Profit Over Clicks: How Runners Plus Increased Net Profit by 22% with Quartile

Runners Plus is a specialty running retailer offering premium footwear, apparel, and accessories from leading brands including Nike, ASICS, and HOKA. Through its ecommerce business, the company helps runners of every level find the right products using expert recommendations, detailed product information, and a carefully curated online shopping experience.

As the business continued to grow, the team wanted more than higher advertising revenue. They wanted advertising that contributed directly to healthier business performance.

The Challenge

At first glance, Google Ads appeared to be performing exactly as expected.

Following the launch of new campaigns, ad-attributed sales increased by more than 50% while Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) remained stable. The account was generating more revenue and efficiently acquiring customers.

But when the team looked beyond Google Ads, the picture changed.

Shopify net sales had declined, and overall profitability had fallen after advertising costs were factored in. More advertising activity wasn't translating into a healthier business.

The issue wasn't Google's ability to find customers—it was what Google's algorithm was designed to optimize.

Google naturally prioritized products most likely to generate conversions. Those weren't always the products that generated the greatest profit. Lower-margin promotional items often received the majority of advertising investment simply because they converted more easily, while higher-margin products received less visibility.

Inventory introduced another challenge.

Because running shoes are sold across multiple sizes, Google's algorithm frequently concentrated spend on individual variants with limited stock. Once those sizes sold out, campaign performance became inconsistent while the algorithm adjusted to changing inventory levels.

Runners Plus needed advertising that reflected how the business measured success—not simply how Google measured campaign performance.

Why Quartile

Most advertising optimization platforms optimize around platform metrics.

Quartile optimizes around business outcomes.

Instead of relying solely on Google's conversion signals, Quartile connected first-party Shopify data with Google Shopping campaigns to provide a more complete understanding of product performance. Profitability, pricing competitiveness, inventory availability, and actual ecommerce sales all became part of the optimization process.

This allowed Google's machine learning to make better decisions because it was working with better business data.

Rather than chasing the easiest conversions, advertising investment could now prioritize the products that delivered the greatest long-term value to the business.

The Solution

Quartile began by enriching the Google product feed with data pulled directly from Shopify.

Product costs were integrated into the feed, allowing every SKU to be evaluated based on actual profitability rather than revenue alone. Google benchmark pricing data was then layered into the feed to identify products that combined strong margins with competitive pricing.

These additional data signals fundamentally changed how products were prioritized.

Rather than allowing Google's native optimization to favor whichever products generated the highest conversion volume, Quartile built Dynamic Performance Labels using Shopify sales performance. This ensured campaigns prioritized products actively driving business results while reducing investment in products and variants that no longer represented the best opportunity.

Campaigns were then restructured around these richer product signals.

Products with healthy margins, competitive pricing, consistent inventory, and strong ecommerce performance automatically received greater investment, while lower-value opportunities became less of a priority.

Instead of optimizing for more conversions, the account was now optimized for better business outcomes.

Results

The new strategy improved more than advertising efficiency—it improved the health of the business.

By aligning Google's optimization decisions with real ecommerce performance, Quartile helped Runners Plus generate stronger profitability while maintaining growth through one of the year's most challenging retail periods.

The retailer achieved:

• 22% increase in net profit after advertising costs  

• 19% increase in overall profit  

• 9% increase in Shopify net sales despite the comparison period including Cyber Monday  

• 15% increase in Google conversion value  

• 49% reduction in spend on non-converting product variants  

The strategy also created a more resilient optimization framework. Rather than reacting to individual product performance inside Google Ads, campaigns continuously incorporated profitability, inventory availability, and Shopify sales signals, helping advertising investment remain aligned with overall business objectives as product performance evolved.

Looking Ahead

What began as a profitability initiative has evolved into a new operating framework for Google Shopping optimization.

The strategy continues to perform because the underlying business signals are continuously refreshed. Product profitability, pricing competitiveness, and Shopify performance are regularly updated, allowing campaigns to evolve alongside the business.

This project also demonstrated the value of incorporating richer first-party commerce data into campaign optimization, creating a blueprint for future Shopify-powered Dynamic Performance Label capabilities that can help more retailers optimize around business performance—not simply advertising metrics.