Know exactly which product categories make you money. Then scale them profitably.
We run Google Ads for UK e-commerce brands turning over around £1M to £20M. Most agencies stop at the ad account. We go further and build the P&L behind it, so you see the real profit each product category makes after costs and returns. Not just revenue.
Your business deserves better than a rising ROAS chart.
Most agencies hand you a dashboard full of numbers that look good and mean nothing. ROAS is up, spend is up, growth is up, and somehow your bank balance isn't. You can scale revenue and shrink profit at the same time, and most agencies will never tell you, because they aren't even measuring it.
We do one thing, properly: Google Ads for product businesses, managed against profit rather than vanity metrics.
With Brass Tacks
With most agencies
We turn your ad account into a P&L. No other agency does.
Other agencies optimise inside the ad account. We go further. We pull your ad spend (Google, Meta, GA4) together with your order and cost data (Shopify, WooCommerce, Magento, Linnworks etc) and build you a live P&L. Your gross and net profit, across the whole business and broken down by category (website category or brand), after the cost of goods and returns.
So you can finally see which categories make real money once everything's counted, where your profit is leaking, and whether a category's growth is adding to your bottom line or just your revenue.
And it's trained on 20 years of judgement.
The platform does the legwork that used to eat an account manager's week. Our founder Martin has spent two decades learning which numbers actually matter and which are just noise, and he's taught the platform to surface the ones that tell you what's working and what isn't. The technology finds the story in your numbers. Your Brass Tacks strategist decides what to do about it.
Full access is built into your management, included as standard. You can't buy it on its own. It's simply how we work.
See where your margin is really going. Free, on your own numbers.
For UK e-commerce brands turning over around £1M to £20M, most of it through Google, who suspect their growth isn't translating into profit the way it should.
You send us two simple exports: a standard report from your Google Ads account, and a spreadsheet of your product costs. No account access, no access to your store, no IT project. Just two files you control and can check before they leave your hands.
We build your profit picture: gross and net by category, the real numbers behind your ad spend.
Martin walks you through it on a short call. Not a pitch. A 20-year specialist showing you your own profit, category by category, and what he'd fix first.
By the end you'll know your true gross and net profit by category, at least one product or category that's quietly losing you money (most brands have one), and a plain-English read on what to do about it. Yours to keep, whether you work with us or not.
If we don't show you something about your own profit you didn't already know, we'll say so ourselves, and you've lost nothing but the data you sent and half an hour on the call. No pressure to sign anything, then or after.
Three steps.
No drawn-out onboarding.
The Audit
You send your two exports, we build your profit picture, and Martin walks you through it. Free. (That's the audit above.)
The rebuild
If you come on board, we restructure your Shopping & PMax around profit, not revenue. Budget follows margin.
The compounding
We keep optimising against contribution, so profit grows quietly while you run the business.
From there the work is ours. No weekly status meetings, no jargon-filled reports.
The platform stays open whenever you want it, and you get a direct line to us, not a ticket queue.
A decade of profitable scaling. Data anonymised, but real.
INTERIORS & LIGHTING · 11-YR CLIENT
£20.9M revenue via Google Ads, avg 4.5x return over 300k+ orders. From a standing start to over £100k/mo ad spend, return held steady the whole way up. Most accounts lose efficiency as they scale. This one didn't.
FINE JEWELLERY · 8-YR CLIENT
£2.36M revenue via Google Ads from just £412k spend, avg 7.7x return. Proof you don't need a big budget to make Google Ads pay.
HOME FURNISHINGS · 11-YR CLIENT
Rebuilt into a consistent six-figure-a-year revenue channel at a steady return, and kept performing year after year. Proof that good Google Ads management lasts, not just spikes.
From the founder - Martin.
I've spent over 20 years in Google Ads, almost all of it growing e-commerce brands through Search, Shopping and Performance Max. The channel where product businesses live.
I kept seeing the same thing. I'd scale a client's revenue, the ROAS looked great, everyone was happy. Then I'd look closer and find the growth wasn't always making them more money. Costs had crept up, returns were eating the margin, and some of the bestselling products were the least profitable of the lot.
So I built Brass Tacks to run paid media against profit, with the data to prove it. It's founder-led today, but built to outlast me. Everyone who touches your account is trained in the same method. Senior thinking, never a junior on your budget.
- Martin Davies, Founder of Brass Tacks
One plan. One flat fee. No percentage games.
£1,000 / month
Billed quarterly
or £1,500 / month to try us out
Everything included: full Google Ads management (Search, Shopping, PMax), the platform with live profit by category, the profit audit kept current, and a direct line to us. No junior, no ticket queue.
Pause or cancel anytime. No lock-in.
subscribe - Billed Quarterlyor pay monthly (£1,500)Questions, straight answers.
ROAS says nothing about whether revenue is profitable. A product can have brilliant ROAS and still lose money once COGS and returns are counted.
At audit stage, no account access to anything. Two files you control. We never see card numbers, customer details, or store login. Never shared or sold.
Because you want more profit, not more reports. We take over the existing account, nothing deleted, rebuild around what's actually making money.
Profitability engine built in-house. Connects ad spend to real margins automatically. Category-level profit in real time, not a monthly report.
No, the fee is for managing your account to generate more profit. The fee does include our bespoke profitability platform
Yes. You get a secure billing portal, powered by Stripe, where you can download every invoice, update your card. No emailing us for a receipt, it's all self-serve.
Manage your billing
Find out what your ad spend is really doing.
Start with a free profit audit. We'll build the P&L behind your ad spend and Martin will walk you through it, with no obligation afterwards. Two simple exports are all we need to start. No account access, and your data stays yours.