I recently audited a gift basket ecommerce store that had been running Google Ads for six years. They sell curated care packages, sympathy gifts, new baby baskets, corporate gifts, and more. They have a 70% gross profit margin and a $165 average order value. They're even ranked on Wirecutter as one of the best places to order care packages.
On paper, this business is fantastic. But their Google Ads account was quietly bleeding profit through a series of very common mistakes. And I'd wager that most ecommerce store owners reading this are making at least two or three of these same errors right now.
Let me walk you through every problem I found and exactly how to fix each one.
Your ROAS Target Is Probably Too Low
This was the big one. The store had a breakeven ROAS of roughly 1.5x (meaning they needed $1.50 in revenue for every $1 spent on ads just to cover costs). Their actual ROAS was hovering around 2x, which sounds decent until you realise that's only marginally above breakeven.
Worse, their cost per acquisition was spiking to $88-90 in some weeks, and performance was volatile. The root issue? They had no clear understanding of the relationship between their ROAS targets and actual profit.
Here's what I recommended: test raising ROAS targets to 2.8x-3x. Yes, revenue will likely decrease. But profit should increase, because you're forcing Google to focus on the most profitable clicks rather than chasing volume at thin margins.
Think of it as a sweet spot. Set your ROAS target too low, and you leave profit on the table by accepting low-quality traffic. Set it too high, and you reduce volume so much that total profit drops. Somewhere in the middle is the optimal point that maximises gross profit after ad spend. For this store, that sweet spot was almost certainly much higher than where they had it.
My advice: run the experiment for at least two months to gather meaningful data. Don't panic if revenue dips initially.
Track Gross Profit After Ad Spend (Not Just Revenue)
This is one of my favourite quick wins because it takes about two minutes to set up and completely changes how you evaluate your campaigns.
Add a custom column in Google Ads with this formula:
(Conversion Value x 0.7) - Cost
Replace 0.7 with your own gross margin percentage. This column shows you your actual profit after ad spend for every campaign, ad group, and product. It's the single most important number in your account, and most advertisers aren't tracking it.
Once you have this column, you can immediately spot campaigns that look healthy on ROAS but are actually barely breaking even, and vice versa.
Your Brand Campaign Probably Has These Two Mistakes
The store's branded search campaign had two issues that I see constantly across ecommerce accounts.
Broad Match on Brand Keywords
Their brand keyword was set to broad match. This meant Google was matching their brand campaign to competitor brand names, generic gift terms, and all sorts of irrelevant queries. Your branded search campaign should use phrase match or exact match only.
Here's what I recommended:
Change the main brand keyword to phrase match
Add exact match variants for common long-tail brand searches (e.g., "[brand name] gift baskets," "[brand name] corporate gifts")
Review the search terms report regularly and add negatives for anything irrelevant creeping in
Your branded campaign benchmarks should be a ROAS above 10x and an impression share above 99%. If you're not hitting both of those, something is wrong.
Display Network Accidentally Enabled
This is the sneaky one. The branded search campaign had the Display Network turned on. Google enables this by default and buries the setting. Go check yours right now; there's a reasonable chance it's on without you realising it.
For search campaigns, always disable the Display Network. It's a completely different channel with different intent, and leaving it on dilutes your branded search performance data.
Performance Max: Strip It Back to Feed Only
The store was running Performance Max with full creative assets attached: headlines, descriptions, images, the lot. The problem? The search ads within PMax were delivering a 1.16x ROAS (below breakeven), while shopping placements were delivering a 2.2x ROAS.
By attaching creative assets, you enable Google to run search ads, display ads, Gmail ads, Discover ads, and YouTube ads through your PMax campaign. For this store, all of those non-shopping channels were dragging down overall performance.
The fix is straightforward: convert to PMax "feed only" by removing all creative assets. This forces Google to focus entirely on shopping placements and eliminates the low-performing channels.
To monitor this yourself, check the Channel Performance report under Insights in your PMax campaign. It shows exactly where your budget is being spent across Shopping, Search, Display, YouTube, Gmail, and Discover. If shopping is your best performer (it usually is for ecommerce), feed only is almost certainly the way to go.
Your Product Titles Are Too Short
This store's product titles were roughly 60 characters long. Google allows 150 characters. That's 90 characters of wasted opportunity on every single product.
Product titles are one of the most important factors in shopping ad performance. They determine which search queries your products match to and how relevant Google considers your listing. Short, vague titles mean fewer impressions and lower relevance scores.
Here's the process I recommended for optimising product titles:
Brainstorm bull's-eye keywords for each product. What would your ideal customer type into Google?
Use Google Keyword Planner to discover additional relevant terms and search volumes
Review your search terms report for high-performing queries that are already converting
Pack those terms into your product titles, aiming for as close to 150 characters as possible
Here's a real example from the audit:
Before: "Goodwill Gift Gift to the Market" (~60 characters)
After: "Spa Basket Gift Set for Women, Self Care Relaxation Box with Bath and Body Products, Luxury Pamper Kit" (~143 characters)
The difference is night and day. The optimised title contains a dozen high-intent search terms that the original was completely missing.
If you have hundreds of SKUs and can't optimise them all at once, start with your top-selling and top-spending products. Those will deliver the biggest return on your time.
The "Limited by Policy" Warning Isn't Always a Problem
The store had a "limited by policy" warning for personalised advertising related to relationships and personal hardship content. This makes sense — they sell sympathy gifts and care packages for difficult life events.
This sounds alarming, but it's often a non-issue for ecommerce. The limitation typically only affects the Display Network, YouTube, Gmail, and Discover. It does not affect Search or Shopping, because someone actively searching for "sympathy gift basket" has opted in to seeing those results.
If you sell products in sensitive categories and see this warning, contact Google Support for clarification on exactly how it affects your account. In many cases, the networks it limits are ones you weren't relying on anyway, especially if you've already moved to a feed-only PMax setup.
The Action Plan
If you run a gift-related ecommerce store, or honestly any ecommerce store on Google Ads, here's your checklist:
Raise your ROAS targets to find your profit sweet spot. Test 2.8x-3x and monitor for two months.
Add a gross profit after ad spend custom column. Formula: (Conversion Value x your margin) - Cost.
Check your PMax Channel Performance report and consider removing creative assets to force feed-only shopping placements.
Expand your product titles to use the full 150 characters. Start with your top sellers.
Fix your branded search campaign. Switch to phrase/exact match and disable Display Network.
Review your search terms reports. They're goldmines for both finding terms to add to product titles and irrelevant queries to exclude.
Investigate any "limited by policy" warnings rather than assuming the worst.
Every one of these fixes can be implemented without spending an extra penny on ads. It's all about making the spend you already have work harder.
Conclusion
This gift basket ecommerce audit revealed seven common Google Ads mistakes that apply to virtually any ecommerce store. The biggest wins come from raising ROAS targets to find the profit sweet spot rather than chasing volume, tracking gross profit after ad spend as your primary metric, and converting Performance Max to feed-only to eliminate underperforming channels. Product title optimisation is a massive, often-overlooked opportunity; expanding from 60 to 150 characters can dramatically improve shopping ad relevance and reach. Brand campaigns need tightening with phrase/exact match keywords and Display Network disabled. And policy limitation warnings, while they look scary, often only affect channels you're not relying on anyway. None of these fixes require additional budget; they simply make your existing spend more profitable.