Ad Spend Drop
Spot quiet ad pullbacks; sherlock's Ad Spend Drop case flags products where ad spend fell ≥10% week-over-week, pulling traffic and revenue with it.
Ad Spend Drop is one of Sherlock's investigation cases. It looks for products where ad delivery quietly stepped down week-over-week: the kind of slowdown that's easy to miss until weekly revenue dips. Use this page to find the biggest pullbacks, confirm the cause, and decide whether to relaunch campaigns or rebudget elsewhere.
What's on the page
At the top:
- The rule: "Products where ad spend fell ≥10% WoW, pulling traffic and revenue down with it."
- Total opportunity: The combined revenue at stake across every flagged product.
- Refresh: Re-run the check with the latest data.
Below, the table:
| Column | What it means |
|---|---|
| Product | Image, title, marketplace flag, ASIN (with copy icon), and brand |
| Revenue drop | Week-over-week revenue change |
| Traffic drop | Week-over-week traffic (sessions) change |
| Ad spend drop | Week-over-week ad spend change |
| Prev week traffic | Sessions in the previous week, for context |
| Opportunity | Estimated revenue you could recover by restoring ad delivery |
The list is sorted by Opportunity, biggest first.
How to read a row
Revenue drop: –56.0% · Traffic drop: –55.2% · Ad spend drop: –46.7% · Prev week traffic: 8,403 · Opportunity: $15,209
It tells you:
- Last week you spent ~47% less on this product's ads.
- Traffic fell almost in lockstep (−55%), and revenue followed (−56%).
- The previous week had 8,403 sessions, so this isn't a small, low-volume item.
- If you restore ad delivery to roughly where it was, Sherlock estimates ~$15k in recoverable revenue.
Open the product investigation
Click any row to open the same investigation view used by Signals (Overview, Timeline, Metrics).
For ad spend drops, the most useful places to look:
- The Overview explanation, which usually pinpoints whether the drop came from a budget cap, lost auction, or paused campaign.
- The Metrics heatmap → Advertising group. Red cells across Ad spend, Ad clicks, and Ad impressions confirm the pullback.
- The Timeline tab. Recent product or campaign changes show up here.
What to do about it
- Budget hit. Daily budget capped out before peak hours. Raise it or shift it.
- Lost auctions. Bids no longer competitive. Increase bids on the top-performing keywords.
- Paused or archived ad group. Someone (or auto-rule) turned it off.
- Auto-targeting drift. SP Auto stopped matching the right queries. Review the targeting report.
Tips
- Cross-check with Zombie Ad Spend: If the same product is wasting on some keywords and under-spending on others, the issue is a campaign-level imbalance.
- Pay attention to Prev week traffic: A 70% drop on a 200-session item is less urgent than a 30% drop on a 10,000-session hero.
Where to go next
What is Sherlock
Overview of Sherlock's investigations, cases, and how it works.
Signals
Your daily filterable list of every meaningful product movement.
Zombie Ad Spend
Find ad groups spending without conversions.
Return Anomalies
Catch return rate spikes early.
Price CVR Drop
Catch the 'priced ourselves out' pattern.
FBA Stockout
React fast when FBA goes empty.
Buy Box Loss
Find listings priced off the Buy Box.