eCommerce PPC: Shopping and Performance Max run against real margin
A campaign can hit its return target and still lose money once shipping, returns and cost of goods are counted. We work backwards from contribution margin and set the targets from there.
What is eCommerce PPC?
eCommerce PPC is paid advertising for online stores across Google Shopping, Performance Max, search and paid social, including product feed management and profitability reporting. It suits Australian retailers with a functioning store and enough margin to buy traffic, who need campaigns judged on contribution rather than on platform reported return alone.
Get a fixed written quote- Typical timeline
- 2 to 3 weeks to launch, 8 to 12 weeks to a reliable read
- What drives cost
- Catalogue size, how many campaigns the structure needs, and how much spend sits under management.
- Best for
- Stores with clean product data and margin that can carry paid traffic
- You own
- The ad accounts, the feed and every conversion configuration
- Built with
- Shopping, Performance Max, feed rules, margin based targets
Your handover
Why a ROAS target quietly loses money
Return on ad spend divides revenue by advertising cost and ignores everything else. A store hitting four times return sounds healthy until you subtract cost of goods at sixty percent, free shipping averaging nine dollars an order, payment processing, and a return rate of one in five on apparel. What looked like a strong campaign can be flat or negative on contribution, and the store scales it enthusiastically because the dashboard is green.
- 01Margin model with break-even targets by product group
- 02Conversion tracking validated against your order data
- 03Product feed rebuilt with rules maintained ongoing
- 04Campaign structure segmented by margin and role
- 05Brand and non brand separated where the platform allows
- 06Weekly optimisation with a documented change log
- Monthly contribution reporting, not just ROAS
- Exclusion list for products that cannot carry paid traffic
- All accounts and feeds registered in your name
The fix is arithmetic rather than cleverness
The fix is arithmetic rather than cleverness. We take your gross margin by product group, add the real fulfilment cost including the Australia Post or courier rate you actually pay rather than what you charge, factor in returns by category, and derive the break-even return for each group. Then targets are set above break-even by whatever contribution the business needs. high-margin products can carry an aggressive target and should be bid harder. Low margin lines often cannot support paid traffic at all, and the honest answer is to exclude them rather than to run them at a loss for revenue that flatters a report.
Product type and category assigned deliberately rather than guessed.
The product feed is the campaign
In Shopping and Performance Max you do not choose keywords. The feed decides what you show for, so feed quality is the main lever available and it is where most accounts are weakest. Titles taken straight from your product database are the usual culprit, because a title written for a category page is missing the words people search: the brand, the type, the key attribute, the size. A title reading Classic Long Sleeve in Navy tells the system very little. Rewritten with brand, product type and attributes in a consistent order, it competes for far more queries.
Beyond titles, the work is unglamorous and it compounds
Beyond titles, the work is unglamorous and it compounds. Correct product identifiers so items are matched properly. Accurate availability and price so nothing is disapproved. Product type and category assigned deliberately rather than guessed. Images that meet the requirements without a watermark. Shipping and returns settings that reflect reality, because those now appear in listings and affect click through. And custom labels, which are the most useful and least used field, letting you group products by margin band, season, stock level or best seller status so campaigns can be structured around the things you actually want to control.
- Titles rebuilt with brand, type and attributes in a consistent pattern
- Identifiers corrected so products are matched and eligible
- Custom labels for margin band, stock level and seasonality
- Availability and price synced so approvals do not lapse
- Shipping and returns configured to match what you really offer
- Feed rules maintained continuously rather than set once at launch
How the engagement runs
How we run an eCommerce PPC account
The first two weeks go to measurement and feed work, not to launching campaigns. Starting to spend before conversion values are accurate is how accounts end up optimising toward the wrong outcome for months, and unwinding that costs more than the delay would have.
- 01Margin modelGross margin, fulfilment cost and return rate by product group, converted to break-even targets
- 02MeasurementConversion tracking with real values, enhanced conversions and a check against your order system
- 03Feed remediationTitles, identifiers, categories, custom labels and disapproval clean up
- 04Campaign structureProducts segmented by margin and role, brand separated where possible
- 05Launch and stabiliseRun long enough for reliable data before judging anything
- 06Scale and pruneBudget moved toward products that contribute, exclusions applied to those that cannot
- 07ReportMonthly contribution reporting with a documented change log
Two decisions on your side that keep the project moving
After launch the cadence is weekly rather than daily. Frequent changes reset learning and make the data noisier, so we work to a documented change log with one meaningful adjustment at a time where possible. Reporting is monthly and framed in your numbers: spend, revenue, estimated contribution after cost of goods and fulfilment, and what we intend to change next.
Structuring Performance Max so you can see inside it
Performance Max hands most of the controls to Google, which is fine when it is working and infuriating when it is not, because the default reporting makes it hard to tell what is happening. Dropping the whole catalogue into a single campaign is the most common setup and the least diagnosable. It also lets the system spend most of the budget on the products that were already selling, including your own brand searches, which inflates the reported return while adding very little.
More on structuring Performance Max so you can see inside it
So we structure for visibility. Products are split into asset groups or separate campaigns by margin band and by role, using the custom labels from the feed. Best sellers, mid tier and the long tail get different targets because they behave differently. Brand traffic is separated where the account allows, so you can see what the campaign contributes beyond demand you already had. We use the reporting available on listing groups and search themes rather than accepting the summary view. None of this makes the black box transparent, but it makes it accountable, which is enough to manage it properly.
Attribution when the customer checks three devices
A typical Australian purchase involves a phone during the commute, a laptop that evening and possibly a marketplace comparison in between. Every platform claims that journey, so adding up the platform reports gives you more sales than your accounting system recorded. Treating those numbers as literal leads to over investing in whichever platform reports most aggressively, which is usually the one with the most generous attribution window.
More on attribution when the customer checks three devices
We handle this in two ways. First, get the underlying measurement as good as it can be with server-side tracking and enhanced conversions so the data is at least accurate about what happened. Second, keep a blended view: total advertising spend against total revenue and total new customers, tracked over time. Platform reports are useful for deciding what to change within a channel, and the blended number is what you use to decide how much the channel gets. Getting the data layer right is analytics implementation, and it is worth doing before rather than after.
When paid is the wrong lever to pull
If your margin cannot carry the cost of a click in your category, no amount of account management will make paid work. Some categories are dominated by large retailers who can afford to buy traffic at a loss to hold share. If you are competing on identical products with thinner margin, paid search is a losing position and we will show you the arithmetic instead of taking a management fee against it.
The rest of the answer
Two other cases. If your store converts well below the norm for your category, paid traffic pours money into the leak, and store design or conversion work should come first. And if your product data is genuinely a mess, feed work has to precede campaigns rather than run alongside them. Where the products suit it, some retailers get better returns putting the same budget into marketplace selling where the buying intent is already present, and we would rather point that out than run a campaign we do not believe in.
How we scope it
Four ways to scope your eCommerce PPC project
We do not publish package prices, because the same brief can be a short build or a long one. These are the shapes the work usually takes. Tell us which one sounds like you and you will get a fixed written quote that spells out exactly what it covers.
Essentials
The core of it, scoped and quoted
Fixed written quote, agreed before work starts
- Margin model with break-even targets by product group
- Conversion tracking validated against your order data
- Product feed rebuilt with rules maintained ongoing
eCommerce PPC Growth
The version most businesses need
Fixed written quote, agreed before work starts
- Everything in Essentials
- Campaign structure segmented by margin and role
- Brand and non brand separated where the platform allows
- Weekly optimisation with a documented change log
eCommerce PPC Platform
The largest version, built around your operation
Fixed written quote, agreed before work starts
- Everything in eCommerce PPC Growth
- Monthly contribution reporting, not just ROAS
- Exclusion list for products that cannot carry paid traffic
- All accounts and feeds registered in your name
eCommerce PPC Care
Ongoing support once it is live
Rolling monthly, quoted in writing
- A named engineer rather than a ticket queue
- Patching, monitoring and a tested backup
- Changes and improvements worked through monthly
- Rolling, cancel with 30 days notice
These are shapes, not menus. Most quotes end up somewhere between two of them, and we will say so when the honest answer is the smallest one. Describe the problem and we will tell you which it is.
Questions buyers usually ask
Frequently asked questions
How quickly will eCommerce PPC work?
Campaigns typically launch 2 to 3 weeks after kickoff, since measurement and feed work come first. You will see traffic immediately and a reliable read on profitability in 8 to 12 weeks, because automated bidding needs conversion volume to stabilise and you need enough orders to see the real return rate. Judging an account in its first fortnight produces confident and usually wrong decisions.
What should we spend on eCommerce PPC?
The right number falls out of the margin model rather than being chosen up front. Once you know the break-even return by product group and what contribution the business needs, budget becomes a function of how much traffic is available at a profitable cost. We build that model in the first fortnight. Our management scope is quoted in writing and separately from media spend.
Who owns the ad accounts and the product feed?
You do. Ad accounts, merchant accounts and analytics are created under your business with your billing details, and we hold access you can revoke. Feed rules and any transformation logic are documented and handed over. If you change agencies, the account history stays with you, which matters because that history is what automated bidding relies on.
Should we run Performance Max or standard Shopping?
Usually a combination, and the balance depends on your catalogue and how much control you need. Performance Max reaches more inventory and often performs well, but it gives away visibility and can absorb brand demand you would have captured anyway. Keeping some standard campaigns preserves control over specific product groups. We test rather than assume, since the answer differs by account.
Do you handle paid social as well as Google?
Yes, where it earns its place. For visual and impulse categories, paid social creates demand that Shopping then captures, and the two work best measured together rather than as competitors for credit. For considered and comparison driven purchases, search usually deserves the budget first. We cover the demand creation side in more detail under social media advertising.
What if our return rate makes the numbers hard to model?
Then we model it explicitly rather than ignoring it, which is what most reporting does. Return rates vary enormously by category, and apparel in particular can make an apparently strong campaign unprofitable. We build the rate into the break-even calculation by product group and revisit it quarterly with your actual data, because an estimate from launch is rarely right six months later.
Related services
Find out what your campaigns really contribute
Send us your current spend, revenue and rough margin. We reply within one business day with a read on profitability and a fixed written quote for management.