FMCG E-commerce: Performance Max and Smart Bidding at Scale

E-commerce dominance and massive catalogue management: optimising profitability at industrial scale.

1. Context and Stakes

The engagement concerned one of the world’s largest fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) groups, managing dozens of leading brands and thousands of SKUs distributed through a multitude of channels (direct-to-consumer, marketplaces, retailers). With a massive annual investment of €5 million in SEA, the challenge was to turn a legacy digital presence into an ultra-high-performing, responsive sales machine.

2. The Strategic Challenge

Steering such afood industry giant brings big-data challenges that our expert had to take on:

• Offer density: How do you maintain optimal visibility across thousands of products without budgets being siphoned off by a few star SKUs at the expense of the rest of the catalogue?
• Fighting private labels: Protecting market share against the rise of retailers’ own brands on search engines.
• Stock and profitability variability: Aligning bids in real time with stock levels and the fluctuating profit margins of each product category.

3. Strategic Solutions Delivered

The approach led by our expert relied on advanced automation combined with senior analytical rigour:

A. Surgical optimisation of the feed and Google Shopping

We carried out a complete overhaul of product data feed management.

• Granular segmentation: Structuring the Shopping account by profitability category and market-penetration objective.
• Data enrichment: Optimising product titles and descriptions to maximise click-through rate (CTR) and ensure ads appear on the most transactional queries.

B. Profitability-driven bidding (Smart Bidding)

To optimise the €5M investment, we deployed value-based automated bidding strategies:

• Predictive algorithms: Using AI to adjust bids according to conversion probability and average basket value.
• Focus on margin: Integrating gross profitability data by SKU to ensure advertising investment was always correlated with the margin generated for the group.

C. Deploying Performance Max and omnichannel integration

We were among the pioneers to deploy Performance Max (PMax) campaigns at this scale.

• Full-funnel synergy: Using AI to cover the entire customer journey (Search, YouTube, Display, Discovery), ensuring brand presence at every stage of the buying cycle, from discovery to replenishment.
• Drive-to-store measurement: Integrating store visit data to measure how the digital budget influenced physical supermarket sales.

D. Creating differentiating ad extensions

To counter generic competition, we developed custom ad extensions highlighting the group’s commitments (sustainability, nutrition, French origin), reinforcing brand preference from the very first touchpoint.

4. Results

Senior management of this large-scale set-up achieved record performance for the group:

• Significant ROAS increase (return on ad spend): Better budget allocation towards the most profitable products mechanically increased the channel’s overall profitability.
• Dominance on generic terms: The group regained leadership on its sector’s strategic keywords, pushing out direct competitors and private labels.
• Operational efficiency: Thanks to supervised automation, management time was reduced, freeing capacity for high-level strategic analysis and new product launches.

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Methodological note: This case illustrates our distinctive expertise in managing enterprise accounts with massive budgets. We turn the complexity of a giant catalogue into a competitive advantage through full mastery of AI and data management technologies.

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