From Spend to Strategy: How HSNG Found Profit Clarity in Google PMAX
PMAX spend redirected away from unprofitable marketsReallocated
Budget steered by contribution margin, not just ROASPer-SKU
Marketing performance and product margin in one viewUnified
HSNG is the Nordic leader in sports nutrition and health supplements, home to brands such as Gymgrossisten and Bodystore. With a strong D2C presence across several markets, HSNG has built a reputation for quality, innovation, and performance. As the company scaled, the team wanted to go beyond traditional ROAS metrics to understand where marketing spend truly drives profit and where it doesn't. That's where Dema came in.
The Challenge
Google PMAX has become a key growth driver for many e-commerce businesses, but also a black box. While performance often looks strong in-platform, it's hard to tell if the results are truly incremental or just capturing demand that would have happened anyway. HSNG wanted to uncover the real efficiency of their Google PMAX campaigns across markets and determine whether they were allocating spend to the right places.
The Tests
Dema ran a series of incrementality tests across multiple markets to measure Google PMAX's true contribution to incremental profit. The findings were clear: some markets delivered strong incremental performance, while others showed low efficiency and significant overreporting — registering an epROAS below 100%, meaning that additional spend was not profit-positive.
Google PMAX · Incrementality by market
Geo holdouts · 8 weeksSweden
IncrementalReported ROAS0.0×
epROAS0%
0%above break-even180%
Real lift on top of organic demand.
Norway
IncrementalReported ROAS0.0×
epROAS0%
0%above break-even180%
Headroom remains — scale carefully.
Finland
OverreportedReported ROAS0.0×
epROAS0%
0%below 100% break-even180%
Capturing demand that would convert anyway.
Denmark
OverreportedReported ROAS0.0×
epROAS0%
0%below 100% break-even180%
Spend not profit-positive at the margin.
Illustrative example. The numbers shown are for visualisation purposes only and do not reflect HSNG's actual results.
PMAX wasn't the problem — the product mix was
Instead of simply cutting PMAX budgets, Dema's analysis revealed something deeper: the issue wasn't in the marketing mix but in the product mix and the unit economics underneath it.
“PMAX wasn't the problem. The product mix it was scaling was.”
HSNG × Dema · Finding from their PMAX incrementality program
The Results
By connecting marketing and profitability data at the product level, Dema identified that certain low-margin SKUs were absorbing too much of the PMAX spend. These products generated revenue but eroded profit. Through Dema's platform, HSNG could easily pinpoint which products were unprofitable and reallocate spend toward higher-margin items, improving both incremental performance and total profit efficiency.
PMAX spend ↔ product margin
Top 5 SKUs by spendProduct ACategory 1
PMAX spend26%
Contribution margin7%
Reduce
Product BCategory 2
PMAX spend18%
Contribution margin4%
Reduce
Product CCategory 1
PMAX spend12%
Contribution margin22%
Scale
Product DCategory 3
PMAX spend8%
Contribution margin31%
Scale
Product ECategory 3
PMAX spend6%
Contribution margin28%
Scale
RecommendationSteer PMAX toward higher-margin SKUs in incremental markets.
Illustrative example. Product names, spend shares, and margins are for visualisation purposes only and do not reflect HSNG's actual data.
The Next Step
HSNG and Dema are now developing an automated segmentation strategy to optimize Google PMAX bidding dynamically based on product-level margins and profitability. This approach ensures that every ad dollar is invested where it truly matters, driving profitable growth, not just more conversions.
With Dema's unified view of incrementality and product-level margin, HSNG turned PMAX from a black box into a lever for profitable growth — and is building the automation to keep it that way.
Ready to scale profitably?