International Google Ads
A profitable UK campaign does not become profitable internationally because you duplicated it
Different CPCs. Different competitors. Different delivery costs. Different returns. Different pricing. Different demand. Different economics. Yet international expansion is often treated like a campaign-copying exercise: duplicate the UK structure, translate a few ads, change the currency, hope the numbers behave.
The same product can be Scale in the UK, Profit in Germany, Gateway in the US and not worth advertising in France. Same SKU, different commercial reality.
The market has to earn the investment.
International growth is an economics problem before it is a campaign problem
The temptation is to start with geography: which countries, which languages, which campaigns to duplicate. Useful questions, but not the first ones. We start with where the business can actually make money: selling price, gross margin, shipping, fulfilment, returns, payment costs, tax, currency, acquisition cost, demand, competition and the operational reality of serving the market.
If the economics do not work, a beautifully translated campaign is still a bad investment.
The same ROAS means something different in every market
Three countries all report 4.0 ROAS. The UK has stronger margin and lower fulfilment cost. Germany has higher returns. The US has higher CPCs but much stronger repeat purchase. A global view makes them look broadly equivalent. Commercially they are not.
Global reporting hides local failure and local opportunity in equal measure. Inside a 5.0 global ROAS you can find the UK at 6.2, Germany at 4.8, the US at 3.6 and France at 1.9. Meanwhile a small market with strong margin, excellent new customer economics and low impression share barely moves the global number, yet the next £1 might work hardest there.
Explore POAS →Commercial intent exists at the intersection of product and market.
Local targets, not exported ones
What does an order contribute here? What does a new customer cost, and what are they worth? How do shipping and returns change the result? How much spend can the market absorb, and what does the marginal £1 return? The target should come from the market.
Localisation, not translation
A mechanically translated campaign can be technically correct and commercially terrible. Search language, category terminology, trust signals, delivery messaging, promotional expectations and landing-page consistency all have to sound native, not merely correct.
Feeds need local thinking
Titles, product types, descriptions, currency, pricing, availability, promotions, shipping data and commercial labels. One English feed copied across every country is administratively convenient and rarely commercially effective.
Shipping and returns
International growth can look excellent at revenue level while fulfilment quietly eats margin. If one market returns 15% and another 35%, the same reported ROAS produces very different final economics.
Brand maturity isn't exportable
Well established in the UK and known by almost nobody in the US are not the same Google Ads problem. Brand demand, customer signal strength and category education all differ, so brand strategy should differ too.
Currency and seasonality
Reported growth can be moved by exchange rates, and congratulating the agency for sterling weakening would be a fairly generous performance bonus. Peaks, holidays and gifting periods differ by market too.
Expansion should be earned by evidence
- 1Validate the economics. Is there a plausible path to profitable demand?
- 2Validate demand. Does meaningful Search and Shopping opportunity exist?
- 3Validate the offer. Pricing, shipping, landing pages, reviews, trust.
- 4Test with controlled investment.
- 5Learn from what actually happens.
- 6Scale where the marginal return justifies it.
More countries is not automatically more growth. Sometimes it is simply more countries, each carrying feed work, reporting, localisation, tracking, customer service, fulfilment and occasionally tax complexity.
What we won't promise
We won't tell you every international market is a growth opportunity. Some won't be. We won't tell you that duplicating your UK account is a strategy. It isn't. We won't recommend localisation for the sake of creating localisation work. And we won't judge every country against the same arbitrary ROAS target.
The question isn't "which country should we launch next?"
It's where the next £1 creates the greatest commercial value. Maybe the US. Maybe Germany. Maybe the UK account still has more profitable headroom than either. International growth should compete for capital like every other opportunity in the business.
Why most agencies fail at cross-market PPC
Running Google Ads in multiple markets isn't a translation exercise. It's a unit-economics exercise. The same SKU sold in the UK, US and UAE has three different contribution margins, three different tax treatments, three different fulfilment costs and three different return profiles. Most agencies treat international expansion as "duplicate the UK account, translate the keywords, increase the budget." That's how brands burn international budgets without knowing why.
Margin economics change per market - the bidding strategy rarely does
A £50 item with 60% margin in the UK might land at roughly 32% margin in the US after tariffs (illustrative), and roughly 47% margin in the UAE after duty and VAT. Without per-market contribution margin feeding the bidder, Smart Bidding optimises against gross revenue and quietly destroys profit on the lower-margin markets.
Simplified teaching maths. Not client performance. Figures are hypothetical.
Native-language campaigns run as direct translations from English
"Best running shoes" in German, French or Arabic carries different commercial intent, different qualifying modifiers, and a different competitive set. Most agencies don't have native-speaker review built in, so the campaign reads as obviously translated, trust drops, conversion rate follows.
Feed quality requirements vary by market
GTIN, EAN and MPN regional differences. Country-specific safety attribute requirements. Different allowed claim language (UAE, KSA, Switzerland and the EU all enforce different rules). Currency formatting. The default Shopify or Magento export rarely satisfies all of these - and a single feed disapproval per market means lost impressions in that market.
Cross-market PPC, run on BOI®
The BOI® framework - Bid On Intent - assigns every SKU one of five commercial jobs (Scale, Profit, Protect, Recovery, Gateway). In a single-market account, that job is calculated against UK margin economics. In a cross-market account, each SKU has a different job in each market because the underlying margin economics differ.
United Kingdom
~60% margin
Scale or Profit job depending on stock and demand.
United States (post-tariff)
~38% margin
Job shifts to Profit or Protect. Aggressive bidding loses money.
UAE (import duty + 5% VAT)
~47% margin
Sits between US and UK treatment.
Simplified teaching maths. Not client performance. Figures are hypothetical.
When tariff rates change (as they have through 2026), the job mix shifts in real time. Brands without commercial-intent bidding don't see the change until the quarterly P&L review. This is why blended bidding fails internationally. It's also why "translate and duplicate" fails. The margin economics are different in every market; the bidding strategy has to reflect it. The POAS view is the only one that holds up across borders.
Native-language campaigns, not direct translations
We run live campaigns across English-speaking markets (UK, US, Australia, Singapore, Canada, Ireland) and non-English markets where the brand has commercial presence - including French, German, Spanish, Italian, Dutch and Arabic, depending on client footprint.
For non-English markets, native-speaker review is built into our keyword research, ad copy production and landing page intent matching. We don't run machine-translated campaigns. We don't ship "passable" copy and hope. The native-speaker review pass typically adds 3–5 days to onboarding, but it's the difference between a campaign that converts and a campaign that visibly reads as translated.
Where we don't claim native capability
We don't pretend to run native-language campaigns for markets where we don't have reliable native review (Mandarin, Japanese, Korean, Russian, Portuguese - depending on current team capacity). For those markets, we partner with specialist local agencies and handle the strategy and methodology layer while they handle the language execution.
Tax, tariff and duty - built into the bidding
US tariffs (2026)
The current US tariff regime applies variable rates depending on country of origin, product category and (for some categories) end-use. For UK and EU brands selling into the US, this can materially compress landed margin; the size depends on origin and category. Every JudeLuxe US-targeting account has tariff-adjusted contribution margin feeding the bidder. We monitor tariff rate changes (currently a monthly review cadence given how often the regime is being updated) and people review BOI® jobs when rates change materially. See our most recent Merchant Center updates coverage for related compliance changes.
EU and UK VAT
Post-Brexit VAT is its own discipline. EU One-Stop Shop (OSS) registration thresholds, country-specific VAT rates (Germany 19%, France 20%, Hungary 27%, etc.) and the £135 / €150 customs threshold all affect per-order margin. We handle the bidding implications - the registration is your accountant's job, but if the registration changes, the bidding changes too.
UAE, KSA and Gulf markets
UAE applies 5% VAT plus customs duty (typically 5% on most goods). KSA is 15% VAT plus duty. Both markets have specific claim-language restrictions for health, beauty and food categories. We work across both markets and have native Arabic-speaker review built in for campaigns in MSA.
Currency hedging
For brands hedging GBP exposure, we adjust reported POAS calculations based on the hedge ratio. A 5% GBP/USD move can shift reported POAS by around 3 percentage points; without hedge accounting that swing reads as performance change.
Where we currently run campaigns
English-language markets
- United Kingdom
- United States
- Canada
- Ireland
- Australia
- New Zealand
- Singapore
Non-English (native-speaker review)
- Germany
- France
- Spain
- Italy
- Netherlands
- United Arab Emirates (Arabic)
Account structure - one strategy, multiple market implementations
Cross-market accounts have three common structural choices, each with trade-offs:
Option 1
Single account, multiple campaigns per market
Pros
Simplest. Easy to manage.
Trade-offs
Mixes performance signals across markets. Smart Bidding optimises against blended targets. Per-market commercial intent is lost.
Option 2
One account per market
Pros
Cleanest signal separation. Each account's Smart Bidding optimises against its own market's economics.
Trade-offs
Higher operational overhead - 5 markets means 5 accounts to monitor.
Option 3
Manager account with market-level subaccounts
Pros
Best balance. Consolidated reporting across markets; subaccount-level Smart Bidding works against per-market commercial signal. How we structure most multi-market accounts.
Trade-offs
Requires up-front strategy work to set conversion actions and value rules cleanly.
The right choice depends on budget split across markets, complexity tolerance and reporting requirements. We make the recommendation based on the brand's actual setup, not a default playbook. For brands managing multiple distinct labels in a single group, the same logic applies to our multi-brand retail work.
Pricing - fixed fee, scoped to market complexity
Cross-market PPC management is a fixed monthly fee, scoped to: number of markets, language complexity (English-only vs multi-language), tax regime complexity (US tariffs + EU OSS + UAE VAT all in one account is more work than UK-only), and subaccount structure complexity.
2–3 markets, English-only, single account
£4,000–£7,000 / month
3–5 markets, mixed English + native language
£7,000–£12,000 / month
5+ markets, multi-language, US + EU + UAE
£12,000–£25,000+ / month
No percentage of spend. Every engagement starts with a commercial review. 3-month initial term, then rolling. Final fee scoped on the commercial review once we understand the actual market footprint. See the full pricing structure or our retained management service for single-market engagements.
When not to expand internationally with Google Ads
We push back on international expansion when it doesn't make commercial sense - even though it costs us revenue. Three common situations where we recommend brands hold:
01
Sub-£2M revenue, sub-£10k/month Google Ads spend
International expansion adds operational complexity that brands at this scale rarely absorb profitably. Better to maximise UK performance first.
02
Catalogue not localised for the target market
Selling UK-spec products into the US without market-appropriate sizing, certifications or pricing tends to under-perform. Fix the catalogue before scaling the ads.
03
Fulfilment infrastructure not in place
Cross-border shipping from the UK to the US, UAE or EU often produces unprofitable unit economics due to duty, tariffs and shipping cost. Brands need a local 3PL or fulfilment partner before scaling ads materially.
We say so on the call when this applies. Better to lose a pitch than take an engagement that won't work.
Questions
Frequently asked questions
Next step
See which markets are actually making money
A free 30-minute commercial review: where per-market margin economics are breaking down, and what looks recoverable. If the catalogue needs deeper work, the SKU Profit Audit goes further.