Microsoft Ads success story · Online drugstore and cosmetics shop

How a Polish online drugstore lifted return on ad spend from 188% to 865% in four months with Microsoft Advertising.

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Darmarsklep.pl sells cosmetics and accessories online in one of the most crowded corners of e-commerce. It opened Microsoft Advertising as a new sales channel, got the tracking right first, then built Shopping, Search and remarketing campaigns around it. Four months later, every unit spent on ads was bringing back far more in sales.

Business: Darmarsklep.pl
Market: Poland
Goal: A new source of traffic, new customers and more profitable sales

Six glass bottles of nail polish in green, blue and purple shades with black caps on a white surface

The results.

Return on ad spend is compared with April 2023, the month the campaigns launched, when it was 188%. Microsoft does not state a baseline or period for the 2.5% revenue increase.

865%return on ad spend at the end of August 2023, up from 188% in April 2023
188%return on ad spend in April 2023, the first month
2.5%increase in revenue

Campaigns launched April 1, 2023. Microsoft reports return on ad spend of 188% in April 2023 and 865% at the end of August 2023, which it describes as four months. Microsoft does not state how revenue or return on ad spend were measured.

The challenge.

Darmarsklep.pl is an online drugstore in Poland. It sells everyday cosmetics and accessories, from powders and blushes to bronzers, made by Polish and international brands. Shoppers can find most of those products in many other stores, both Polish and foreign, so the competition for every customer is intense.

In a market like that, buying more of the same traffic only pushes costs up. The store wanted a new channel that could bring in new customers and new visits, and it wanted that channel to pay its way: a higher return on ad spend and more sales, not just more clicks. It chose Microsoft Advertising.

Microsoft Advertising example of a Bing shopping ad showing a product with its price and rating

What they did.

Shopping ads that show products with price and picture · Search ads · Dynamic remarketing that shows past visitors the products they viewed · Conversion tracking

Tracking first, then ads: Before spending on growth, the team set up conversion tracking and checked that it was recording sales correctly. Every decision after that rested on numbers they could trust.
Shopping ads split by what people search: The core of the account was Shopping campaigns, the ads that show a product with its picture and price. Each campaign covered a different kind of search: broad terms, long and specific terms, and a group run at the lowest bids that still made sense.
A full funnel from day one: The campaigns launched on April 1, 2023 and were built to cover the whole path to purchase, from first discovery to the final click, rather than only the shoppers already searching for a brand.
Remarketing with the right products: Dynamic remarketing showed people who had visited the store the products they had looked at, bringing them back to finish the order.
Search ads, pruned week by week: Selected Search campaigns ran alongside Shopping. The team kept adding irrelevant search terms as exclusions, so less of the budget went to searches that would never turn into a sale.

Why it worked.

Our read on the decisions behind the numbers, and what any business can take from them.

Clean data, better bids: Because sales were tracked accurately from the start, the campaigns could be judged and tuned on revenue. A return-on-ad-spend number is only useful if the sales behind it are real.
Different searches, different bids: Someone typing a general term and someone typing an exact product name are not worth the same. Splitting campaigns by search type let each one bid what that kind of shopper was worth.
Second chances are cheap: Cosmetics shoppers compare and come back. Showing them the exact product they viewed won back sales that would otherwise have gone to a rival store.
Less wasted spend over time: Removing poor search terms every week means each month runs on a cleaner account than the last. That steady pruning is a big part of how return on ad spend climbs.

How we would run this play for your business.

You do not need a national budget to use the same ideas. This is how Overtop Media Digital Marketing puts them to work in our microsoft ads management.

Get the tracking right first: We set up and test sales tracking with real order values before we scale anything, so you see what each ad really earns and the platform learns which shoppers buy.
Build Shopping around your margins: We split your product feed and campaigns by search type and profit, so your best sellers and highest-margin lines get the budget they deserve. That is how our Microsoft Ads management works for online stores.
Bring back the browsers: We show past visitors the products they looked at, with clear prices, so shoppers who left to compare come back to you to buy.
Run Microsoft and Google together: Your customers shop on both. Our Google Ads management uses the same feed, tracking and exclusions, so both channels get sharper together.