The situation
This furniture and home e-commerce brand was spending heavily on Google Ads across a large catalogue of products. The account had 40 or more active campaigns running across Search, Performance Max and Shopping, all targeting different furniture categories from beds and boxsprings to garden sheds and TV units.
On the surface the account looked active and busy. But the profit dashboard told a different story. In the period from January 19 to February 17, 2026, the business generated 148,434 in revenue and 30,620 in gross profit, but spent 46,204 on ads across Google and Meta. The result was a contribution margin of negative 15,584. Every month the ads were running, the business was losing money.
A busy account is not the same as a profitable one. Forty campaigns, dozens of ad groups, and a six-figure ad spend. None of it matters if the contribution margin is negative.
The core problem was structural. Most Search campaigns were bidding on product-level ROAS targets of 6x to 7x based on revenue, with no connection to actual product margins. Low-margin products received the same budget as high-margin ones. And there was no mechanism to cut spend automatically when a campaign was generating orders that cost more than they were worth.
What I did
The fix required two things: better measurement and a completely different budget logic. Rather than chasing revenue ROAS targets, campaigns were restructured around POAS — profit on ad spend — so every bidding decision is evaluated against actual gross margin, not topline revenue.
Introduce POAS-based campaign tiers
Replaced blunt revenue ROAS targets with a tiered profit structure. PROFIT-TEST PMax campaigns were created for NL and BE separately, segmented by product profit tier: Gold, Silver, Bronze, Nickel and Iron. Each tier has its own budget ceiling and POAS target based on the actual margin of products in that group.
Launch tPOAS Shopping campaigns
Introduced Shopping campaigns with a target POAS bidding strategy rather than target ROAS. This was a direct signal to Google to optimise for profit per euro spent, not just revenue return. The Iron tier Shopping campaigns in both NL and BE became the strongest performers in the restructured account.
Isolate branded search
Branded campaigns were separated from generic product search and given their own budget. With a POAS of 3.69x on branded search alone, protecting this traffic from being diluted into broader campaigns ensured high-intent, high-margin clicks were not competing with expensive generic terms.
Cut spend on campaigns with no profit signal
Multiple Search campaigns were generating clicks and even conversions but showing zero gross profit contribution. These were identified, budgets were reduced dramatically, and the freed spend was redirected to the POAS-optimised Shopping and PMax campaigns where margin was visible and positive.
Spending less and earning more is only possible when you know which campaigns are actually profitable. POAS tracking made the invisible visible and the cuts made themselves obvious from there.
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