The campaign has sales. Most of the targets inside it are losing money. Both thi
By Elizabeth Greene · October 12, 2026 · Curated by George's Blog
The campaign has sales.
Most of the targets inside it are losing money.
Both things are true at the same time, and the campaign-level number is the one you're looking at.
Everybody knows how to cut a bleeder.
No conversions, high spend, easy call, gone.
That part people do.
The layer underneath it is the one almost nobody pulls.
Go to your search term report and filter for the targets with a lot of clicks, a lot of spend, and one or two orders.
Not zero. One or two.
Then look at the ACoS on those.
I've seen 200%, and I've seen 300%.
And those don't get paused, because technically they convert.
Somebody sold something on that term once.
So it stays live, and it keeps taking clicks, and the campaign total still looks okay because a few good targets underneath are carrying it.
Think about what it would actually take to fix one of those.
You're trying to walk a 300% ACoS down to 30.
That's a lot of testing and a lot of spend on a term where the conversion rate is already telling you the shopper isn't there.
By the time you got it anywhere near 30 you'd barely be getting orders at all.
So what are you buying, exactly?
Pause them and negative them.
They're not worth the testing budget.
Go look at your own account right now: how many targets do you have sitting at one order and triple-digit ACoS?