Platform ROAS is the most easily manipulated metric in ecommerce: it goes up if you buy back your own brand, if you over-count repeat customers or if the mix shifts towards low-margin products. As an ecommerce paid media agency, we optimise against what is left over: margin per order, net ROAS per SKU and MER. That is where it is decided whether the channel pays for the company or only pays for itself.
You can start with the numbers: the catalogue calculator gives you the breakeven ROAS each category needs, so you can see which parts of your range can actually carry paid traffic.
Large catalogues: not every SKU deserves a bid
In distribution with thousands of products, treating the catalogue as a single block is giving money away. With SKUSCALE™ (the product of our Classification Lab) we classify every product by real profitability and scaling potential, and the campaign structure inherits that classification:
- High-margin SKUs with proven demand get budget and aggressive bids.
- Thin-margin SKUs only compete where the price is competitive.
- SKUs that destroy margin come out of the feed or stay at minimum coverage.
The typical result isn't spending less: it is the same budget buying orders that leave a profit.
Own brands: scaling without burning the brand
In DTC the problem is a different one: separating acquisition from repeat purchase. If Meta and Google claim customers who were already yours, the growth is fictional. We measure new vs returning in every channel, work attribution with honest windows (click, not inflated view-through) and set the pace of scaling with blended figures and MER in front of us, not just Ads Manager ROAS.
The stack: Shopping + PMax + Meta, measured properly
Google Shopping and Performance Max with enriched feeds and brand exclusions. Meta with creative refreshed based on data (Nash Generative Lab) and attribution read on a click-only basis. And underneath, measurement: server-side, deduplication across platforms and your store's actual sales (Shopify, PrestaShop or whatever you use) reconciled with platform data in the Nash BI Lab pipeline. If the platform says 100 and the store says 60, you want to know before scaling.
Reporting your finance team understands
Net sales (excluding VAT and shipping, net of returns), margin by channel, MER and a paid media P&L. Automatic, daily and reconciled against your ecommerce platform. Stop arguing with the agency report: our reporting is designed for your finance director to sign off.
Frequently asked questions
We have 40,000 products. Can you really manage that?
It is our favourite territory. Classification by profitability is automated (SKUSCALE™) and the campaign structure is generated from it. The bigger the catalogue, the more value there is in separating margin from volume.
How do you calculate net ROAS?
Your store's actual net sales (excluding VAT and shipping, net of returns) divided by spend, by channel and by SKU where the data allows. We don't use gross platform revenue as the source of truth.
Meta or Google for ecommerce?
Both, in different roles: Google captures demand (Shopping and Search) and Meta creates it. The split comes from your acquisition and margin numbers, not from an agency preference.
We already have a ROAS of 6. Why would we need you?
To find out whether that 6 is real. In most audits, once you separate out brand, repeat customers and returns, the number changes. Sometimes it confirms everything is fine and the job is to scale; sometimes it reveals that the growth was buying itself.
Is your paid media a profitable system or just a pile of campaigns?
Tell us about your case and we return an actionable diagnostic: what to scale, what to keep and what to pause. Free, no strings attached.