ROAS is dead. Long live profit.
Choosing an ecommerce PPC agency in 2026 is no longer about who can click buttons in Google Ads. It is about who owns your data and protects your margins. This guide compares the three primary agency models to help you find the right fit for your SKU count and growth stage.
We optimise Google Ads for POAS, not just ROAS, so bidding follows contribution margin after COGS, shipping, returns and fees rather than headline revenue. If you want that managed rather than compared, start at our ecommerce PPC agency page.
At a glance: the three agency archetypes.
Every ecommerce PPC agency falls into one of three models. The differences are not cosmetic: they determine how your budget is spent, what gets measured, and who profits.
| Feature | The Generalist | The Specialist | The Profit-First Partner |
|---|---|---|---|
| Primary metric | Impressions / Clicks | Blended ROAS | POAS (Profit on Ad Spend) |
| Bidding logic | Standard AI (auto-pilot) | tROAS (targeting revenue) | SKU-level profit bidding |
| Tracking | Standard GA4 | Server-side GTM | Full-funnel profit attribution |
| Account ownership | Often 'managed' by agency | Brand owned | 100% brand owned and transparent |
| Margin data integration | None | Rarely | COGS, shipping, returns built into bidding |
| SKU-level strategy | Campaign-level only | Ad group level | Individual SKU roles (Scale, Profit, Recovery, Gateway) |
| Reporting | Templated dashboards | Custom ROAS reports | Board-ready P&L impact reports |
| Pricing model | % of ad spend | Fixed fee or % hybrid | Fixed fee, no percentage of spend |
| Best for | Brand awareness | Early-stage scaling | High-growth and enterprise ecommerce |
Seven UK ecommerce PPC agencies, compared honestly.
Agency models are useful, named agencies are more useful. Below are seven UK agencies that come up repeatedly on ecommerce Google Ads shortlists, with the spend band each tends to serve and the honest case for and against. We are one of them, so read our own row with that in mind.
Disclosure: JudeLuxe is included in this comparison and JudeLuxe publishes it. Everything here is drawn from each agency's own public positioning and from what UK ecommerce buyers tell us during selection processes. It is a starting point for a shortlist, not a ranking, and no agency has paid to appear.
| Agency | Typical spend band | Strongest for | Where they are strong | Where to press them |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Circus PPC | £10k-£150k/month | Established retailers wanting a large, process-led PPC team | Long-standing UK PPC specialist with real Shopping and PMax depth and a sizeable team, so cover and continuity are rarely an issue. | Team scale means the person who pitches is often not the person in the account day to day. Ask who owns your account and how strategy decisions are escalated. |
| PPC Geeks | £5k-£100k/month | Mid-market ecommerce brands wanting audit-led onboarding | Audit-first approach, transparent about account access and ownership, well reviewed by SME ecommerce clients. | Positioning spans lead gen and ecommerce rather than pure ecommerce economics. Ask to see contribution margin reporting, not just ROAS dashboards. |
| Found | £25k-£500k+/month | Larger brands wanting paid, SEO and digital PR under one roof | Full-service integrated search offering with serious data and measurement capability, suited to brands running paid and organic together. | Integrated scope means PPC competes internally for attention and budget. Ask what proportion of the retainer is genuinely Google Ads execution. |
| Oxedent | £10k-£200k/month | Ecommerce brands wanting Shopping and PMax specialists | Deliberately narrow ecommerce Google Ads focus, feed-literate, comfortable with Shopping and Performance Max as the core of an account. | Smaller team, so capacity and cover are fair questions. Press on how margin data reaches bidding rather than how campaigns are structured. |
| Upscale Digital | £15k-£250k/month | Brands who value published methodology and transparency | Publishes detailed PMax methodology and buyer checklists, which is a good signal: an agency willing to be judged against its own criteria. | Content-led visibility is not the same as account results. Ask for the case where they cut spend and profit rose. |
| Salience Search Marketing | £10k-£150k/month | Retail brands running search alongside SEO | Established UK search agency with retail experience and solid technical search capability across paid and organic. | Heritage is SEO-led, so paid ecommerce economics may not be the centre of gravity. Ask who leads the paid team and how SKU-level profit is handled. |
| JudeLuxe (us) | £15k-£500k+/month | Ecommerce brands judged on contribution margin, not ROAS | Fixed fee with no percentage of spend, SKU-level margin bidding under BOI®, cost of goods pulled from the store into the feed, senior-only delivery. | Small team and a hard minimum spend, so we turn down accounts below it. Google and Microsoft Ads only: social and email run through partners, not in-house. |
Circus PPC
£10k-£150k/month
One of the longest-established UK PPC specialists. Strong on Shopping and Performance Max execution at scale, with the resourcing to handle large catalogues. The trade-off with any agency of that size is seniority dilution, so make the named account lead a contractual point rather than a sales-call reassurance.
PPC Geeks
£5k-£100k/month
A well-regarded UK PPC specialist with a strong audit-led sales process and a healthy attitude to account ownership. Their client base spans B2B lead generation as well as ecommerce, so if margin-led bidding is your priority, test how deep the cost-data work goes before signing.
Found
£25k-£500k+/month
A large integrated UK search agency, strong where paid and organic need coordinating and where measurement and econometrics matter. Less suited to a brand that wants one channel run very deeply by a small senior team, and the retainer structure reflects the breadth.
Oxedent
£10k-£200k/month
A focused ecommerce Google Ads shop with genuine Shopping and PMax depth and no pretence of being full service, which is a strength. Worth asking directly whether cost of goods is integrated into bidding or whether optimisation still terminates at revenue.
Upscale Digital
£15k-£250k/month
Notably transparent about method, to the point of publishing the questions buyers should use to interrogate agencies, including their own. That is a genuine credibility signal. Hold them to their own checklist and ask for the example where platform reporting looked good and they still reduced budget.
Salience Search Marketing
£10k-£150k/month
A long-standing UK search agency with retail credentials and strong technical search foundations. Good fit if you want one partner across organic and paid; less obviously the choice if what you need is deep catalogue-level margin engineering inside Google Ads.
JudeLuxe (us)
£15k-£500k+/month
We run Google and Microsoft Ads for UK ecommerce brands above the minimum spend floor, bidding on contribution margin rather than revenue. Fixed fee means reducing your spend costs us nothing. The honest limitations: we are deliberately small, we decline accounts under the floor, and we are not the right call if you want one agency running every channel.
If you are running this shortlist properly, pair it with how to choose a PPC agency and whether you should change agency at all. If Shopify is your platform, the technical questions differ: Google Ads for Shopify brands.
The 'spend-first' agency.
These are the large agencies with 500+ employees. They charge a percentage of ad spend, which creates a fundamental conflict of interest: they make more money when you spend more, regardless of whether you make a profit.
Your account is typically managed by a junior account coordinator overseeing 20+ clients. You get templated reports and 'best practice' setups that ignore your specific product margins, seasonal patterns, and inventory constraints.
The risk
Percentage-of-spend pricing incentivises budget increases, not profit
Junior staff managing 20+ accounts cannot provide strategic depth
Templated setups ignore your specific margin structures
No SKU-level analysis: winners and losers blended into one number
Agency may retain ownership of your Google Ads account
The 'ROAS-first' agency.
These agencies are a step up. They focus on Return on Ad Spend and use advanced Google Ads features like Performance Max and Demand Gen. They know the platform well and can drive impressive-looking ROAS numbers.
The problem is that ROAS is a vanity metric. If you sell a product for £100 with £90 COGS, a 5x ROAS looks excellent on paper but generates £10 gross profit before shipping and fees. After a £20 ad cost, you have lost £10 on every sale the agency celebrates.
The risk
ROAS ignores COGS, shipping, returns, and payment fees
A 5x ROAS on a 10% margin product is a net loss
Optimising for revenue, not profit, scales losses faster
No integration of your actual cost data into bidding
Performance looks good in dashboards but not on the P&L
The 'profit-first' partner.
This is where the industry is moving in 2026. Instead of optimising for what Google reports, profit-first management optimises for what your bank account shows. By integrating COGS directly into bidding algorithms, every bid decision is weighted by actual contribution margin.
Most agencies bid at campaign level. Profit-first management bids at SKU level. If Product A has a 50% margin and Product B has a 10% margin, they should not share the same ROAS target. They are different business units with different commercial objectives.
What this looks like
COGS, shipping, and returns built into every bid decision
SKU roles assigned dynamically: Scale, Profit, Recovery, Gateway
Board-ready reporting showing P&L impact, not just platform metrics
Fixed monthly fee with no percentage of spend
100% account ownership and full data transparency
Incrementality testing to prove true contribution
Why profit-first wins in 2026.
Server-side tracking
In a cookieless world, standard tracking misses 20-30% of conversions. Server-to-server tracking ensures your bidding AI has accurate data. Without it, Smart Bidding is optimising on incomplete information.
AI search readiness
AI Overviews and agentic commerce are changing how products are discovered. Your product feed, structured data, and content need to be machine-readable and citation-worthy. Most agencies have not adapted.
Zero-conflict pricing
Fixed monthly fees mean we never benefit from recommending higher spend. Every budget increase comes with a commercial case: projected margin impact, diminishing returns analysis, and a rollback trigger.
The ROAS illusion: a worked example.
Product price
£100
COGS
£65
Shipping
£5
Payment fees
£3
Gross profit before ads
£27
ROAS agency charges £20 CPA
5x ROAS
Actual profit: £7
After 15% return rate: £2.95
POAS agency targets £12 CPA
1.25x POAS
Actual profit: £15
After 15% return rate: £10.75
The ROAS agency reports a 'great' 5x return. The POAS agency delivers 2.6x more actual profit per sale by targeting a lower CPA informed by margin data.
February 2026 Update
March 2026Latest platform changes and how we're adapting our approach:
- Google's AI Mode (conversational search) is now live in 15 markets. Agencies without a structured data and product feed strategy are losing visibility in AI-generated product recommendations.
- Consent Mode v2 enforcement means conversion modelling is standard. Agencies relying solely on GA4 are working with 20-30% less accurate data than those using server-side tracking.
- Performance Max now surfaces more asset group reporting, but still no full search term transparency. Weekly PMax audits remain essential for margin protection.
Five questions to ask before hiring your next agency.
The answers will tell you more about an agency than any case study or testimonial.
"Who actually moves the levers?"
Avoid agencies that pass you to juniors after the sales call. The person who pitched should be the person managing your account, or at minimum, reviewing every strategic decision weekly.
"How do you handle SKU-level profitability?"
If they say 'we use blended ROAS', they are averaging your winners and losers into a single number that hides the truth. You need SKU-level contribution margin, not campaign-level averages.
"Do I own my data and my accounts?"
Never let an agency own your Google Ads account. If the relationship ends, your campaign history, audience data, and conversion tracking should stay with you. This is non-negotiable.
"How are you preparing my brand for AI Search?"
Generative search (AI Overviews, AI Mode) is changing how products are discovered. Your agency should have a concrete plan for structured data, product feed quality, and machine-readable content.
"Can you show me a report that includes my COGS and shipping costs?"
If the agency cannot integrate your cost data into reporting, they cannot tell you whether your campaigns are actually profitable. Revenue reports without margin context are meaningless.
Go deeper.
Questions about choosing an agency.
What is the difference between a generalist and specialist PPC agency?
A generalist agency manages multiple channels (Google, Meta, TikTok, email) for multiple industries. A specialist focuses on one channel and one vertical. The trade-off is breadth versus depth. For ecommerce brands spending £15k+ per month on Google Ads, depth wins because the complexity of Shopping feeds, SKU economics, and margin-based bidding requires dedicated expertise.
Why is ROAS considered a vanity metric?
ROAS measures revenue per ad pound, but revenue is not profit. A product with £100 revenue, £90 COGS, and £5 shipping shows 5x ROAS but generates £5 gross profit before ad cost. If you spent £20 to acquire that sale, you lost £15. POAS (Profit on Ad Spend) accounts for COGS, shipping, and returns to show actual profit per ad pound.
What does profit-first PPC management look like in practice?
Profit-first management means feeding contribution margin data into bidding algorithms at SKU level, segmenting products by commercial role (Scale, Profit, Recovery, Gateway), and reporting on P&L impact rather than platform metrics. It also means throttling spend when marginal returns decline, even if the agency earns less as a result.
How do I know if my agency has a conflict of interest?
If your agency charges a percentage of ad spend, they earn more when you spend more, regardless of profitability. Ask whether they have ever recommended reducing spend. If the answer is no, the incentive structure is working against you.
What should I look for in an ecommerce PPC agency in 2026?
Five things: (1) margin data integration, not just revenue tracking; (2) SKU-level strategy, not campaign-level averages; (3) fixed pricing with no percentage of spend; (4) full account ownership and data transparency; (5) a concrete plan for AI search and agentic commerce readiness.
Is it worth switching agencies mid-year?
Yes, if the current agency cannot show you profit per order, does not use your margin data, or charges a percentage of spend. The cost of staying with the wrong agency compounds monthly. A well-managed transition takes 2-4 weeks and typically recovers the switching cost within 60-90 days.
How we work
See allMost brands waste 20-30% of their budget on zombie SKUs.
Products that look profitable on ROAS dashboards but lose money after COGS, shipping, and returns. A SKU-level profit audit shows you exactly where the margin is leaking.