From Volume to Value: The Future of Retail Advertising

As we navigate the new year in the retail landscape, the traditional Google Ads playbook has been rendered obsolete. The era of chasing top-line revenue volume is being replaced by a sophisticated signal auction, where success is dictated not by the size of the budget, but by the quality of the data and assets fed into the engine. For blue-chip retailers, simply maintaining a digital presence is no longer enough. Performance must now be measured by its impact on profitability and Customer Lifetime Value (LTV).

To win in this new environment, retailers must master three critical elements: the transition from revenue to profitability, the safeguarding of signal integrity in a post-cookie world, and the incorporation of AI creative intelligence to capture shifting consumer attention. 

The move to Profit Based Bidding (POAS)

For retailers operating in a high competition environment, not all revenue is equal. That’s why the biggest winners in 2026 are pivoting from ROAS (top-line revenue) to POAS (Profit on Ad Spend) by integrating real-time margin data into their Google Ads strategy. 

By using Custom Labels to feed margin data into Smart Bidding, we can prioritise high margin items over low margin clearance stock. This transition allows us to bid aggressively on products that will move the dial for the business, ensuring every penny spent is an investment in profitability rather than just volume. 

Shifting to POAS allows retailers to align their spend and reach stronger customer lifetime value, which is another key metric for ensuring long term growth. 

Signal integrity

Google’s AI is only as smart as the data it consumes. Ensuring you have solid first-party tracking in place is now the baseline requirement to prevent the algorithm from “bidding blind”. To maintain a competitive edge, retailers must prioritise feeding their campaigns with the best quality data by fully integrating Enhanced Conversions and feeding in their own customer data to the platforms. 

Ultimately, measurement is the engine of performance and accounts that secure their signal integrity will see a significant reduction in wasted spend and an improvement in ROAS compared to those operating with fragmented data. In this era, your first-party data is your most valuable resource. Protecting its flow to the platforms is the ultimate goal. 

Creative scaling with Nano Banana & Veo

All marketers know that creative has become more and more important in digital marketing. Capturing, and more importantly keeping, user attention is becoming an increasingly difficult task due to the sheer volume of content being created today. Those who can harness tools to create hyper-realistic, AI-generated video and lifestyle imagery will ultimately dominate the space. 

By using generative models like Nano Banana for image iteration and Veo for video, retailers can now produce hyper-personalised, relevant assets at scale in a fraction of the traditional production time. But it isn’t just about volume, it’s about creative intelligence. By feeding the AI a diverse library of lifestyle imagery and video content that matches specific audience segments, we drive significantly higher click-through-rates and lower CPCs. 

To Summarise

So, what do you need to consider when planning out your 2026 strategy this January?  

Make measurement and providing the highest quality data your priority. Without this, you cannot fuel your campaigns with the firepower they need to perform at their best. 

Start to calculate your profit over your revenue and work towards optimising towards this to really get the most bang for your buck. 

And finally, don’t shy away from AI. Although it seems daunting, as advertisers, we cannot get left behind on the AI train! 

If you’re interested in learning more about what Summit could do for your online advertising, reach out using the links below. 

If you’re in need of a PPC agency, get in touch with our team!