This one is going to sound obvious. You'll read it and think, of course. But it'
By Mansour Norouzi · October 3, 2026 · Curated by George's Blog
This one is going to sound obvious.
You'll read it and think, of course.
But it's a trap I've seen brands fall into. More than once.
A client told us their organic sales were stagnating.
Their dashboard agreed. Organic share on their top product dropped from 51% to 40%.
So we dug in.
Organic sales on that same product went from about $65K to $145K.
More than double.
The share fell because ad sales grew even faster. Bigger pie. Smaller slice.
That's the trap. A ratio can go down while every dollar underneath goes up.
The ratio still tells you something, though.
This product ranks #1 organically for its main keywords. Some of those ad sales are probably sales organic would have caught anyway.
So we're testing it. Lower bids on the top keywords. Fewer ad hours. Less Sponsored Brands at the top of the page.
If organic picks up the slack, we found cannibalization.
If it doesn't, the ads were doing real work.
Report the dollars first. Then the ratio.
Anyone else been fooled by a percentage that was hiding growth?