Your competitors are bidding on your brand name, and you're paying premium CPCs to defend it. Meanwhile, your own brand campaigns cannibalize organic traffic you'd get for free.
Example: D2C brand paying $2.50 CPC for their own brand name while competitors bid $1.20
Customers see your Google ad, then buy on Amazon for Prime shipping. You pay for the click, Amazon gets the sale and the customer data.
Example: 40% of clicks going to users who purchase on Amazon within 7 days
Mixing prospecting and retargeting audiences inflates your CAC reporting and causes smart bidding to optimize for easy conversions instead of new customer acquisition.
Example: Reported CAC of $45 actually includes 60% returning customers at $12 CAC
Google optimizes for first purchase, not customer lifetime value. High-LTV product lines get underbid while low-margin impulse buys consume budget.
Example: Subscription starter kit with $400 LTV getting same bid as $30 one-time purchase
Your Google Ads compete against your own retail partners (Target, Nordstrom, etc.) who bid on your products. You're paying to steal your own wholesale revenue.
Example: Paying $3.00 CPC for clicks that would have purchased through retail partner
With a single asset group, Google optimizes for aggregate ROAS by heavily favoring your top 5-10 products. The rest of your catalog gets almost no impressions. Worse, low-margin products drag down profitability while appearing successful in aggregate.
Fix: Segment products by performance tier: Winners (scale), Potentials (test), Underperformers (cut or fix). Create separate asset groups for each.
PMax claims credit for brand searches that would've cost $0.30 through a dedicated brand campaign. Without exclusions, you're paying 3-5x more for customers already looking for you.
Fix: Add brand exclusions to PMax and run a separate Brand Search campaign with exact match keywords.
Missing GTINs, generic titles, no custom labels, and missing sale prices hurt your Shopping ad performance. Missing lifestyle imagery
Fix: Highlight D2C-specific benefits (free shipping, subscription savings)
Your 5x ROAS might look great until you realize 70% of sales are repeat customers who would've bought anyway. You're paying to acquire customers you already have.
Fix: Segment reporting by new vs returning customers. Set up customer match lists and analyze true CAC.
Not all campaign types work for d2c stores. Here's what to skip:
Will cannibalize brand and inflate metrics
Bleeds into competitor and irrelevant terms
Better for brand awareness, poor for ROAS
Follow these best practices to maximize your D2C Brands Google Ads performance:
Budget: 10-15% of total • Target ROAS: 8-12x
Budget: 40-50% • Target ROAS: 2.5-4x
Budget: 25-35% • Target ROAS: 3-5x
Budget: 10-15% • Target ROAS: 5-8x