Google Ads Case Study: Instant Cameras — UAH 4.84M (~$108K) in Revenue and a 1669% ROAS Without Performance Max

An unusual case. An online store selling instant cameras and accessories for them. The niche seems ordinary, but there are nuances.

Contents

1. Three nuances of the project
2. Results over 450 days
3. Why standard Shopping and not Performance Max
4. Budget and bidding strategy
5. Tracking without a developer
6. Product ratings
7. FAQ

Google Ads case study: instant cameras, ROAS 1669%

Three nuances of the project

First — a very narrow product range. Only a small number of products run in the ads.

Second — the result. Over 450 days of work, the ads brought in UAH 4.84M (~$108K) in revenue at a 1669% ROAS. That is a very high figure, and it is not typical.

Third — the approach. Over more than a year of work I tested everything that could be tested and found the setup that works best: no Performance Max at all, only standard Shopping. How I choose between Shopping and Performance Max for a specific store is covered on the Performance Max and Shopping campaign setup service page.

Results over 450 days

Over 450 days (April 6, 2024 — June 29, 2025):

• UAH 4.84M (~$108K) in revenue from ads;
• UAH 290K (~$6.4K) in ad spend;
• 3,240 conversions;
• ROAS 1669% — every hryvnia in ads returns almost 17 hryvnias in revenue;
• about UAH 90 ($2) per conversion on average over the period.

An important caveat. When projects come to me for an audit or a media plan estimate, I never assume figures like these. They are not typical. You definitely should not base a forecast on them.

Google AdsGoogle Ads Media Planning: How to Build a Realistic Forecast Before LaunchStructure of a pre-launch Google Ads media plan: assumptions, scenario-based ROAS forecast, site readiness checklist.Sep 4, 2026Read

Why standard Shopping and not Performance Max

There are two reasons.

Maximize Conversion Value in Standard Shopping — Finally! What It Changes

First — top sellers periodically go out of stock. For smart campaigns like Performance Max that is very bad. Google finds patterns, including with specific products, and pushes them hard while they work. As soon as a product goes out of stock, the algorithm goes back into learning and looks for a way to sell something else.

In practice this problem is systemic. For some reason the client cannot build up enough stock to eliminate it.

And there is one more thing. After products drop out like this, Performance Max very quickly dives into the Display Network. And for product ads, display traffic is mostly junk rather than traffic. Standard Shopping does not do that: if there is not enough Shopping traffic, the money does not go to Display.

Second — a narrow product range. To work carefully with search terms you need control. In standard Shopping I fully manage the traffic and exclude everything unrelated to the business.

So even when top sellers go out of stock, I do not spend as much money as Performance Max would burn. In this particular project, this approach worked.

Budget and bidding strategy

The budget here is small and not very typical for Shopping — about UAH 600 ($13) a day.

But a conversion now costs about UAH 100 ($2.2). So within this budget the campaign gets more than 5 conversions a day. And that makes it possible to use the Target ROAS strategy — target return on ad spend.

Target ROAS works properly when a campaign gets 5 or more conversions a day. Both my own practice and Google’s guidance confirm this.

Tracking without a developer

The site came, as often happens, with tracking not set up.

I set it up with a free WordPress plugin, without involving a developer. Everything still works correctly.

A bit later I added Enhanced Conversions. This means sending hashed customer data — email or phone — to Google Ads to make the data in the ad account more accurate.

04 — AnalyticsConversion tracking with GTM and GA4Accurate tracking: Google Tag Manager, GA4, Enhanced Conversions, Google Tag Gateway.from $50Learn more

Product ratings

There was an idea to enable product ratings — the stars in Shopping ads. But there are not enough reviews on the site yet to meet the program requirements. The client is actively collecting customer reviews, so we will come back to this.

Merchant CenterProduct Ratings in Google Merchant Center: What They Are, How They Work and Why They MatterProduct Ratings in Google Shopping: requirements, how Google matches reviews to products, a solution for Prom.ua stores.Sep 5, 2026Read

How I run ads for online stores — on the Google Ads for online stores page.