Bandel turns Performance Max into a segmented growth engine

Full Story

Background & Opportunity

Bandel Automobiltechnik GmbH operates an online automotive-parts and accessories business in Germany. It sells through its own webshop, eBay and other external marketplaces, with limited offline activity. The company offers more than 200,000 products, creating a difficult advertising-management problem: products do not face the same level of competition, and their prices are not equally attractive in the market. Before the change, Bandel used existing Smart Shopping and Performance Max settings. The structure did not sufficiently segment products according to competition intensity, price attractiveness and product value. As a result, automated budget allocation could send spend toward auctions where Bandel faced strong competition or lacked a compelling price position. The challenge was not simply to increase advertising automation, but to make automation more commercially aware. Bandel worked with smec on an Enhanced Performance Max approach. The solution introduced product and campaign groupings based on competition and price data. Automation could then allocate budget and product exposure toward auctions more likely to generate value, while still operating at the scale required by a catalogue of more than 200,000 products. The case report presents differentiated results. For highly competitive activities with unattractive prices, value per click increased by 119%. For activities with low competition and competitive prices, it increased by 60%. Other products recorded a 25% increase. These figures are value-per-click measures, not revenue or profit margins. The broader business also grew during the period. Public financial data show revenue rising from €88.906 million in 2022 to €116.173 million in 2023, a 30.7% increase. Webshop revenue rose from €43.890 million to €57.962 million, a 32.1% increase, and operating profit rose from €3.183 million to €8.288 million, a 160.4% increase. However, the available evidence does not demonstrate that the advertising project alone caused these financial outcomes. Pricing, product mix, marketplace sales, demand and other marketing activity may also have contributed.

Original Problem / Model

Bandel’s starting point was a very broad catalogue and a uniform automated advertising structure that did not fully reflect market differences.

Turning Point

Competition intensity and price attractiveness varied considerably between products and auctions.

Core Decision

The business needed scalable control without manually managing more than 200,000 products.

Execution / Model / Acquisition Changes

Enhanced Performance Max segmented products and campaigns using competition and price data, allowing automated allocation to respond to product conditions.

Measurable Results

Reported value per click increased 119% for highly competitive, unattractively priced products; 60% for low-competition, competitively priced products; and 25% for other products.

Lessons

The case shows that structured automation can improve media efficiency, but concurrent revenue and profit growth should not be attributed to the advertising project alone.

Value per click increased by 25%, 60% or 119%, depending on the product group.

Deep Analysis

Option B best matches the verified case. Bandel’s product catalogue contained large differences in competition and price attractiveness, while the previous setup did not adequately reflect those differences. Segmenting products and campaigns using competition and price data gave automated bidding and budget allocation a more relevant structure. The reported value-per-click gains—119%, 60% and 25% for different product groups—support the effectiveness of this approach. Option A preserves the central weakness. Option C is not supported by the evidence because Bandel continued to use multiple channels. Option D would be difficult to scale across more than 200,000 products and was not the chosen solution. The financial growth is consistent with a successful period, but it should not be attributed solely to the advertising intervention.

Turning Point

Bandel and smec moved from a largely uniform Smart Shopping and Performance Max structure to Enhanced Performance Max campaigns segmented with competition and price data.

Before vs After

Before
Automated shopping campaigns treated product differences insufficiently, leaving Bandel with limited control over budget allocation across competitive and less competitive auctions.

After
Campaign and product segmentation enabled more targeted automated allocation, with reported value-per-click gains of 25%, 60% and 119% across product groups.

GoGoUp Five Powers

Discover5/5

★★★★★

Analyze5/5

★★★★★

Execute5/5

★★★★★

Decide5/5

★★★★★

Create4/5

★★★★☆

Discover5/5

The key discovery was that more than 200,000 products did not share the same competitive or pricing conditions. A single automated structure could therefore direct budget inefficiently across very different auctions.

Analyze5/5

Bandel and smec used competition and price data to distinguish product groups. This created a basis for evaluating value per click rather than treating every product as an equivalent bidding opportunity.

Execute5/5

The team introduced Enhanced Performance Max, grouped products and campaigns by relevant market conditions, and used automation to shift budget and product exposure toward auctions with stronger value potential.

Decide5/5

The strategic decision was not to abandon automation, but to give it a more structured operating environment. Segmentation preserved scalability while improving control over where automated budget could flow.

Create4/5

The resulting model connected product economics and market conditions with automated media allocation. It created a repeatable framework for managing a very broad catalogue across the direct webshop and marketplace channels.

Automation becomes more useful when product groups are separated according to competition, price attractiveness and expected value rather than managed uniformly.

Evidence / Sources
smec’s case page and PDF report the Enhanced Performance Max approach and value-per-click gains of 119%, 60% and 25%. Public financial data report 2022–2023 revenue, webshop revenue and operating profit. These sources support the timing and results but do not prove sole causation by advertising.