How a Seasonal Outdoor Brand Improved ROAS 52% with DSP

This mid-market outdoor equipment brand operates a large catalog of replacement parts and maintenance tools on Amazon. The business serves homeowners and DIY buyers, with demand heavily concentrated in spring and summer months. Like many seasonal advertisers, performance hinges on how well the brand navigates the sharp drop in demand during winter.

The Challenge

For this brand, seasonality wasn’t just a pattern—it was a constraint.

During peak months, strong demand made performance predictable. Sponsored Products captured high-intent traffic efficiently, and the account met its return targets with consistency.

But every winter, the same pattern emerged. As demand declined, efficiency followed. Without a way to re-engage shoppers beyond search, performance became increasingly volatile. Return on ad spend dropped below the client’s strict benchmark, forcing the team to reduce budgets to protect profitability.

That decision came with a tradeoff.

Pulling back too far risked losing visibility on high-value keywords—undermining organic ranking and making it harder to recover when demand returned. The brand wasn’t just managing short-term efficiency. It was trying to protect long-term position in a seasonal category.

What they needed was not a way to spend less—but a way to stay efficient while staying present.

Why Quartile

The limitation wasn’t effort. It was structure.

A search-only strategy could capture demand, but it couldn’t sustain it. And manual adjustments couldn’t keep pace with the shifts happening across hundreds of SKUs and changing seasonal conditions.

Quartile introduced a different approach—one that treated seasonality as something to plan for, not react to.

By combining real-time optimization with audience-based targeting through Amazon DSP, Quartile gave the brand the ability to influence shoppers beyond the moment of search. More importantly, it created a system where peak demand could be used to build future performance—not just capture it.

This shifted the strategy from reactive cost control to proactive performance management.

The Solution

Quartile restructured the account around a simple idea: use strong months to prepare for weak ones.

During peak season, Sponsored Products continued to capture high-intent traffic. But instead of stopping there, DSP was introduced as a core layer of the strategy—not an add-on. Retargeting campaigns focused on shoppers who had already engaged, including product viewers and high-intent audiences.

This wasn’t just about driving immediate conversions. It was about building audience depth while demand was high—creating a pool of qualified shoppers that could be re-engaged later.

As the account moved into winter, the strategy shifted deliberately.

Instead of cutting spend aggressively, Quartile maintained disciplined investment and leaned into DSP retargeting. These campaigns re-engaged previously interested shoppers, helping stabilize conversion rates even as overall demand declined.

At the same time, Sponsored Products maintained visibility on priority keywords—supported by the stronger conversion signals coming from retargeted traffic.

The result was a connected system: peak season built the audience, and off-season strategy converted it.

Results & Impact

The impact was most visible during the period that had historically been the weakest:

• 52% improvement in ROAS year over year, exceeding the client’s efficiency benchmark  

• Winter performance strengthened significantly, reversing prior seasonal declines  

• DSP retargeting drove high-efficiency returns, reinforcing conversion during low-demand months  

These results changed the role of seasonality in the account. Instead of dictating performance drops, it became something the strategy was built around—and ultimately improved through.

Ongoing Value & Future State

With this framework in place, the brand now approaches seasonality with control instead of caution. Peak months are used to build future performance, while off-season periods are managed with precision rather than retrenchment.

Quartile continues to refine this system—optimizing audience strategies, strengthening retargeting performance, and ensuring the account can scale without sacrificing efficiency.