Paid Advertising
PPC for Ecommerce
Each channel has its own page. This is the part nobody owns — how they interact, and which one should get the next pound.
Ecommerce PPC is the cross-channel job: Shopping, Performance Max, search, paid social and Amazon all bidding for the same customers. The Nexclick allocates between them on product-level margin and maps where they overlap, because most ecommerce accounts are quietly paying twice for one sale.
Is this you?
What usually prompts the call
- Every channel reports a good return and the total revenue does not add up.
- Shopping, Performance Max and search are all bidding on the same products.
- Budget is split by habit rather than by which channel produces margin.
- You report revenue and return on ad spend, and never contribution.
What we do
The actual deliverables
Things that appear on an invoice, not adjectives.
- Build the margin picture first
- Cost of goods, payment and platform fees, shipping and return rate, per product. Without it every channel is optimised on revenue — and revenue at a loss is very easy to buy in quantity.
- Map where the channels overlap
- Shopping against Performance Max, brand search against everything, Amazon against Google for the identical product. Overlap is where the double-paying happens, and it is invisible from inside any single channel.
- Allocate on contribution, not return on ad spend
- A 3x return is excellent at one margin and loss-making at another. Moving budget to whatever contributes most after cost of goods frequently reorders the channel league table completely.
- Give every channel a stated role
- Shopping and PMax for demand capture, paid social for new customer acquisition, remarketing for recovery, Amazon for its own marketplace. Channels without stated roles compete instead of combining.
- Separate new customers from repeat buyers
- New customer acquisition cost is the number that governs growth. An account flattered by repeat purchasers can look highly efficient while acquiring almost nobody new.
- Fix the product data once, use it everywhere
- Google Shopping, Performance Max, the Meta catalogue and Pinterest all draw on the same product data. Fixing it once improves four channels, which makes it the highest-leverage work available.
- Plan promotions across channels together
- So a sale is not being discovered independently by each platform’s algorithm at different moments and different bids, which is how a promotion ends up costing more than it earned.
- Report contribution by channel and by product
- A single view of what each channel and each product actually contributed. It is the report most ecommerce businesses have never seen, and the one that changes decisions.
Comparison
Which ecommerce channel does what, and where they collide
Each of these is covered in depth on its own page. This is the part only visible from above — what each channel should be for, and which other one it is most likely double-counting against.
| Channel | The role it should hold | Where it collides |
|---|---|---|
| Google Shopping | Demand capture on product searches | Performance Max, bidding on the same queries |
| Performance Max | Reach across all Google inventory | Everything, including your own branded search |
| Brand search | Defending people who already chose you | PMax, remarketing and organic all claim these |
| Non-brand search | Category and problem-led searches | Shopping, on product-specific queries |
| Paid social | New customer acquisition from cold audiences | Remarketing, re-touching the same people |
| Remarketing | Recovering people who nearly bought | Whichever channel first brought them in |
| Amazon | Demand inside its own marketplace | Google Shopping, for the identical product |
| Email and automation | Repeat purchase and lifetime value | Remarketing, paying for what email gets free |
How it works
Step by step, with timeframes
Timeframes are typical rather than guaranteed, and they assume we get account access and approvals when we ask.
- 01Week 1–3
Margin and overlap analysis
Product-level margin assembled, channel overlap mapped, and the double-counted revenue identified and quantified.
- 02Week 3–4
Product data and channel roles
Product data fixed once for every channel that consumes it, and an explicit role assigned to each channel in writing.
- 03Week 4–5
Reallocate
Budget moved on contribution rather than on platform-reported return, with brand separated and channel overlap constrained.
- 04Ongoing, monthly
Manage and report
Contribution reported by channel and by product, with promotional and seasonal planning done a quarter ahead across all channels at once.
What you get
Reporting and ownership
- A product-level margin model, so channels can be judged on contribution rather than revenue.
- A map of where your channels overlap and where you are paying twice for one sale.
- A stated role for each channel, so they combine rather than compete.
- New customer acquisition cost reported separately from blended figures.
- One contribution report covering every channel and every product.
Tools and platforms
- Google Ads and Merchant Center
- Meta and Pinterest catalogues
- Amazon Advertising
- Feed management tooling
- Product-level cost, fee and returns data
Timeline
How long this actually takes
Four to five weeks for the analysis and reallocation, then monthly management. The first three weeks are unglamorous data work — assembling cost of goods, fees and return rates by product — and clients regularly want to skip it. Every channel decision afterwards depends on it, so we do not. One finding recurs often enough to warn about in advance. Once the overlap is mapped, the total of what each channel claims usually exceeds actual revenue, sometimes substantially. Nobody has been dishonest: Shopping, Performance Max, remarketing and paid social each legitimately touched the same sale and each counted it. Reallocating budget from platform-reported returns without correcting for that is exactly how ecommerce accounts scale spend into declining profit.
Pricing model
Project, then retainer
Fixed price for the margin and overlap analysis, then a management retainer across the channels in scope. Ad spend stays on your own billing accounts throughout.
Questions
PPC for Ecommerce questions
Why does each channel report a good return while our profit falls?
Because they are all counting the same sales. A customer who saw a Meta ad, clicked a Shopping listing and returned via remarketing appears as a conversion in three places. Add the reported figures together and they exceed your actual revenue — sometimes by a lot, and always in the direction that encourages more spend.
Should we sell on Amazon and advertise on Google, or pick one?
Usually both, because they capture different moments. The discipline is checking whether they compete for the same customer on the same product, and whether Amazon’s margin after fees justifies the volume. Plenty of products are profitable on one channel and quietly loss-making on the other.
How do we work out product-level margin?
Cost of goods, platform and payment fees, shipping, packaging and your actual return rate by product. It is tedious and it is usually held across three systems that disagree. It is also the foundation of every allocation decision, which is why we build it before touching a campaign.
Should we set one return on ad spend target across all channels?
No, and it is one of the more expensive habits in ecommerce. A single target ignores that margin varies by product and that channels do different jobs — a new customer acquisition channel and a remarketing channel cannot sensibly be held to the same number.
How do we separate new customers from repeat buyers?
Through customer data fed back into the platforms, plus new customer acquisition settings in Google and exclusions in Meta. It changes the picture substantially: accounts that look efficient often turn out to be efficiently selling to people who would have returned anyway.
Why does the product feed matter across channels?
Because Google Shopping, Performance Max, the Meta catalogue and Pinterest all read the same underlying product data. One round of title and attribute work improves every one of them simultaneously, which makes it the cheapest available improvement in an ecommerce account.
How is this different from managing each channel separately?
Each channel page covers running that channel well. This covers what none of them can see from the inside: overlap, double-counting, which channel should get the next pound, and whether the total is producing profit. Well-run channels can still add up to a badly-run account.
Last reviewed 28 July 2026.
Tell us what you are trying to fix
A 20-minute call, no pitch deck. The Nexclick will tell you what we would do, roughly what it costs, and whether we are the right people for it.