Scandinavian Outdoor is a Finnish family-owned company with roots going back more than 50 years. The company has been running its online store in Finland for 20 years, making it one of the pioneers in Finnish e-commerce. Scandinavian Outdoor specializes in selling outdoor and hiking products from many of the most popular and trusted brands in the industry.
Sales up. Cost per sale down. That's what happens when your product feed reflects your business logic, not just yesterday's clicks. For Scandinavian Outdoor, a leading retailer with a broad and diverse catalog, gaining control over the algorithm was the key to unlocking profitable growth.
Executive Summary
The Goal: Embed business rules like profitability and strategic priority into the product feed so Google's Performance Max (PMax) stops guessing and starts prioritizing the right products.
The Shift: Budget was strategically reallocated from low-priority to high-priority products (Low-priority spend dropped from 51% → 24%; high-priority spend grew from 18% → 29%).
The Payoff: High-priority items delivered an ~8.5x ROAS compared to an ~4.35x ROAS on low-priority items.
The Result: Year-over-year, their PMax campaigns saw +32% revenue with a +5.7% better ROAS.
The Challenge: A Smart Platform Making Blunt Choices
Scandinavian Outdoor runs a broad, seasonal catalog. While Google's PMax is a powerful tool, it often defaults to chasing historic winners and cheap clicks, missing the bigger picture of business strategy.
The impact was clear in the data: over half (51%) of the ad spend was flowing to the lowest-priority products, while just 18% reached the highest-value items. The account was busy, but it wasn't aligned with the business.
The Approach: Put Business Logic Inside the Feed
Instead of endlessly tweaking campaigns, the team used Expanly to program the algorithm directly through the product feed. The onboarding was "easy and quick," allowing them to start reshaping their strategy almost immediately.
Product Scoring: Each product receives a dynamic score based on strategic business factors like profitability, priority, real-time conversion signals, and inventory levels. High-scoring products get more visibility, while poor performers are automatically deprioritized.
Fastlane for Promotions: When the business needs to move fast on seasonal pushes or specific campaigns, the team can place key products in a "fast lane". As Kuutti Haapanen, Head of Ecommerce & Marketing, explains, this allows them to "accelerate their sales during promotions" without breaking the account structure.
The Results: Reallocation That Pays For Itself
By teaching the algorithm what to prioritize, the budget naturally followed the value. The shift in spending from low- to high-priority products explains the significant lift in profitability:
High-priority products: ~848% ROAS
Low-priority products: ~435% ROAS
These ROAS figures are averages across the pilot period, not a single-day spike.
The logic is simple: when you spend more where your ROAS is strongest, you don't just sell more; you sell more profitably. For Scandinavian Outdoor, this delivered a two-pronged victory. According to Kuutti Haapanen, not only have "product sales increased significantly," but crucially, "the cost per sale has gone down".
Why It Worked: Your Business Logic is the Best Algorithm
This strategic shift delivered more than just better metrics; it created a smarter, more resilient advertising operation.
The Algorithm Sees the Bigger Picture. By encoding profitability and strategic importance into the feed, Google can finally act on what actually matters to the business, not just what converted last week.
Control Without Chaos. The "fast lane" gives the marketing team the power to push priority products instantly during promotions, no complex campaign rebuilds or messy overrides required.
Budget Follows Value. Reallocating spend toward high-impact products compounds performance, ensuring more of the right impressions go to the right products at the right time.
What This Means For Retailers With Big Catalogs
If your product assortment is wide and seasonal, you don't have a bidding problem, you have a teaching problem. Handing your entire catalog to an algorithm and hoping for the best leads to spend drift and missed opportunities.
The fix is powerful: embed your strategy into the feed so the platform can prioritize products exactly like you would.
