I was on a call with a seller who was genuinely proud of his account. And he had
By michael-erickson-facchin ยท September 16, 2026 ยท Curated by George's Blog
I was on a call with a seller who was genuinely proud of his account. And he had reason to be.
22% ACoS. Held steady for five months straight. Barely moved.
He pulled up the chart to show me. Flat line, right where he wanted it.
Then he said the thing that made me sit up:
"So why does it feel like we're not growing?"
We went and pulled total sales. Ad sales, organic sales, together. Then divided his ad spend by that number.
His TACoS had gone from 16% to 25% over the same five months.
He stared at it for a while.
Here's what that gap means, and it took me an embarrassingly long time to internalize it myself:
๐๐๐จ๐ ๐จ๐ง๐ฅ๐ฒ ๐ค๐ง๐จ๐ฐ๐ฌ ๐๐๐จ๐ฎ๐ญ ๐ฌ๐๐ฅ๐๐ฌ ๐ญ๐ก๐๐ญ ๐๐๐ฌ ๐ญ๐จ๐ฎ๐๐ก๐๐. It's a closed loop. Ads in, attributed sales out, ratio between them. It can look perfect while the rest of your business quietly hollows out.
๐๐๐๐จ๐ ๐ฌ๐๐๐ฌ ๐๐ฏ๐๐ซ๐ฒ๐ญ๐ก๐ข๐ง๐ . Ad spend against ๐๐๐ revenue. Which means it answers the only question that actually matters is this spend building something, or renting it?
His organic sales had been sliding for months. The ads were covering the gap so cleanly that his ACoS never flinched. He was spending more and more to stand still, and the metric he trusted most was the one hiding it from him.
Two accounts can hold an identical ACoS for a year. One's TACoS drops from 18% to 11% โ ad spend buying rank, rank producing free sales, each dollar of revenue cheaper than the last. The other's climbs from 18% to 24% revenue that exists only while the ads run.
Same number on the report. Opposite businesses.
I think about that call a lot.
The metric everybody watches is the one that can be perfect while you lose.