DanGuitar.dk is a well-established online store based in Grenaa, Denmark, specializing in musical instruments and equipment since 2002. With a strong digital presence as well as an impressive showroom in Grenaa, they offer a wide range of products including guitars, basses, drums, keyboards, and pro audio gear.
They partner with Obsidian, an international digital marketing agency founded in Denmark in 2016. With a team of 400+ creatives, Obsidian collaborates with DanGuitar to develop and execute their marketing strategy.
The Challenge
Obsidian was helping DanGuitar make significant investments into marketing. However, lacking a comprehensive understanding of what products and initiatives were actually driving profit, they were navigating through a period where it seemed like marketing initiatives were no longer providing bottom-line value.
Limited visibility into profit was also stalling expansion. DanGuitar had plans to move into Sweden and Norway, but without an understanding of their profitability, they were hesitant to make a strong push into new markets.
Missing Tracking Data
DanGuitar relied on client-side tracking to measure conversions, but like many retailers, they were losing 20% of their conversion data due to ad blockers and failed tracking scripts.
Incomplete cost data, incorrect margins
In an industry where margins are often slim, Obsidian needed to identify DanGuitar’s most profitable product categories and develop a strategy that prioritized them. Before working with Obsidian, DanGuitar had taken a margin-based approach with a previous agency - segmenting products by high/mid/low margin, setting ROAS targets based on those margins, and launching separate campaigns.
Previously, margins were being determined based on Cost of Goods Sold (COGS) alone, not accounting for other variable costs (shipping, payment fees, discounts, packaging and handling). This resulted in too many products being labeled as high margin, despite not actually being profitable.
Obsidian needed a way to fill the gaps in DanGuitar’s tracking data, accurately determine product margins, and validate their ROAS targets with real profit insights. For that, they turned to ProfitMetrics.
The Solution
Obsidian set DanGuitar up with ProfitMetrics’ server-side tracking, and connected the missing variable costs for each product. Now they had complete conversion data, and insight into the actual Gross Profit of every product.
Improving Tracking
DanGuitar adopted ProfitMetrics’ server-side tracking. With conversions sent directly to Google Ads and Meta, they eliminated the gaps caused by client-side tracking, increasing the number of conversions tracked by 15-20%.
Revealing all the cost data with ProfitMetrics
DanGuitar integrated their cost data with ProfitMetrics. This gave them instant visibility into Gross Profit per order, enabling the creation of accurate, margin-based segments. From there, they could calculate POAS® (Profit on Ad Spend) by comparing that Gross Profit to ad spend, giving them a clear view of which product categories were truly profitable.
Connecting cost data to ProfitMetrics and gaining a complete understanding of their variable costs gave DanGuitar and Obsidian a clear view of product-level profitability. With that clarity, they could group products by true margins and set ROAS targets that aligned. POAS® was then used as a diagnostic layer, allowing them to evaluate whether campaigns that met ROAS targets were actually delivering profitable outcomes.
This gave them the confidence necessary to make informed decisions, and expand more intelligently and aggressively.
The Results
With accurate margin groupings from complete cost data, a nearly 100% tracking rate from server-side implementation, and the ability to validate ROAS targets against real profit outcomes, Obsidian had the clarity they needed to scale confidently in Denmark, and develop aggressive market entry strategies for the newer markets of Sweden and Norway
In Sweden in particular, a modest revenue lift translated into a substantial Net Profit increase, underscoring the value of profit-optimized bidding.
With these insights, and using the ProfitMetrics Real-time Dashboard for real-time analysis, Obsidian helped DanGuitar validate their ROAS targets against real profit outcomes and reallocate budget to the categories that drove the strongest margin impact.
Year-over-year results for Sep–Apr (2023–24 vs 2024–25)
- Improved Tracking Rate to ~ %100
- Denmark: +31% Revenue and +28% Net Profit
ProfitMetrics gave DanGuitar a better understanding of their profitability on ad spend, and real-time insights into the performance of every campaign. This allowed them to remain flexible and make informed changes to strategy even while the campaigns were running. They improved Net Profit, which allowed for a sustainable scale in spend as well as developing successful entry campaigns into new markets.
