From ROAS to real profit. A shift in measurement unlocked 3 years of compounding growth.
- Paid Growth
- Profit optimization
- Creative Strategy
Introduction
Yarn Marketplace is Australia’s leading online destination for authentic First Nations and Aboriginal art products. Strong brand equity, loyal customer base, and a mission that resonates.
But paid media was optimized to ROAS. And ROAS is a sensor, not a steering wheel.
Every e-commerce brand optimizes for ROAS. It’s the default metric, the one platforms reward, the one that shows up in every agency report. But the moment a metric becomes the goal, it stops being a good measure. Teams start making decisions to improve the dashboard instead of the business. Retargeting gets blended with acquisition because it inflates ROAS. High-margin products get starved because low-ticket items “perform better.” Budget moves toward what looks efficient, not what drives growth.
Yarn’s transformation started the moment we stopped optimizing for the instruments and started steering toward the destination: profitable new customer acquisition.
The challenge
profit hidden behind vanity metrics
Yarn had been running paid media successfully by conventional standards. But the conventional metrics were lying. ROAS looked healthy while margins were under pressure. New customer acquisition was blended with retargeting, inflating perceived efficiency. Creative output was limited, constraining the algorithm’s ability to find new audiences. And there was no framework connecting ad spend to actual business profit.
The result: a business that looked efficient on platform dashboards but couldn’t answer “how much real profit did paid media generate?”
The Strategy
measure what matters, then scale what works
Incrementalist didn’t start by spending more. We started by redefining what success looked like. Three workstreams ran in parallel:
Profit-First Measurement
Transitioned from ROAS to POAS and contribution margin at the platform level. Implemented ProfitMetrics, sending real profit data from Shopify directly to Google and Meta. Every dollar of ad spend was now evaluated on its actual business return, not platform-reported revenue.
New vs. Returning Customer Architecture
Built clear bidding separation between acquisition and retargeting. New customer campaigns were isolated with dedicated budgets and nCAC targets. Retargeting efficiency was protected without cannibalizing acquisition signals. The result: +30% new customer revenue in a single month.
Creative System at Scale
Increased creative output ~5x with UGC formats, funnel-based frameworks, and structured concept testing. More creative volume gave the algorithm more signal. More signal meant faster learning. Faster learning meant more efficient spend.
The numbers tells the story
+88%
~11×
5×
What made the difference
POAS is a sensor, not the goal
We shifted Yarn from ROAS to POAS. But POAS was never the objective. The objective was efficient new customer acquisition at a profit. POAS told us if we were getting closer. The moment you treat a metric as the goal instead of a signal, you start optimizing for the dashboard instead of the business.
Separate what you measure from what you steer
New vs returning customer separation wasn’t a campaign structure decision. It was a measurement decision. When acquisition and retargeting are blended, every metric lies. Separating them didn’t change the spend. It changed what we could see. And what you can see is what you can steer.
Three years, same question
Metrics changed. Strategies evolved. Creative scaled 5x. But every week for three years the question stayed the same: are we acquiring new customers profitably? Everything else on the dashboard is a sensor in service of that answer.
Ready to build a system that compounds?
Manifesto
Paid media system is broken. And everyone knows it.
Ad Platforms became attribution machines. Claiming credit for every touchpoint, rewarding you for spending more, not for growing more. Their only incentive is your next dollar in.
Acquisition teams operate in silos. Paid has no say in the funnel it feeds. Creative has no loop back from paid. Each owns its metric. Nobody owns the outcome.
Agencies charge for doing, not for thinking. No motivation to challenge. No discomfort. No pushback. Just execution, reports, and invoices.
The result: millions spent on advertising that no CFO can connect to a business outcome.
We believe in one principle.
Every dollar of ad spend should show up in the P&L.
Whether it's optimizing costs, increasing revenue, or acquiring new customers. If it doesn't move the business, it doesn't belong in the budget.
We don't scale spend because spend is available. We scale when the unit economics say we should.
We own paid growth end-to-end. Because paid media is the fastest way to discover what works and what doesn't. It generates volume, it tests hypotheses, it exposes funnel gaps, and it reveals whether a business is ready to scale or needs to fix something first. That's not media buying. That's growth consulting with real money on the line.
This is incrementalist.