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    European Search Awards 2026 · Best Small PPC Agency

    For finance

    Your Google Ads agency says performance is improving. What does finance say?

    When the advertising report and the management accounts disagree, it is usually not because one of them is lying. It is because they are measuring four different things and calling them the same thing.

    The same account, read two ways

    Revenue
    £480k
    ROAS
    6.8x
    Conversions
    4,921
    Optimisation score
    96%
    Same account.

    One order

    £100 order

    Google Ads reports the top line. The business lives on what is left at the bottom.

    1. £100Revenue
    2. £54After cost of goods
    3. £47After fulfilment
    4. £41After returns and payment fees
    5. £29After advertising

    What the business actually keeps

    The actual receipt

    Revenue
    £100.00
    COGS
    -£48.00
    Fulfilment
    -£7.20
    Returns
    -£8.10
    Fees
    -£2.40
    Ads
    -£21.00
    Left£13.30
    Still want to optimise revenue?

    The platform reports the top line. The finance team lives on the bottom one. Every allocation decision we make is argued at the level of what is left, not what was returned. Figures here are illustrative of the shape, not a client account.

    How an honest read of the account looks

    Don't confuse a hypothesis with a fact.

    What we know

    • Brand is 71% of PMax conversions.
    • Blended ROAS holds at 8.2x.

    What we think

    • Reported growth is overstated.

    What we need to test

    • Brand exclusion and an incrementality read.

    Illustrative account. A fact, a hypothesis and a test are three different things.

    Four distinctions that decide the argument

    Revenue ≠ Profit

    Google Ads reports revenue it can attribute. It does not know what the goods cost, what fulfilment cost, or what came back as a return.

    ROAS ≠ Contribution

    A 6x return on a 15% margin product and a 6x return on a 50% margin product are not the same outcome for the business.

    Conversion value ≠ Cash

    A sale that clears ageing stock releases cash the business has already spent. A sale of something on three weeks' cover mostly buys a stockout.

    Attributed revenue ≠ Incremental revenue

    Some of the revenue in the report would have arrived without the advertising. Separating the two takes deliberate testing, not a default attribution model.

    What we measure and question

    We read an account across six layers before we touch it: profit, cash, inventory, customer quality, brand position and commercial trajectory. That diagnosis decides allocation, and allocation decides what the account buys.

    In practice that means validating tracking before optimising anything, sending conversion values that reflect contribution where the data supports it, treating stock cover as a constraint on spend, and using tests to separate demand we created from demand that would have arrived anyway.

    Website enquiries carry no monetary value in our reporting. The number that matters is contribution, and it should reconcile with something you already recognise.

    Seven questions worth asking your current agency

    1. 01How much incremental contribution did paid search generate?
    2. 02What happened to profit when spend increased?
    3. 03Where did the additional budget go?
    4. 04Which products absorbed it?
    5. 05What margin did those products generate?
    6. 06Would those customers have bought anyway?
    7. 07What happens if we spend £100k less?

    If those answers are readily available, the account is probably being run commercially. If they are not, that is the gap.