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The Contribution Method

Most agencies optimise a
number that is not profit.

Reported ROAS measures what a platform claims credit for. Contribution margin measures what survives cost of goods, shipping, fees and returns. When they disagree, we act on the second one. Three phases, run by the senior people who scoped them.

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The two numbers

Reported ROAS

What the platform claims credit for

Contribution margin

What survives COGS, shipping, fees and returns

We manage against the second one. Every time.

€10M+

Revenue driven for clients

94%

Client retention

2×+

Average ROAS and MER uplift

Multi-awarded

performance awards, incl. Gold

Three phases

Run in order,
on every account.

The order matters more than any individual tactic. Phase 01 is slower than a typical agency onboarding and produces no campaigns, which is exactly why Phase 03 works when we get there.

01

Research & Foundation

We start with your margins, not a pitch deck. Before any campaign is touched, we establish what each part of your business actually contributes and build the measurement to keep that visible. Most brands we take on have never had this done, which is why their reporting and their bank balance tell different stories.

  • Profitability analysis by product category, after cost of goods, shipping, fees and returns
  • Full audit of existing accounts, structure, bidding and wasted spend
  • Competitive and market research in your category
  • Contribution margin and FOCM tracking built into GA4
  • A measurement baseline everyone agrees on before anything changes
Axel Accessories Case study

Bestsellers that were losing money

This phase ran before a single campaign was touched. Several bestsellers turned out to be margin-negative once returns were costed in, which changed the entire media plan.

Read the case study
02

Build & Launch

With the foundation set, we rebuild the system. Campaign architecture organised by funnel role rather than platform default, so each channel has a defined job and a defined success criterion. This is where most of the visible work happens, and it is deliberately unglamorous.

  • Campaign architecture rebuilt around funnel roles, not platform templates
  • Creative testing engine with a defined cadence rather than ad-hoc briefs
  • CSS integration to reduce Shopping click costs
  • Lifecycle and retention automation wired to acquisition economics
  • Conversion fixes so paid traffic stops leaking on site
Sorena Greece Case study

+48% CVR, −43% CAC

Full-funnel rebuild across Meta and Google, with first-order contribution margin replacing ROAS as the primary KPI.

Read the case study
03

Optimise & Scale

Once the system holds under load, we push it. Scaling is where the first two phases pay for themselves, because a brand with clean measurement and sound architecture can absorb budget that would break a fragile one. The research from Phase 01 stays active as your market moves.

  • Creative testing cycles that keep the auction supplied
  • Audience and geography expansion against margin, not ambition
  • New channels added only when the existing ones are saturated
  • Budget scaled against contribution, with a defined ceiling
  • Quarterly re-analysis as your category and costs shift
Sorena Greece Case study

2× budget in 45 days

Media budget doubled with efficiency maintained. Possible only because the foundation had established what the brand could carry.

Read the case study

What Phase 01 usually finds

  • Product categories that lose money after returns
  • Branded search inflating the headline number
  • Budget in campaigns with no defined funnel role
  • Tracking that disagrees with the P&L

See what it would find in your account.

A working session, no deck. We walk through what Phase 01 would look like for your business.

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Why it works

Four commitments that
make the difference.

Any agency can state these. What makes them real is the second column.

  • 01

    Contribution margin over ROAS

    Our headline numbers look worse than a competitor's blended ROAS.

  • 02

    Branded and non-brand measured apart

    We lose the easiest win in the deck: taking credit for demand you already had.

  • 03

    Senior people stay on the account

    We can hold far fewer accounts than an agency that staffs juniors.

  • 04

    We say when something is not working

    Some months we recommend spending less, which reduces our own fee.

Questions

What people ask
about the method.

Why does Phase 01 take so long before anything launches?
Because every media decision that follows depends on knowing which parts of your business make money. Launching first and analysing later means several weeks of spend allocated on assumptions, and those assumptions are wrong often enough to matter. In practice Phase 01 runs in weeks, not months, and existing campaigns keep running throughout.
Our reported ROAS might drop. Is that acceptable?
Often yes, and we agree it in advance. When an account stops over-weighting branded search, the reported number falls because the account stops taking credit for demand it did not create. What matters is whether contribution margin rises. For Axel, reported figures shifted while first-order contribution margin rose 21%.
Do we need perfect margin data to start?
No. We need approximate cost of goods by category and a willingness to refine it. Approximate margin data used properly beats precise revenue data used badly. Most clients improve their own margin visibility during Phase 01, which is useful well beyond marketing.
How is this different from what any good agency does?
Many agencies would describe a similar process. The difference is what happens when the data is inconvenient. Optimising to contribution margin regularly means recommending less spend on a channel that looks good in a dashboard. That is easy to say and harder to do when the dashboard is what gets reviewed.
Does this work on small budgets?
Yes, and it matters more. Tokopeli won Gold at the Peak Awards 2024 for Best Small Budget Campaign, with net profit up 317%. Small budgets punish imprecision faster, so the discipline pays back sooner.
See it on your numbers

See what Phase 01
would find in your account.

Book a strategy call and we will walk through what the first phase would look like for your business, and what we would expect it to uncover.

Partnerships we're proud of
Meta Business Partner
Google Partner Klaviyo Partner HubSpot Certified Partner
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