A$252,375 of tracked revenue from A$60,827 of spend in a single month, at 4.15x blended.
A catalogue account performing well at the top line, with two structural leaks underneath it that a headline ROAS figure hides completely.
The headline export: Google Ads monthly report, May 2026.
Shown in full and uncropped when supplied.
A catalogue-driven Google account trading through May at A$60,827 of spend, returning A$252,375 in primary conversion value. Product surfaces, Shopping and Performance Max, carried 97.7% of the spend and 98.8% of the value at a blended 4.20x.
At account level that reads like a well-run month, and it was. The reason to look harder is that a healthy blended number is the most effective place in a Google account for waste to hide. Four point one five times average tells you nothing about where the next A$20,000 of budget should go, and it actively conceals anything sitting below it.
Structure. Two leaks, both structural, neither visible at account level.
The first was Search. It returned 2.42x against a 4.15x account average and produced only A$58.17 of value per conversion. Keyword-driven spend was the least productive money in the account by a wide margin. Its front end looked strong, the lowest cost per click in the account at A$2.38 and a 9.90% conversion rate, which is exactly why it had survived. Cheap traffic that converts is not the same as profitable traffic, and Search was converting people into low value orders.
The second was more expensive and simpler. One Shopping campaign was carrying a A$1,500 daily budget and spent A$34.89 across the entire month. Five hundred and ten impressions in thirty one days. No optimisation score assigned. That is not a bidding problem, it is a delivery problem, and the trace activity it did record looked excellent on paper at 7.49x, which is precisely how a dormant campaign avoids being noticed. Four conversions is not a signal.
Underneath both, four channel types were entirely dormant. Demand Gen, Display, Video and Smart recorded zero spend, zero impressions and zero conversions for the month, in an account where Performance Max was already absorbing 54.6% of budget at the highest cost per conversion in the account.
What made this hard was not finding it. It was what had to be true before anything could change.
Nothing in the account was flagged
A blended 4.15x on A$60,827 is a good month, and a good month is the most effective place in a Google account for waste to hide. There was no alert, no failing metric and no complaint to work from. The whole engagement started by deciding to look harder at something that already looked fine.
The weakest channel had the strongest front end
Search returned 2.42x against a 4.15x average, but it also had the lowest cost per click in the account at A$2.38 and a 9.90% conversion rate. Every surface metric said it was working. The case had to be made on value per conversion — A$58.17 — which is the number nobody was looking at.
The dormant campaign looked like the best performer
A Shopping campaign on a A$1,500 daily budget spent A$34.89 in a month and recorded 7.49x. Sorted by return, it topped the account. Explaining that four conversions is not a signal, and that a 7.49x on A$35 is noise rather than proof, took longer than finding it did.
The biggest line item was not cuttable
Performance Max held 54.6% of budget and produced 56.5% of value, at the account's highest cost per conversion and lowest conversion rate. Neither cutting it nor leaving it was right. It was an asset quality problem, which is slower and less satisfying to fix than moving a budget.
Six domains, in order. Each one is a decision, not a task list.
Strategy
Set a minimum return floor per channel at the start of the month rather than reading returns at the end of it. Anything under 3.0x gets a decision inside two weeks, not thirty one days.
Acquisition
Shopping GROWTH was the most efficient campaign at scale in the account — 4.45x, A$15.14 per conversion, 22.89% conversion rate — and it was running on 5.4% of spend. It got the budget. Shopping STAR held its A$2,100 daily budget as the volume engine, 1,297 conversions at A$17.46 and a 100% optimisation score.
Creative
Performance Max was producing the largest single share of value, 56.5%, at the account’s highest cost per conversion, A$25.45, and the lowest conversion rate of the scaled campaigns, 1.19%. That combination is an asset quality problem, not a budget problem, so the work went into asset groups rather than into spend.
CRO
Search’s A$58.17 value per conversion pointed at the landing path, not the keyword list. Cheap clicks converting into small orders is a matching problem between query, page and product.
Analytics
Flagged the reconciliation residual openly. A$186.77 of account spend, 0.3%, was not attributable to the five listed campaigns, from campaigns paused or removed inside the period. Immaterial, and reported anyway, because a client who finds a discrepancy you did not mention stops trusting the whole report.
Scale
Budget moved toward the two campaigns proving efficiency at scale, with the dormant A$1,500 daily budget either fixed or released rather than left sitting in the account looking like capacity.
blended return on A$60,827 of spend
conversions at A$21.01 each
daily budget identified as dormant capacity
Campaign-level figures are the month as it traded. The structural changes were made against them, with the return floor set at the start of the following month rather than read at the end of it.
| Campaign | Spend | Value | Return | Cost / conv. |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Performance Max, Summersale | A$33,112 | A$142,112 | 4.29x | A$25.45 |
| Shopping, STAR | A$22,649 | A$90,799 | 4.01x | A$17.46 |
| Shopping, GROWTH | A$3,247 | A$14,456 | 4.45x | A$15.14 |
| Search, PPC | A$1,597 | A$3,859 | 2.42x | A$24.08 |
| Shopping, dormant | A$35 | A$261 | 7.49x | A$8.72 |
| Account | A$60,827 | A$252,375 | 4.15x | A$21.01 |
Source: Google Ads monthly report, May 2026. Platform metrics sit here as support, not as the headline.
I let Search run a full month at 2.42x before flagging it. On A$1,597 of spend the cost of waiting was small, roughly A$1,100 of value against the account average, and easy to justify at the time.
The same lag on a larger keyword footprint would not have been small. If Search had been carrying twenty per cent of budget instead of two and a half, that month of patience would have cost real money. Reading a return at month end is a reporting habit, not a management one. The floor now gets set at the start.
blended return on A$60,827 of spend
conversions at A$21.01 each
impressions, 14,081 clicks at A$4.32
Structure
Google Shopping, Performance Max, Search
Growth ownership
A diagnosis, not a pitch.
Bring the account, the numbers and the problem as you understand it. You leave knowing where the broken link is, whether or not we work together.
A read on where your growth ceiling actually sits, across all six parts of the system.
Which of frequency, measurement or structure is costing you the most right now.
What fixing it would take. Scope, sequence and who does what.
A straight answer on whether I am the right person to own it.
Thirty minutes, held on Google Meet. The link is in the calendar invitation.