What is the profit assessment? How much profit is your paid media leaving on the table?
The Profit Assessment is a quick assessment of how profit-led your Google and/or Meta accounts really are.
It looks beyond ROAS and revenue to see whether you’re using the numbers that actually matter to your business: contribution margin, profit, returns and the economics of your products.
Answer the 10 questions about how your accounts are currently set up and you’ll get a score out of 100, showing how close you are to a genuinely profit-led setup.
ROAS alone doesn't tell you whether you're making a profit, so making business decisions on that alone will affect your P&L. We focus on making profit. This questionnaire will give an insight to how you're performing and where to improve.
10 questions. 3 minutes. A profit assessment across 5 areas showing where you're strong and where you're leaking profit, benchmarked against how we run accounts. Our clients average 47% contribution margin after ad spend.
Where's your result?
One field. We'll send the full breakdown too. No sales sequence attached.
Keen to get into a bit more detail?
Book a callThe Profit Leak Scorecard Find out where your paid media is leaking profit
Know what you're actually making
The first step is knowing what each sale is worth.
We look at whether you understand contribution margin at SKU level, including the costs that sit between revenue and actual profit: COGS, shipping, payment fees and returns.
We also look at how much margin varies across your catalogue. If one product makes 10% and another makes 60%, treating them as equal sales creates a pretty obvious problem.
Give the platforms the right signal
Knowing your margins is one thing.
Actually getting that information into Google and Meta is another.
We look at whether your bidding is based on raw revenue or margin-adjusted values, and whether that data is kept up to date.
Because if you’re telling Google that every £1 of revenue is worth the same, don’t be surprised when it goes after revenue rather than profit.
Stop blending everything together
Brand and non-brand search shouldn’t be judged in the same bucket.
Neither should prospecting and retargeting.
We look at how your Google and Meta accounts are structured, whether different parts of the account have clear jobs, and whether you’re separating the demand you created from the demand that already existed.
Make decisions on profit, not ROAS
The final piece is what happens after the ads have run.
What number sits at the top of your weekly report?
How are you comparing Google against Meta?
And if Google is doing 4x ROAS while Meta is doing 6x, do you actually know which one is generating more profit?
We look at whether you’re using contribution profit and blended MER to make those decisions.
Hear from a few clients
Richard Pink Boutique & Rowen HomesA pleasure to work with Cam and the team successfully managed our paid search channels, providing both growth and efficiency across the campaigns. A pleasure to work with, they really felt part of our team rather than an external agency and are clearly passionate about what they do for their customers.
Anna OreliaOur brand have worked with Sarah on paid search for years. We’ve always loved how passionate she is, and all of the ideas and insight she has brought to the table. We followed her to The Ad Lounge after working with her at a different agency, and now we have the added benefit of Cam too. They’ve helped restructure our ad account and get it to a really positive place, and the numbers are looking great. They’re super hands on, responsive, and knowledgeable. Thank you both!
Alice Fahey GroupWorking with The Ad Lounge has been an absolute blast! They’re friendly and genuinely fun to work with.
Their creativity and marketing insights have made a real difference to our company, they just get it and they get results.
Highly recommend them if you’re looking for an agency that’s as invested in your success as they are in keeping things fun.
FAQ’s
Why isn’t ROAS enough to measure profitability?
Because ROAS only tells you how much revenue you generated from your ad spend. It doesn’t tell you how much of that revenue you actually keep.
Two campaigns can both generate a 5x ROAS while producing completely different amounts of profit depending on product margins, COGS, shipping, payment fees, returns and other costs.
The Profit Assessment looks at whether your paid media is being judged against the numbers that actually affect your P&L.
What does the Profit Assessment actually score?
It scores how profit led your current paid media setup is across the key areas that influence profitability.
That includes how well you understand your product-level margins, whether Google and Meta are receiving the right value signals, how your accounts are structured, and whether you’re making decisions based on contribution profit rather than just platform reported ROAS.
You’ll receive a score out of 100, showing where your setup is strong and where there are opportunities to improve.
What are the 10 questions based on?
The questions are based on the way we believe ecommerce paid media should be managed when the objective is profitable growth.
They cover the underlying economics of your products, the data being passed into the platforms, account structure and segmentation, and the metrics you use to make decisions.
It isn’t a generic marketing quiz. The questions are designed to uncover the areas where revenue can look healthy while profit quietly disappears.
Do I need to know my exact profit margins to complete it?
No. You can complete the assessment with the information you currently have.
However, if you don’t know your contribution margin at SKU level, that is useful information in itself. Not knowing what you actually make from each sale makes it considerably harder to tell Google or Meta what a valuable customer looks like.
The assessment will highlight this as an area to address
Why does SKU level margin matter to paid advertising?
Because not every sale is worth the same.
If one product generates a 60% contribution margin and another generates 10%, treating both sales as equal can lead your advertising platforms towards the wrong products.
Understanding margin at SKU level allows you to make better decisions about what to promote, what to bid for and where incremental spend is actually creating profit.
Should Google and Meta be optimised towards profit rather than revenue?
If profitability is the objective, your optimisation signals should reflect profitability as closely as possible.
Sending Google and Meta raw revenue tells them that £100 of revenue is worth the same regardless of the margin behind it. That can be a problem when your catalogue contains products with very different economics.
The assessment looks at whether your platforms are receiving the information they need to make better commercial decisions.
How should I compare Google Ads and Meta?
Firstly, by not just taking the ROAS from each platform and choosing the bigger number.
Google and Meta capture different parts of the customer journey, and platform attribution can make direct comparisons misleading.
The better question is how much incremental contribution profit each channel is generating for the business. That means looking at channel performance alongside blended MER and your overall contribution margin.
What happens after I complete the assessment?
You’ll receive your score and an indication of where your current setup is strongest and where you’re potentially leaking profit.
There’s no obligation to work with us afterwards. If the assessment shows you have areas to fix, you’ll know where to start.
If you want help going further, we can take a closer look at your numbers and paid media setup.
Is the Profit Assessment really free?
Yes. There’s no payment required and no obligation to become a client.
It takes around three minutes to complete and is designed to give you a useful benchmark of how profit-led your current setup is.
Who is the Profit Assessment for?
It’s built for ecommerce businesses running Google Ads, Meta Ads, or both, particularly brands that are already spending meaningful amounts on paid media and want to understand whether that spend is actually generating profitable growth.
If your main KPI is still simply “what ROAS did we get?”, it’s probably worth taking the assessment.