PPC Commentary
Beet It Sport & Zinger · June 2026 (vs May 2026)
Managed to TACOS and sell-through. Beet It Sport is carrying the account; Zinger is defending revenue through its seasonal low. The month's biggest risk sits in stock, not spend.
Two brands, opposite directions, one supply risk
−7.3% MoM · +24.8% YoY
year-on-year
year-on-year
the metric that matters
Beet It Sport is £84,731, up 91.9% year-on-year, and is carrying the account. Zinger is £30,372, down 36.9%, declining alongside a ginger shot category that is in its summer trough.
We manage this account to TACOS and sell-through, not to an ACOS target. On a Vendor account Amazon has already bought the stock, so the job is to keep that inventory moving and hold rank, and to tighten efficiency as demand allows rather than starve a brand in a soft month. TACOS held at 3.5% in June. On a business with a strong organic base, that is the number that matters, and it confirms advertising is a proportionate lever.
Blended ACOS was 11.9%, up from 9.3% in May. The rise came from higher click costs, and it splits by brand: Beet It Sport ran on target, Zinger ran deliberately hot to defend volume through its low season.
The biggest item in this report is not advertising. Nitrate 400 is 68% of managed revenue, and it is being restocked at a 43% receive-fill rate while total on-hand inventory fell 25% in the month, from £240,839 to £181,526. The account's core earner is drawing down its buffer with replenishment running at less than half. That is a supply conversation and it is the main risk to Q3.
June is noise on two longer trends
| June 2026 | Revenue | MoM | YoY |
|---|---|---|---|
| Beet It Sport | £84,731 | −8.7% | +91.9% |
| Zinger | £30,372 | −2.9% | −36.9% |
| Managed total | £115,103 | −7.3% | +24.8% |
Search demand for Zinger's core terms continued to soften into the summer, down around 24% year-on-year. Zinger's own 2.9% monthly fall was shallower than the category's drop, so June reflects the market's seasonality rather than a Zinger-specific problem. The category's winter peaks are still growing year-on-year, so this is a seasonal asset in its low season.
Advertising drove 29% of managed revenue in June, with organic driving the balance. On a business with a strong organic base, the ad job is to protect rank, capture competitor traffic and hold velocity so the organic position keeps compounding, and to do it efficiently. TACOS at 3.5% shows that is working: advertising is pulling real weight against the sales it influences while staying proportionate to the whole.
One blended number, two objectives
from 9.3%
+18%
+19%
Blended ACOS rose to 11.9% from 9.3%. The driver was click cost. CPC rose 18%, from £0.77 to £0.92, partly from deliberate bid restorations on Beet It Sport competitor campaigns and partly from Prime-window competition. CVR eased slightly, 33.3% to 30.6%, and CTR held at 0.36%. Impressions and clicks were flat, so reach was intact and each click simply cost more.
Beet It Sport: on target
Demand is strong, acquisition is efficient, and the only real constraint is stock rather than spend.
Zinger: above target by choice
Its Sponsored Brands activity carries a high ACOS, and cutting it would strip volume off a declining brand in its weakest month. We paused one underperforming Sponsored Brands campaign in June and are holding the rest deliberately, to protect velocity and rank while demand is low. We will tighten this as the category rebuilds toward winter. Managing Zinger to a 10% ACOS now would cost sales the brand cannot spare, so ACOS is not the near-term goal for Zinger. Holding revenue and rank is.
On the branded split, 91.4% of spend went to non-branded acquisition at 13.4% ACOS, and 8.6% defended the brand at 5.6%. Efficiency is being earned in open competition rather than propped up by cheap branded search. Non-branded ACOS rose from 9.9% to 13.4%, and that movement accounts for most of the month's efficiency change.
On zero-sales spend, around £271 of Beet It Sport and Zinger SP spend went to search terms that were genuinely off-target: beet powder and two unrelated adult products matched against "nitrate" on Beet It Sport, and off-category drink terms on Zinger. These have been negated. A further £420 or so went to relevant terms that did not convert in the month, including core terms like "ginger shots" itself. Those are held, not negated, since a quiet 14-day window in a seasonal low is not the same as waste.
Prime-driven drift
ACOS drifted up through the month: 10.9%, 12.1%, 12.0%, 13.3%, then 10.4% on the tail. Week 4 carried Prime Day, the highest-spend and highest-CPC week, and the tail returning to 10.4% shows the drift was event-driven. Weekly sales were steady across the month, so the softness sits in efficiency rather than volume.
Core terms at target
Core non-branded terms are at or near target and remain the priority for investment: ginger shot at 7% ACOS, beet root 7%, beet nitrate 8%, beetroot juice 12%, concentrated beetroot shots 18%.
Beetroot shots, the highest-volume non-branded term, converts across several campaigns at 15–29%. That is the main bid-tuning lever next month: hold the efficient placements, trim the 29% instances. Competitor capture is working selectively. The Fighter Shots ASIN converted at 10%; Moju ginger shot extra strength at a weaker 33% is a bid-down candidate.
Bid cost was the limiter, not budget
96 active campaigns across both brands, 37 of which spent more than £5 in June, at around £42 a month on average. This is the deliberate single-keyword structure rather than sprawl, though the long tail of sub-£2-a-day campaigns gathers data slowly and is a candidate for consolidation. The "Ginger — All KWs — To Split" campaign is the first structural job.
Best performer
JW | BIS | SP | Nitrate 400 | Phrase | Single KW - Beetroot Shots | T Disc — £774 spend, £9,135 sales, 8% ACOS, 353 orders. The biggest and most efficient earner, with room to scale once ACOS settles. Auto | Loose Match (£428 to £6,195, 7%) and B & P | Low Bid - Catch All (£445 to £5,486, 8%) are close behind.
Weakest with real spend
JW | ZIN | SB | Ginger - B016H9SJ5K | Manual | Broad | Single KW - Immunity Shots | DPV - LP — £183 spend, 44% ACOS, Broad match leaking into generic juice terms. JW | ZIN | SP | Ginger - B016H9SJ5K | Manual | Competitor Targeting - Lower Rated Competitors | Expanded (Low Bid) — £82 spend, 46% ACOS, now paused.
Budget was not the June constraint. Only the £5-a-day Zinger Top Competitors campaign ran near its cap. The core campaigns have headroom, so the month's limiter was bid cost rather than budget, and reallocation is not the current lever. Bidding is predominantly Down Only; JW | BIS | SP | Nitrate 400 | Manual | Competitor Targeting - All Competitors runs Up & Down at an elevated ACOS by design, restored mid-June to recover reach lost in the April bid incident, and is being monitored rather than expanded.
The stock-out clock
Nitrate 400 (B01GJS8VX4): the account
£78,693 revenue, 68% of managed, 34% ad conversion rate. In stock through June at 5,432 units, but receive-fill is 43% on a 1,568-unit open order. The demand and the ad efficiency are sound. The replenishment pipeline is the risk. This is the ASIN to protect.
Zinger Ginger Shots (B016H9SJ5K): the Zinger core
£14,433 revenue, 40% ad conversion rate, 8% ACOS on its brand-defence campaign, in stock at 2,026 units. It holds #1 organic rank on its core terms. Its year-on-year decline tracks a category in its seasonal trough. We are managing it to defend revenue and rank through the low season, and there is further analysis of the Zinger position underway separately.
Energy Gel (B0DCC1KMM9) generated £970 before selling out. Its ads stopped serving because the listing ran dry, not because of a targeting fault. No spend until it is restocked.
Across the catalogue, sellable on-hand inventory fell 25% in the month, from £240,839 to £181,526. Set against the fill-rate data, this is the clearest forward risk in the account.