Project
How POAS Bidding Helped Silver UK Close the Profitability Gap
Dominic Lidgett
Paid Media Account Director
13/5/2026
Many ecommerce brands find that a high ROAS can act as a vanity metric that masks the true impact of rising operational costs and shifting margins. This article explores how Silver UK transitioned from revenue-focused reporting to a sophisticated Profit on Ad Spend (POAS) model. By feeding gross profit signals directly into their bidding strategy, they moved past surface-level platform data to gain total clarity on their bottom line. This strategic shift closed their contribution gap in just ten weeks and created a scalable, profit-first foundation for their busiest retail seasons.
For ecommerce brands, revenue growth only tells part of the story. The more important question is whether that revenue is contributing enough profit to support sustainable growth, and that was the challenge facing Silver UK.
As external cost pressures began to affect pricing, the relationship between paid media performance and business profitability became more complex. Traditional ROAS reporting still showed how much revenue Google Ads was generating, but it did not give a clear enough view of whether that spend was supporting the wider commercial goals of the business.
Silver UK needed more than platform performance. They needed clarity on profit contribution.
Google Ads has traditionally been managed around revenue-led metrics, with ROAS used as the core measure of performance. While useful, ROAS does not always reflect the commercial reality of an ecommerce business. For Silver UK, this became increasingly important as rising costs meant prices had to be adjusted. Those changes had the potential to affect paid performance, customer demand and overall contribution margin.
The account needed a more accurate way to understand what Google Ads was really delivering. Not just in revenue, but in gross profit, gross margin and profit after ad spend. That is where POAS bidding came in.
Rather than continuing to optimise around revenue alone, we moved the focus towards profit-based bidding. POAS, or Profit on Ad Spend, allows Google Ads activity to be guided by gross profit rather than top-line revenue. This means bidding decisions can be shaped around the products and orders that contribute the most profit to the business, not simply those that generate the highest sales value.
Before making the move, we built out multiple forecasting scenarios for Silver UK. The goal was to understand how Google Ads could continue to drive volume while maintaining an acceptable level of profitability. This gave the client a clearer view of what could be achieved, how performance could be measured and what impact different levels of spend could have on the overall contribution margin of the business.
Once implemented, POAS gave us penny-level visibility across the metrics that mattered most:
- Gross profit from Google Ads
- Gross margin
- Gross profit after ad spend
- Overall contribution from paid activity
This changed the conversation from “how much revenue did we generate?” to “how much profit did this activity contribute?”
As with any major bidding change, the account needed a period of adjustment. Google’s algorithm had to move away from optimising against revenue values and begin learning from gross profit signals instead; the impact started to show quickly. Within the first month, the contribution gap began to narrow. By two and a half months, that gap had closed.
For Silver UK, the value of the work went beyond improved Google Ads reporting. It gave the business a clearer understanding of how paid media was affecting overall profitability, helping the team make decisions based on the commercial metrics that matter most. The client shared positive feedback on both the approach and the results, particularly because the work had a broader business impact beyond the ad account itself.
This project shows why paid media performance cannot be judged in isolation.
For ecommerce brands with margin variation, cost pressures or ambitious growth targets, revenue alone is not enough. Strong ROAS can look good on paper, but it does not always show whether a business is growing profitably.
By moving Silver UK towards POAS bidding, we were able to align Google Ads more closely with real business performance. The work gave the client a more accurate view of profitability, a stronger foundation for decision-making and a clearer path towards future growth. It also reflects how we approach performance marketing at B2. We look beyond surface-level platform metrics and focus on the numbers that drive commercial outcomes.
Scaling from a More Profitable Base
For Silver UK, the next stage is to continue building from this more profitable base ahead of stronger seasonal demand in Q3 and Q4. With the account now better aligned around profit contribution, there is a stronger foundation to scale when demand increases.
This approach is also highly adaptable for other ecommerce businesses where margin data and sufficient sales volume are available. Through discovery and forecasting, brands can understand the profit potential of Google Ads before scaling spend, helping them grow with greater confidence and control.
Ready to move beyond ROAS? Get in touch to see what we can do for your POAS and help you uncover your true profit potential.
