Why (and when) you shouldn’t remove an “underperforming” campaign

A while ago, we were reviewing a brand’s YouTube Ads campaign.

On the Google dashboard, it showed a 1.5X ROAS. Not great.

But when we dug deeper into how YouTube influenced the rest of their marketing mix, things looked very different.

On Shopify, the campaign was driving a 3.75X ROAS.

That’s a massive difference. More than double what Google reports.

But the impact of YouTube didn’t stop there.

When we factored in Amazon sales uplift, it jumped to a 5.25X ROAS.

What looked like a weak campaign… suddenly turned into one of their best.

From a 1.5 in ROAS all the way up to 5.25.

That’s a 233% jump compared to what the brand initially thought.

Same campaign, same dollars spent, but completely different outcome.

This is the tricky part about advertising.

It’s so easy to misjudge a campaign based on what the platform shows you.

A YouTube campaign might look like it’s underperforming… while it’s printing profit behind the scenes.

A PMax campaign might look like it’s crushing it… but most of those sales are just easy brand traffic.

I’ve seen many inexperienced media buyers make the wrong decisions because of this.

They end up scaling the wrong campaigns or cutting the right ones.

When that happens, you’re not just losing profit in the short term.

You’re also cutting off your chance to scale further.

Which is why you need to look deeper into what the data says.

In our agency, we train the team to always do two things:

1. Step back to see the bigger impact of a campaign

2. Zoom in to uncover why the numbers are showing up the way they do

That way, we can have all the intel available to make the most informed decision possible.

You’ve probably heard the advice “double down on winners, cut the losers.”

It’s a good rule of thumb, but I believe there’s a deeper layer there.

A great advertiser doesn’t just cut a campaign that’s underperforming

They try to find why it’s not working and if it can be fixed before pulling the plug.

This is critical early on, but it becomes non-negotiable if you want to scale to big levels in Google Ads

Since, after all, this is a skill that allows you to “stretch” the value of every dollar you spend.

And you'll be able to pay more to acquire each customer than most brands could.

Jackson

Founder and CEO of Echelonn

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