Kova Commerce · Clementine & Mint

Google Ads Audit

Account 8007771142 · 20 September 2026 · windows: last 30 / 90 / 365 days, plus Q4 2025 for seasonality

ROAS · 365d
9.86
£9.86 back per £1
Revenue · 365d
£79,152
1,528 orders
Spend · 365d
£8,024
avg £22/day
Live campaigns
2
PMax + Brand search
The short version This account is well built — clean structure, correct tracking, strong returns. The single biggest opportunity is not a fix, it's a release: PMax has been capped at its daily budget for six weeks, heading into the two months that earn the most all year.

1Scorecard

What's already right, and what we'd change.

Working well — don't change

  • ROAS 9.86 over 12 months on £8,024 spend
  • Conversion tracking is clean — no double counting, data-driven attribution live, values accurate to 2%
  • Brand excluded from PMax correctly, so Shopping isn't buying your own name
  • Brand search is exceptional — ROAS 120, Quality Score 10/10
  • Feed-only PMax is a deliberate, sound choice — keeps spend on Shopping
  • Headbands earn their share — best conversion rate in the account at 6.96%
  • Clean naming and structure — easy to manage and extend

Where the money is

  • Raise the PMax budget — capped 38 of the last 45 days
  • Raise brand max CPC 10p → 20p, and budget to £4/day
  • Rewrite product titles — customers search "bridal bag", not "pouch"
  • Restore 3 missing products worth £864 of last Q4
  • Fund the starved winners — laptop sleeves, robes, bows
  • Standardise product images — only 4 of 227 are on white
  • Ramp budget for Christmas on a dated calendar

2The budget is the bottleneck

PMax has spent above its £22/day budget on 38 of the last 45 days — an average of £26.74, or 121.5% utilisation.

£0£10£20£30£402026-08-06: £25.06 — over budget2026-08-07: £24.97 — over budget2026-08-08: £32.38 — over budget2026-08-09: £32.2 — over budget2026-08-10: £25.31 — over budget2026-08-11: £22.62 — over budget2026-08-12: £27.61 — over budget2026-08-13: £31.02 — over budget2026-08-14: £33.71 — over budget2026-08-15: £24.26 — over budget2026-08-16: £32.38 — over budget2026-08-17: £24.06 — over budget2026-08-18: £28.42 — over budget2026-08-19: £26.21 — over budget2026-08-20: £23.86 — over budget2026-08-21: £30.47 — over budget2026-08-22: £21.852026-08-23: £33.94 — over budget2026-08-24: £29.77 — over budget2026-08-25: £25.44 — over budget2026-08-26: £24.55 — over budget2026-08-27: £26.13 — over budget2026-08-28: £24.98 — over budget2026-08-29: £27.22 — over budget2026-08-30: £21.252026-08-31: £29.48 — over budget2026-09-01: £22.33 — over budget2026-09-02: £37.61 — over budget2026-09-03: £25.06 — over budget2026-09-04: £21.062026-09-05: £38.01 — over budget2026-09-06: £33.52 — over budget2026-09-07: £28.46 — over budget2026-09-08: £33.62 — over budget2026-09-09: £27.52 — over budget2026-09-10: £24.04 — over budget2026-09-11: £22.012026-09-12: £22.45 — over budget2026-09-13: £22.4 — over budget2026-09-14: £19.622026-09-15: £18.472026-09-16: £28.23 — over budget2026-09-17: £23.38 — over budget2026-09-18: £17.462026-09-19: £28.86 — over budget 06/0817/0828/0808/0919/09
Over budget 38 daysWithin budget 7 days£22 daily budget
Why this matters right now The same thing happened last Christmas. PMax hit its cap on 18 of 61 days in Nov–Dec 2025, 14 of them in December — spending £42 on a day budgeted at £22, while returning a ROAS of 11–15. The best weeks of the year were rationed.

Note: the campaign's own "budget lost impression share" reads 1.3%, which looks healthy. That metric is unreliable on Performance Max — spend ÷ budget is the real test.

Recommendation

CampaignTodayRecommend nowReason
PMax — All Products£22/day£32/dayRunning at 121.5% of budget
Brand — UK Search£1.50/day£4/dayWill bind once CPC rises + Q4 demand

Also worth adding a target ROAS of 5.5–6.0 to PMax. It currently runs on Maximise Conversion Value with no floor, so there's nothing protecting efficiency as budget goes up.

3Christmas is the whole game

November and December carry the year. The pattern has repeated two years running.

010202025-08: ROAS 7.69, £4,771 value2025-09: ROAS 7.12, £4,369 value2025-10: ROAS 6.7, £3,729 value2025-11: ROAS 16.85, £8,805 value16.92025-12: ROAS 13.17, £10,038 value13.22026-01: ROAS 8.66, £4,052 value2026-02: ROAS 5.61, £2,614 value2026-03: ROAS 9.04, £4,705 value2026-04: ROAS 11.17, £6,748 value2026-05: ROAS 11.66, £9,385 value2026-06: ROAS 9.5, £8,221 value2026-07: ROAS 10.86, £9,399 value2026-08: ROAS 7.44, £6,470 value2026-09: ROAS 6.75, £3,400 valueA25SONDJ26FMAMJJAS
November & December

Where the efficiency actually sits, week by week

01020w/c 2025-09-29: ROAS 7.44, £18.96/day7w/c 2025-10-06: ROAS 5.34, £20.43/day5w/c 2025-10-13: ROAS 5.06, £18.49/day5w/c 2025-10-20: ROAS 10.36, £15.45/day10w/c 2025-10-27: ROAS 5.98, £15.15/day6w/c 2025-11-03: ROAS 14.5, £16.7/day15w/c 2025-11-10: ROAS 15.66, £15.97/day16w/c 2025-11-17: ROAS 16.19, £16.31/day16w/c 2025-11-24: ROAS 23.48, £21.07/day23w/c 2025-12-01: ROAS 15.6, £26/day16w/c 2025-12-08: ROAS 11.05, £33.29/day11w/c 2025-12-15: ROAS 14.89, £26.97/day15w/c 2025-12-22: ROAS 10.98, £16.63/day11w/c 2025-12-29: ROAS 11.1, £13.91/day1129Sep6Oct13Oct20Oct27Oct3Nov10Nov17Nov24Nov1Dec8Dec15Dec22Dec29Dec
BFCM week — ROAS 23.5High-efficiency window (3 Nov – 21 Dec)

Early and mid October is the weakest stretch of Q4 (ROAS 5–6). Don't ramp then — ramp from late October.

Budget calendar

PeriodPMax /dayBrand /dayWhy
Now → 12 Oct£32£4Fix today's over-utilisation
13 – 26 Oct£30£4Weakest ROAS stretch — hold
27 Oct → 16 Nov£40£5ROAS climbs to 14–16
17 – 30 Nov BFCM£55–65£8Peak efficiency: ROAS 23.5, CVR 8.9%
1 – 18 Dec£55£8Highest volume; 14 capped days last year
19 – 24 Dec£35£5Last posting dates
25 Dec → 5 Jan£22£3Volume collapses

Step up by about 30% at a time, and make the BFCM increase by 17 November so the campaign is settled before peak. Judge it on marginal return, not blended ROAS.

4Product mix

Headbands dominate — and they've earned it. The problem is elsewhere.

Headbands
54.9%
7.80
Pouchesfell to ROAS 2.58 last 30d
20.4%
6.10
Children's headbandROAS 8.61 last Q4
5.8%
2.27
Bowsbest CVR; 30% of Q4 spend
4.0%
7.30
Laptop sleeves
3.7%
11.13
Robeshighest AOV ~£214
2.7%
10.66
Pyjamas
2.7%
2.54
Scrunchies
2.6%
8.52
Children's bow
1.3%
2.03
Spend shareROAS (account average 7.03)
Good news Headbands take 54.9% of spend and return 61.8% of conversions at the best conversion rate in the account. They're not crowding out better performers — they are the best performer.
The actual problem Pouches are the second-biggest spend line and fell from ROAS 6.10 to 2.58 in the last 30 days. The single biggest-spending product in the account is a pouch returning 4.53 — well below average. Section 5 explains why, and it's fixable.

Underfunded winners

LineShare of spendROASNote
Laptop sleeves3.7%11.13Brown Gingham sleeve is the best product in the account at ROAS 20.57
Robes2.7%10.66Highest AOV in the catalogue, ~£214/order
Scrunchies2.6%8.52ROAS 12.05 last Q4
Bows4.0%7.30Best conversion rate of any line — and 30% of spend last Q4
Why they can't be funded today All three live product groups overlap — the "All Products" group already contains 90 of the 92 headband products and 39 of the 42 pouch products. Product groups don't have their own budgets, so the catch-all wins the spend. Funding these lines needs a separate campaign, not another product group.

5Product titles

The highest-value fix on this list, and the data tells us exactly what to write.

Nobody searches "pouch" They search bridal bag (4.3 sales), bridal bag satin (5.5), ivory satin bag (4.0), bridal clutch (3.9). The best-selling pouch is titled "The White Ruffled Pouch" — it only ranks because the boilerplate at the end happens to contain "Bridal Clutch bag".

What customers actually type

SearchSalesValue
pale blue headband10.2£548
wedding guest headband8.9£377
butter yellow headband7.6£346
padded headband7.4£347
linen headband women7.1£310
bridal bag satin5.5£310
bridal bag4.3£203
bridal clutch3.9£187

The winning pattern is colour + material + product + occasion. Nearly every title instead starts with "The" and ends with the same brand boilerplate.

Suggested rewrites

NowThe White Ruffled Pouch | Luxury Lifestyle Accessories by Clementine & Mint, Personalised gift, Bridal Clutch bag.
BetterWhite Ruffled Bridal Clutch Bag | Satin Pouch, Personalised Gift | Clementine & Mint
NowTHE LIGHT BLUE SATIN HEADBAND
BetterLight Blue Satin Headband | Wedding Guest & Bridal Hair Accessory | Clementine & Mint
NowTHE BROWN SATIN HEADBAND PRE ORDER | Luxury Lifestyle Accessories, Linen Headbands by Clementine & Mint
BetterBrown Satin Headband | Padded Aliceband, Handmade in the UK | Clementine & Mint

What's wrong, by the numbers

IssueProductsImpact
Written in ALL CAPS179 of 229Reads as spam; 69% of spend
Start with the word "The"228 of 229Wastes the highest-weighted position
Boilerplate inconsistent127 have it, 102 don'tSame category described two ways
Pouches & pyjamas tagged "Linen Headbands"severalActively tells Google the wrong category
Still say "PRE ORDER JUNE / JULY DELIVERY"7It's September
Duplicate titles competing with each other5 listingsSplits sales data; one twin gets 0 sales
Custom labels filled in0 of 229Blocks clean campaign splitting

Start with the top 20 products by spend — they carry 55% of spend, so the work is bounded.

6Don't prune before Christmas

Products that look dead in September are the ones that carry December.

The trap The Burgundy Velvet Maxi Bow returned £1,649 on £268 last Q4 — the biggest product of the year. Today it shows £5.02 and zero sales, which puts it on any "underperformer" list.
ProductNow (90d)Last Q4Verdict
Burgundy Velvet Maxi Bow0 sales£1,649 · ROAS 6.15Leave alone
Red Velvet Scrunchie0 sales£215 · ROAS 62.68Leave alone
Navy Velvet Headband0 sales£260 · ROAS 22.71Leave alone
Black Watch Tartan Headband0 sales£589 · ROAS 13.56Leave alone
Children's headbands (line)ROAS 2.27ROAS 8.61Hold, review January
The bigger win — 3 products aren't running at all These earned £864 last Q4 and currently get zero impressions.
ProductLast Q4Status
Black Watch Tartan Pyjamas — Medium£368 · ROAS 9.06Not serving
Cream Tweed Headband£265 · ROAS 19.24Not serving
Navy Velvet & Tartan Ruffled Pouch£232 · ROAS 7.51Not serving

This also solved a puzzle: the search "tweed headband" got 19 clicks and no sales — not because it's bad traffic, but because the tweed headband isn't running, so Google showed people the wrong products.

The only two things to actually pause

ProductSpendWhy
Navy Blue Linen Aliceband "PRE ORDER JUNE DELIVERY"£20.09ROAS 0.18, and the title promises June delivery
Duplicate Black Watch Tartan Pyjamas listing£25.1564 clicks, 0 sales, while its identical twin sells

7Brand search

The best-performing thing in the account — and slightly throttled.

Genuinely excellent ROAS 120 over 12 months. Quality Score 10/10. Ad strength Excellent. Last Christmas it returned £4,462 on £26 of spend in November.
KeywordMatchImpression shareLost to rankROAS
clementine and mintExact93.1%6.8%103
clementine and mintPhrase57.5%40.1%49
clementine & mintPhrase73.1%26.9%53

Your exact-match keyword is already above the 90% target. The ~84% campaign average is dragged down by the two phrase keywords — and every bit of that loss is bid, not budget (budget lost: 0.6%).

Two changes 1. Raise max CPC from 10p to 20p. Quality Score is already perfect and you're only paying 3.6p — the 10p ceiling is the only thing capping you.
2. Raise the budget to £4/day at the same time, or a higher CPC plus Christmas demand will simply hit a different ceiling.

One correction to an earlier assumption

Search partners were worth turning off — but they delivered 4 impressions and £0.00 in 90 days. It's tidy housekeeping, not a performance fix, and it won't move impression share.

8Product imagery

We sampled all 227 primary product images. The inconsistency is real — just not the one we expected.

Grey (rgb 180–214) 110Light grey (215–234) 91Dark / mid (<180) 14Coloured / lifestyle 8Near white (235–247) 3Pure white (248–255) 1
Only 4 of 227 images are on white It isn't white vs grey — it's grey against a different grey, spanning a wide range. Google Shopping renders tiles square, so a 4:5 grey image gets white padding added — putting your grey directly against white, in a grid where competitors sit on pure white.
MeasureFinding
Primary images on a white background4 of 227 (1.8%)
Competing aspect ratios4:5 (137) and 5:6 (74)
Distinct image dimensions across the catalogue88
Square images1 of 959

Fix the top 30 products by spend first: square (1:1), pure white background, lifestyle shots kept as the second image. Christmas products shot on dark sets are fine as lifestyle, wrong as the lead image.

9Conversion tracking

We stress-tested this before trusting any number in the report. It's healthy.

CheckResultDetail
Double countingCleanThree purchase tags exist; only one counts. Correct.
AttributionData-drivenGenuinely active, not silently falling back to last-click
Value accuracyWithin 2%AOV agrees across all three tags (£49.35–£50.31)
Default-value leakageNoneThe £43.92 fallback never fired
Tag outagesNoneFired on 351 of 365 days; gaps are normal variance
Lookback windowRight-sized71% of sales happen within a day
GA4 agreement−26%GA4 undercounts despite a 3× longer window
Enhanced conversionsVerifyNot visible via the API — check in the interface
One thing to know GA4 reports about 26% fewer Google Ads sales than actually happened. It doesn't affect bidding, but any comparison you make in GA4 will make Google Ads look worse than it is.

10Smaller wins

FindingCostAction
Two "coming soon" pages taking paid traffic£74 / 90dRemove from the feed until buyable
No negative keywords anywhere~£20/moAdd 4–6 exact-match negatives only (see note)
Desktop converts at half the mobile rate3.18% vs 6.14%Worth a look at the desktop product pages
Christmas PMax campaign built but paused£20/day readyDecide the switch-on date deliberately
Tracking template writes campaign numbers into GA4—Swap to campaign names
Duplicate paused brand campaign—Delete to keep things clean
Worth saying — what we did NOT recommend The obvious negative keywords turned out to be profitable: "fascinator" returns £398 across 27 searches, "makeup bag" £280, "tartan" £136. Blocking them would have cost real revenue. The genuine waste is about £20 a month — worth ten minutes, not a project.

11What to do, in order

Sequenced so everything is settled before the peak.

This week
1Raise PMax to £32/day and brand to £4/dayFixes six weeks of over-utilisation. 5 minutes.
2Restore the 3 missing Q4 products£864 of last Christmas currently invisible
3Raise brand max CPC 10p → 20pQuality Score is already 10/10 — the cap is the only limit
4Pause the two genuine underperformersStale pre-order title, duplicate pyjama listing
5Add the 4–6 exact-match negatives~£20/month, 10 minutes
Before 26 October
6Rewrite titles for the top 20 productsLead pouches with "bridal clutch / bag"
7Fill in custom labels by categoryUnlocks clean campaign splitting
8Switch the Christmas campaign and product groups back onAlready built — just paused
9Confirm enhanced conversions is recordingFree accuracy gain before peak
10Square, white images for the top 30 productsImproves click-through on every impression
The Christmas ramp
1127 Oct — go to £40/dayROAS climbs to 14–16 from here
12By 17 Nov — go to £55–65/dayPeak week: ROAS 23.5. Set it early so delivery is stable.
1319 Dec — step down to £35, then £22Volume falls after last posting dates
January
14Split non-headbands into their own campaignThe only way to genuinely fund laptop sleeves, robes and bows
15Review the children's lines on a full Q4Judge them on their real season, not September