A full read of one live creatine listing across all five EU marketplaces — rank, price, conversion, ad efficiency and search demand — on our own authorised data. The product is fine and the price is a genuine strength. The upside is in the ad targeting in two markets, and an audience the listing barely addresses. Our own brand; the figures are sealed.
What you're seeing. Same product, same competitive price, fully localised in every market — yet Germany and Spain sit below the breakeven line, losing money on every ad click, while the UK, Italy and France run comfortably above it. That split is the whole audit. Exact returns sealed.
The verdict in one line. This is not a product problem or a price problem — the listing ranks top-20 in four of five markets and is the cheapest creatine per gram almost everywhere. It's two things: the ads in Spain and Germany are paying for the wrong clicks, and the single biggest pocket of demand — older women — is barely addressed anywhere. Fix the first to stop the leak; build the second to grow.
Top-20 in four of five categories, yet Spain and Germany lose money on every ad click. Same product, same price — so the gap is who the ads bring in, not what you're selling.
| Market | PPC conversion | Cost / sale | Return on spend | What's happening |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 🇬🇧 UK | ▓▓% | £▓.▓▓ | ▓.▓× | Value shoppers click → buy |
| 🇮🇹 IT | ▓▓% | €▓.▓▓ | ▓.▓× | Strong, under-spent — scale it |
| 🇫🇷 FR | ▓▓% | €▓.▓▓ | ▓.▓× | Profitable, steady |
| 🇩🇪 DE | ▓▓% | €▓.▓▓ | ▓.▓× | Brand-loyal browsers compare and leave |
| 🇪🇸 ES | ▓▓% | €▓▓.▓▓ | ▓.▓▓× | Creapure seekers bounce — no badge |
Price is the first thing everyone blames, so we ruled it out first: at £▓.▓▓/100g (UK) and €▓.▓▓/100g (DE) the listing is the cheapest or near-cheapest per gram in every market — against Nutrition Geeks, ESN and Natural Elements, all priced well above per gram. Being cheap isn't the problem. Being found by the wrong shopper is.
A large share of Spanish creatine searches ask for Creapure certification the listing doesn't carry. They click, find no badge, and leave — at a painful cost per click.
The whole Spanish account runs below breakeven — losing money on every click — largely because broad and Creapure traffic drags it under. The fix is surgical, not a rebuild: negate "creapure" as an exact negative across all campaigns, cut Spain to exact- and phrase-match only (pause the broad, ASIN and auto campaigns, which convert in the single digits), and add "gominolas, cápsulas, hsn, myprotein" as negatives.
If Creapure certification is ever sourceable, those two terms unlock a large block of monthly searches you currently repel. Until then, they're pure leak — negate them today.
The exact same product converts at nearly double on long-tail terms as on the broad head term. You're buying the expensive clicks and under-buying the cheap ones.
Broad terms pull in brand-loyal browsers (ESN loyalists) who compare and leave; long-tail terms pull in ready buyers. Pause the broad campaigns, move the budget to exact-match long-tail, and the cost per sale drops sharply. One spelling note the data settles: "kreatin" with a K far outweighs the English "creatine" in Germany — both are covered, and the images correctly lead with the K.
The biggest growth isn't a new keyword — it's an audience. Older women convert on creatine at rates the head term never comes close to, against almost no competition.
The demand isn't UK-only. Germany shows hundreds of monthly searches for "kreatin für frauen ab 50" and "kreatin für frauen ab 40"; Spain has a healthy block for "creatina para mujer" — all with almost no competitor addressing them directly. The listing wins these terms today almost by accident. Speak to them on purpose and the conversion compounds.
The move: add a women's-health A+ panel across all five markets — "Kreatin ist nicht nur für Sportler", "Creatina para mujeres activas" — and fold the terms into backend keywords. It's the one change that grows the top line rather than just plugging a leak, and the search data says the audience is already there, waiting.
In the UK you're over-spending on a term organic rank already wins. In Italy you're barely spending in your most efficient market. Both are easy money.
In the UK, pull budget off the cannibalising broad "creatine" term and redirect it to the under-bid winners the engine flags — "vegan creatine", "creatine 1kg", "creatine gummies" — all converting well but sitting at a sliver of impression share. In Italy, simply spend more: it already runs at UK-level efficiency on a rounding-error budget.
Combined, the ad fixes alone recover several hundred pounds a month in wasted spend — before the women's-health upside, which grows the top line rather than just plugging the leak.
Then the growth move: women's-health A+ across all five markets, and the backend keywords to match. The leak fixes pay for themselves in a month; the audience play is what makes the listing bigger.
Every ASIN, every market — where the ad spend leaks, and the audience you're missing. On your authorised data, in your own cloud.