The Pet Station

The challenge

A broad pet catalogue was being pushed through a single unsegmented Performance Max campaign, so best-sellers subsidised long-tail products nobody wanted to advertise.

Merchant Centre had persistent disapprovals and thin product data, which capped impression share on exactly the terms with buying intent.

Reported revenue in the ad platform and revenue in the store never agreed, so nobody trusted the numbers enough to scale.

Fix the feed before touching bids

We rewrote titles to a category-attribute-brand pattern, filled missing GTIN and product type data, and cleared the disapproval backlog. Feed quality was treated as a bidding lever, because for Shopping it is one.

Segment by margin, not by convenience

Products were split into tiers by contribution margin and sell-through, each with its own campaign and target. High-margin repeat-purchase lines got the aggressive targets; low-margin bulk items were capped rather than cut, to keep basket value.

Rebuild measurement

Server-side conversion tracking and Consent Mode were implemented, then reconciled against Shopify order data weekly until the variance was small enough to act on.

The outcome

• Blended return on ad spend settled at 3.2x with spend increasing, rather than efficiency bought by shrinking the account.
• Site sessions grew 184% as Shopping impression share recovered on core categories.
• The engagement has run for 17 months and now covers analytics and organic search alongside paid.

Services used