Context

A market-leading lifestyle and sportswear retailer had become structurally over-indexed on a single paid channel — close to half of online revenue was being attributed to one platform. That concentration created three compounding problems: revenue risk if the channel’s economics shifted, margin pressure as the brand bid against itself, and diminishing returns as spend climbed past the channel’s efficient ceiling. The brand needed to diversify without losing topline, in a market where competition for paid auctions was tightening month on month.

What we led

• Re-architected the paid media mix across search, social, affiliation and comparison engines — each channel given a clear role (acquisition, retention, defensive, brand) rather than competing for the same conversions.
• Killed the underperforming long tail. Roughly a third of comparison-engine and affiliate partners were cut after a contribution-margin review; budgets were reallocated to channels with marginal ROI headroom.
• Rolled out a segment-prioritisation approach on the Meta-style social platform: the catalog was carved into performance bands — best sellers, hidden gems with high CTR but low spend share, and new arrivals — with budget and bid logic assigned per segment rather than left to the algorithm’s default delivery.
• Stood up a weekly channel-mix scorecard so the trading team could see — without a media-agency translation layer — what each channel was actually contributing to profit, not just revenue.

Outcome (Q4 2024 → Q4 2025; Q1 2025 → Q1 2026, like-for-like)

• Dominant channel’s share of online revenue reduced from ~46% to ~38%, while absolute revenue from that channel held flat 
• Social platform revenue share grew from ~6% to ~15% of online; affiliation grew from ~3% to ~4%.
• Segment-prioritised social campaigns delivered ~+39% ROAS versus the retailer’s prior business-as-usual dynamic campaigns during the pilot window; the approach now accounts for 40%+ of social spend.

Context

A market-leading lifestyle and sportswear retailer had become structurally over-indexed on a single paid channel — close to half of online revenue was being attributed to one platform. That concentration created three compounding problems: revenue risk if the channel’s economics shifted, margin pressure as the brand bid against itself, and diminishing returns as spend climbed past the channel’s efficient ceiling. The brand needed to diversify without losing topline, in a market where competition for paid auctions was tightening month on month.

What we led

• Re-architected the paid media mix across search, social, affiliation and comparison engines — each channel given a clear role (acquisition, retention, defensive, brand) rather than competing for the same conversions.
• Killed the underperforming long tail. Roughly a third of comparison-engine and affiliate partners were cut after a contribution-margin review; budgets were reallocated to channels with marginal ROI headroom.
• Rolled out a segment-prioritisation approach on the Meta-style social platform: the catalog was carved into performance bands — best sellers, hidden gems with high CTR but low spend share, and new arrivals — with budget and bid logic assigned per segment rather than left to the algorithm’s default delivery.
• Stood up a weekly channel-mix scorecard so the trading team could see — without a media-agency translation layer — what each channel was actually contributing to profit, not just revenue.

Outcome (Q4 2024 → Q4 2025; Q1 2025 → Q1 2026, like-for-like)

• Dominant channel’s share of online revenue reduced from ~46% to ~38%, while absolute revenue from that channel held flat 
• Social platform revenue share grew from ~6% to ~15% of online; affiliation grew from ~3% to ~4%.
• Segment-prioritised social campaigns delivered ~+39% ROAS versus the retailer’s prior business-as-usual dynamic campaigns during the pilot window; the approach now accounts for 40%+ of social spend.