Paid advertising case study · 7 to 14 February 2024
6.74 times back on ad spend once the account was measuring orders
An online retailer’s Google Ads account was optimising on the wrong number. The tracking was fixed first, then the spend was moved to searches the store could serve.
£31.4K
conversion value
£4.66K
spend behind it
£15.87
cost per conversion
Measured over
7 to 14 February 2024
What to notice
The Google Ads overview for the window: 6.74 conversion value per cost, £31.4K in conversion value against £4.66K of spend, and £15.87 per conversion. Conversion value here is order value, because that is what the rebuilt action counts.
Want numbers like these?
Get a free written review of your own account.
Who the business is
An online retail store running Google Ads. The owner asked not to be named, so the account is described by what the numbers show rather than by who runs it.
Why marketing mattered
A store that measures page views as conversions will keep feeding budget to whatever produces page views. Until the number is right, no optimisation can be.
- Service
- Paid advertising
- Sector
- Google Ads, retail
- Period measured
- 7 to 14 February 2024
- Figures from
- Screenshot of the Google Ads account
What was not working
The problem
Spend going to searches the business could not serve, and a conversion action counting page views rather than orders, so every optimisation decision was made on the wrong number.
- Spend was going to searches the business could not actually serve.
- The conversion action counted page views rather than orders.
- Every optimisation decision was being made on that wrong number.
Where things stood before the work began
The account was running and spending, but the figure it was being judged on did not describe orders. There was no reliable before to compare against, because the before was measuring the wrong thing.
What we found, and why we started there
The thinking
Nothing could be optimised until the account counted orders, so the conversion action was rebuilt in the first week and nothing else was changed until it was. Once the numbers were real, the searches that could not be served were cut and the budget was concentrated on the ones that could.
How we did it, step by step
- 1
The conversion action rebuilt to count orders
Done in week one, before any optimisation. A page view is not a sale, and a bid strategy fed page views optimises towards them.
- 2
Spend moved off searches the store could not serve
Terms the business could not fulfil were removed, so the budget went to searches that could end in an order.
What got in the way
The before and after do not measure the same thing
Because the tracking was fixed first, the earlier figures counted page views and the later ones count orders. That is the point of the fix, and it is why the result is shown as an eight-day snapshot rather than a comparison.
Adjusted as it ran
How the work was adjusted as it ran
The order of work was the strategy: measure first, cut what cannot be served second, then let the bid strategy learn on orders rather than on page views.
What the numbers show
The result
6.74x
return on ad spend
£31.4K in conversion value from £4.66K of spend at £15.87 per conversion. The tracking was fixed in week one, before anything was optimised.
From the work to the outcome
- Orders counted, not page views
- Budget on servable searches
- £4.66K spend
- £31.4K conversion value
How to read this, and what it does not prove
An eight-day window, 7 to 14 February 2024, from the account itself. Read the return as a snapshot of that week rather than as a year-round average, and note that conversion value is revenue rather than profit.
Return on ad spend is reported against conversion value, which is revenue rather than profit. Whether 6.74 times is good depends on this account gross margin, which is not shown here. The tracking fix in week one means the before and after figures are not measuring the same thing, which is the point and also a limit on comparing them.
Want this for your business?
It starts with a free written review.
What you can take from this
Fix the number before you optimise anything
A week spent on tracking is worth more than a month of bid changes made on a figure that counts page views.
Cut the searches you cannot serve
Spend on a term the store cannot fulfil is spend with no possible return. Removing it costs nothing.
Read a return on ad spend with its window
A 6.74 return over eight days is a real figure and a short one. The spend and the conversion value sit beside it so it can be read properly.