Case study · Multi-Category Retail

Multi-Brand Retailer

Confidential multi-brand retailer

Client-reported comparison

Annual P&L improvement: £320k
Contribution margin lift: 2.3x
Wasted spend eliminated: -47%

Period: Client-reported period against the pre-engagement baseline. Duration and incrementality not independently verified.
Basis: Annual P&L improvement and contribution measured on the client's own finance reporting, not on ad-platform revenue.
Source: Client-reported from their finance data.

Client name withheld. Catalogue size and account-level underlying records have not been independently verified for this publication.

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Blended ROAS hid differences in product contribution. The team reviewed where investment went rather than treating the account-wide figure as a profit measure.
Client finance data reports an annual P&L improvement of £320k against its pre-engagement baseline. The comparison does not isolate the effect of advertising changes or establish a separate monthly profit figure.
Stopped funding products by historic habit. Wasted spend fell 47% once high-margin lines that had been effectively invisible were allowed to compete for budget.
A counterfactual was not measured. The documented risk was continuing to allocate spend by historic habit without comparing product contribution.

Situation

A multi-brand retailer had no unified view of which products deserved spend and which were simply being tolerated.

Budget went where it had always gone, and nobody in the business could explain why.

Diagnosis

Blended ROAS across the catalogue hid differences in contribution between bestsellers and other products.

Campaigns were segmented by brand, so within each brand products competed for budget regardless of margin, stock or commercial priority.

High-margin lines with genuine profit potential were effectively invisible.

Decision

The call

Compare product contribution with where investment was going rather than relying on historic spend alone.

The brand-level campaign structure was preserved and scoring was added as a layer inside it, rather than rebuilding the account.

Execution

Product contribution, stock and sales patterns reviewed together.

Commercial priorities reviewed against the account's existing brand structure.

Investment decisions reviewed by the team rather than presented as automatic job changes.

Weekly accountability calls introduced with a documented decision log.

Result

The client reported £320k annual P&L improvement, a 2.3x lift in contribution margin and a 47% reduction in wasted spend against its pre-engagement baseline.

These client-reported figures are observational, not a controlled measure of incremental advertising profit. The annual amount must not be added to a separate monthly estimate.