Which campaigns should I pause?
Not every campaign deserves to keep running. Some are costing you money with nothing to show for it. The tricky part is identifying which ones, because the platforms won't volunteer that information.
The short answer
Pause campaigns where the cost per acquisition is above your target, conversions are declining, or the platform-reported revenue does not match your books. The challenge is that each ad platform will keep telling you things are going well even when they are not. You need to cross-reference their data with your accounting software to find the real underperformers.
Why bad campaigns keep running longer than they should
You launched a TikTok awareness campaign three months ago. TikTok says it generated 840 conversions at $12 each. Sounds reasonable. But when you check your revenue for those three months, it barely moved. The “conversions” TikTok counted were mostly page views or add-to-carts, not actual purchases.
Meanwhile, that campaign spent $2,400. Every month it ran was another $800 that could have gone to a campaign that actually drives revenue. The problem is that the platform made it look like it was working. You would need to dig into the conversion settings, compare against your books, and do the math yourself to see the truth.
Most businesses have at least one campaign that should have been paused months ago. The cost of leaving it running is not just the wasted spend. It is the opportunity cost of not putting that money somewhere better.
Four warning signs that a campaign should be paused
- CPA above your break-even point. If it costs you $80 to acquire a customer through a campaign and your average order value is $65, you are losing money on every conversion. Even if the platform shows a positive ROAS, the math does not work.
- Spend increasing, conversions flat or declining. If spend went up 20% over three months but conversions stayed the same, the campaign is hitting audience fatigue. Throwing more money at it will not fix this.
- Platform revenue claims that do not match your books. The platform says the campaign generated $15,000 in revenue. Your P&L shows total revenue for the month was $42,000. When you add up all campaign claims across all platforms, they total $68,000. Something is very wrong.
- No clear attribution path.If you cannot reasonably connect a campaign to actual customer purchases, even roughly, the campaign's reported performance is not trustworthy enough to justify continued spend.
How to find which campaigns to pause across your ad platforms (6 steps)
- 1Export 3 months of campaign data from each platform
In Google Ads, go to Campaigns, set the date range to the last 3 months, and download the report. In Meta Ads Manager, go to Campaigns, set the same date range, and export. Include spend, conversions, CPA, and conversion value columns.
- 2Build a master spreadsheet with trend columns
For each campaign, create rows for Month 1, Month 2, and Month 3. Include Spend, Conversions, CPA, and Platform-Reported Revenue. Add a column for MoM change in CPA so you can see the trend at a glance.
- 3Pull your actual revenue from QuickBooks or Xero
Run a P&L for each of the 3 months. Note total revenue per month. Compare against the sum of all platform-reported revenue to see the overcount.
- 4Calculate adjusted ROAS for each campaign
Apply the overcount ratio to each campaign's claimed revenue. If platforms collectively overclaim by 60%, multiply each campaign's revenue by 0.40. Recalculate ROAS using the adjusted number.
- 5Flag campaigns below your thresholds
Highlight campaigns where: adjusted ROAS is below 1.0 (losing money), CPA increased more than 20% over 3 months, or conversions declined while spend stayed flat or increased.
- 6Decide: pause, restructure, or watch
Campaigns with adjusted ROAS below 1.0 should be paused immediately. Campaigns with rising CPA but still positive ROAS may benefit from creative refresh or audience changes. Tag these as “watch” and check again next month.
How to cross-reference pause decisions with your books
Before pausing a campaign, verify one more thing in your accounting data:
- Check if revenue drops after pausing. If you paused a similar campaign before, look at your P&L for the following month. Did revenue dip? If it did, the campaign was driving more value than the adjusted ROAS suggested (possibly through brand awareness that is hard to measure).
- Calculate the savings. Add up the monthly spend of campaigns you plan to pause. That amount drops straight to your bottom line if you do not reallocate it. Check your P&L to see what that would do to your net margin.
What it takes to audit campaigns for pausing every month
The full audit takes about an hour, same as the scaling analysis. You need multi-month data from every platform, P&L data from accounting, and a spreadsheet to calculate adjusted metrics and trends.
The painful truth is that most businesses never formally audit campaigns for pausing. They let underperformers run until someone notices the credit card bill seems high, or until the end of a quarter when they finally look at the numbers.
Total time: about 1 hour per month. Requires platform exports, accounting data, trend analysis, and careful judgment. Most businesses only do this reactively.
Or let Bottomline flag the campaigns wasting your money
Bottomline connects to your ad platforms and accounting software. It automatically compares platform-reported performance against verified revenue, tracks CPA trends over time, and flags campaigns that should be paused.
Adjusted ROAS 0.8x, CPA rising 3 months straight
Adjusted ROAS 1.1x, conversions down 35% MoM
Adjusted ROAS 0.6x, high impression share but zero verified purchases
No spreadsheets. No guessing. Every month, Bottomline tells you exactly which campaigns are underperforming against real financial data and how much you would save by pausing them.