Gradient boosting: how Bosch grew share without breaking relevance

Boosting sponsored products proportional to their organic relevance lifted Bosch's share-of-voice, clicks and sales — and improved average click position — without forcing fixed ad slots or hurting the customer experience.

• +36% Share of Voice
• +121% Share of Clicks
• +11.8% Share of Sales
• 11.4 → 9.6 Avg click position (faster)

Traditional retail media monetises a handful of fixed sponsored slots at the top of search. That caps supplier participation and — when bids win over relevance — degrades the customer experience for everyone downstream.

Gradient boosting works differently. Sponsored items are lifted proportionally to where they already rank in the organic, personalized relevance curve. A product that's organically rank 6 might surface at rank 3; a product at rank 14 might nudge to rank 9; a product at rank 55 stays buried. The shape of the relevance curve is preserved — just nudged.

Bosch ran gradient-boosted campaigns across the retailer's search results. Share of Voice climbed +36%, Share of Clicks +121% and Share of Sales +11.8% — with average click position improving from 11.4 to 9.6. Customers reached boosted Bosch products faster, not force-fed them.

The strategic point: retail media stops being a slot-rationing problem and becomes a relevance-shaped lift curve where many more suppliers can participate at once — without breaking the substrate that makes the whole system convert.

Boosting sponsored products proportional to their place in organic relevance does two things: it preserves the best customer experience, and it allows a cambrian explosion of supplier participation in retail media without limiting to fixed slots. — Particular Audience, Gradient Boosting briefing