QuidMarket is an FCA-authorised direct lender running broad match campaigns in one of the most expensive and most scrutinised auctions in UK search. Absolute Digital Media rebuilt the account around intent and measured it through to funded loans rather than form fills.
Absolute Digital Media's PPC campaign for QuidMarket delivered +98% conversion value (the value of loans funded), +323% return on ad spend (three months), +52% total conversions (three months) and 163 Semrush tracked UK paid keywords at peak (from 13).
QuidMarket is a direct lender of short-term loans to UK consumers. It is the trading name of Stagemount Limited, authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority, and since November 2024 it has been part of Propel Holdings Inc., the Toronto-listed consumer credit group, which acquired the business for US$71 million. QuidMarket has been lending since 2011 and operates from Nottingham.
It lends its own money rather than broking applications to a panel, and reviews every application manually. That distinction matters commercially, because a direct lender carries the cost of every application it receives whether or not the applicant passes affordability checks, which makes the quality of paid traffic a balance sheet issue rather than a reporting one.
Absolute Digital Media ran QuidMarket’s paid search for around three years alongside the SEO programme for the same brand. This page covers the three-month optimisation window in which the account was rebuilt.
Performance movements are reported as percentages against the account’s own performance at the start of the three-month window; absolute spend, conversion, value and return figures are not published for this account. Conversion value is the value of loans funded, traced to the originating click, not application volume. Derived figures (cost per acquisition down roughly two thirds, value per conversion up roughly 30%, spend down roughly 53%) are arithmetic from the three reported movements and assume all three are measured over the same period on the same basis. Semrush figures are the UK database’s modelled estimates of paid keyword coverage and traffic, verified August 2026; the index observes ads in search results and cannot see spend, so it is used as third-party evidence of the account’s expansion in visibility, not as a count of visits or a measure of budget.
Integrated Agency of the Year - SilverEuropean Agency Awards 2026
Best Use of Search B2C (PPC) Small (The Swallow Co.)European Search Awards 2026
Standout B2C Ecommerce Website of the Year (Stelrad)UK Digital Excellence Awards 2026
Best Integrated Paid Media CampaignUK Paid Media Awards 2026
Best New Business CampaignUK Agency Awards 2025
Best Use Of Search (Retail/Ecommerce) - SEOUK Search Awards 2024Integrated Agency of the Year - SilverEuropean Agency Awards 2026Best Use of Search B2C (PPC) Small (The Swallow Co.)European Search Awards 2026Standout B2C Ecommerce Website of the Year (Stelrad)UK Digital Excellence Awards 2026Best Integrated Paid Media CampaignUK Paid Media Awards 2026Best New Business CampaignUK Agency Awards 2025Best Use Of Search (Retail/Ecommerce) - SEOUK Search Awards 2024 
A custom reporting dashboard combining Google Analytics and Google Ads data traced each campaign from initial click through to funded loan, with conversion value set to the value of loans funded. That gave the account a true conversion definition to optimise towards. Optimising to application volume is the default, it is what the platform reports natively, and in direct lending it actively rewards traffic the business cannot serve. Every improvement made after this point depended on measuring the right thing first.
Campaigns were rebuilt as dedicated structures for each stage of the user journey, from information-seeking through to application, with keywords grouped into thematic intent-based clusters rather than by search volume. That allowed budget to follow intent rather than traffic. Consolidating into fewer, broader campaigns to let automation find the performance would have given the algorithm contradictory signals, because a structure that mixes research-stage and application-stage queries cannot tell it which is which.
The account moved from manual cost per click to automated bidding using real-time signals across user behaviour, device, location and time of day. In a high-cost auction, the difference between a bid set once and a bid set per impression is the entire margin. Manual bidding is defensible when conversion data is thin; once funded-loan tracking was in place the account had a clean signal to give the algorithm, and withholding it would have been the more expensive choice.
A full historical search query audit identified terms that had converted in previous activity, which became the basis for a long-tail keyword portfolio and a comprehensive negative keyword list rather than starting from keyword research tools. The account’s own three-year history contained better evidence about what converted for this specific lender than any third-party volume estimate, and it was going unused.
Tiffany set the strategy, specified the funded-loan attribution the account was rebuilt around, ran the historical search query audit, restructured the campaigns by intent stage, migrated the account from manual to automated bidding and ran the weekly optimisation that moved budget towards the terms producing funded loans.
The application journey from ad click to submitted form was reviewed and refined so the higher-quality traffic the restructured account was buying converted at the rate it should. Conversion rate work on a lender’s landing pages sits inside the same regulatory frame as the ads, and the required information had to be presented clearly at every step rather than minimised.
Supported by sitelinks, callouts and structured snippets. In consumer credit the constraint is the point: ads that carry required information clearly outperform ads that treat it as an obligation, because the audience is assessing whether the lender is legitimate.
Live data moved budget continuously towards the terms producing funded loans and away from those that were not, with in-market audience overlays and remarketing reaching people actively considering borrowing.
Tiffany Shears leads the PPC department at Absolute Digital Media, running paid media across Google Ads, Microsoft Ads, Meta and TikTok for lead generation and eCommerce clients. She specialises in…
Edwina Lambourdiere is a Senior PPC Account Manager at Absolute Digital Media, running paid media accounts across Google Ads, Microsoft Advertising, LinkedIn Ads and Meta Ads for UK and international…
Alex is Head of Content at Absolute Digital Media, overseeing content production and ideation for regulated-sector clients in iGaming, finance, and healthcare. He specialises in creating content that performs reliably…
Shane Fox is Lead Designer at Absolute Digital Media, responsible for the agency’s creative output and for the design of everything a client actually sees: campaign creative, brand systems, landing…
Three months of optimisation moved the account from volatile to predictable. Total conversions rose 52%, conversion value rose 98% and return on ad spend rose 323%.
The gap between the conversion figure and the value figure is where the work shows. Conversions grew by half while the value of those conversions nearly doubled, so each conversion was worth around 30% more than before, which means the account stopped buying applications and started buying loans it could fund. The return figure says the rest: a 323% rise in return on ad spend against a 98% rise in value implies the account produced that value on roughly half the spend, with cost per acquisition falling by roughly two thirds, assessed against funding outcomes rather than submission counts. Week-over-week performance became consistent enough to scale from, which for a lender is the difference between a channel and an experiment.
The scaling in visibility is independently recorded. Semrush’s UK index shows the account moving from a narrow, cautious position of 13 tracked paid keywords to a peak of 163, and settling since at roughly ten to fifteen times its starting visibility.
| Measure | Reported | Multiple | Basis |
|---|---|---|---|
| Conversion value (loans funded) | +98% | 1.98x | Reported |
| Return on ad spend | +323% | 4.23x | Reported |
| Total conversions | +52% | 1.52x | Reported |
| Value per conversion | roughly +30% | 1.30x | Derived: value ÷ conversions |
| Spend | roughly −53% | 0.47x | Derived: value ÷ return on ad spend |
| Cost per acquisition | roughly −69% | 0.31x | Derived: spend ÷ conversions |
Semrush UK index, paid keywords and estimated paid traffic by month: November 2025 13 / 581; December 38 / 3,775; January 2026 86 / 4,998; February 163 / 12,528; March 136 / 13,510; April 58 / 5,496; May 62 / 6,607; June 99 / 6,437; July 124 / 8,831. Semrush estimates are modelled from the ads it observes in search results and cannot see spend or actual clicks, so the traffic column is a visibility index rather than a visit count.
It's fantastic to be partnered with such a forward-thinking agency. We've already achieved huge success across SEO and PPC and are excited to see what comes next. The financial industry can be tough to crack, but the team's knowledge is second to none. We've made progress at a pace we never thought possible.
At the funded loan, not the application. Direct lenders decline a proportion of applicants, so an account optimised towards form submissions will be trained to find more of the applications the business cannot serve. Connecting Google Ads to analytics and to the lender’s own funding outcome, so that conversion value is the value of loans funded, gives the account a conversion definition worth optimising towards.
Yes, with conditions. Google requires UK financial services advertisers to be FCA-authorised and verified before ads can run, and ad content sits under the FCA’s financial promotions rules for consumer credit. Those requirements shape what can be said in an ad, and presenting required information clearly tends to improve performance rather than hinder it, because the audience is assessing legitimacy.
Once the conversion signal is clean, yes. Automated bidding adjusts per impression using behavioural, device, location and time signals that manual bidding cannot replicate, which matters most in expensive auctions. Migrating before the conversion definition is correct simply automates the wrong objective at greater speed.
Because the traffic mix improved. QuidMarket’s conversions rose 52% while conversion value, measured as the value of loans funded, rose 98%, which means each conversion was worth around 30% more on average than before. That gap is the clearest available evidence that an account has shifted from buying applications to buying customers it can serve.
Structure and measurement, not bids. Restructuring around intent stage, correcting the conversion definition and building a comprehensive negative keyword list address why budget is being wasted. Bid adjustments address how much you pay for the waste.
It is usually the most valuable input available. A mature account holds a record of which specific queries produced customers for your proposition, which external keyword tools cannot provide. Auditing it before rebuilding produces a stronger long-tail portfolio and a far better negative keyword list.
QuidMarket’s account moved from volatile to predictable inside three months, with conversion value up 98% and return on ad spend up 323% at the end of that window. The first weeks go on measurement and structure, which produce nothing visible in the reports; the performance movement follows once automated bidding has a clean signal to learn from.
Against funded outcomes and return on ad spend, not clicks or applications. For QuidMarket the measures were conversion value, which rose 98%, and return on ad spend, which rose 323%, both assessed against loans the business could actually fund.
If your paid media is reporting healthy conversion volume that your underwriting team is declining, the conversation worth having is about where your account stops measuring.
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