When to stop a campaign that isn't selling: the stop threshold rule

Most campaigns don't fail because the product is wrong. They fail because nobody decided upfront how much to spend and when to stop. You watch spend go up, hope for a sale tomorrow, add more budget. The result is always the same: money spent and nothing learned.

The fix is easy to state and hard to follow: turn every campaign into a test, with a stop rule written down before you launch.

Why you need a rule set in advance

Once a campaign is live, every decision is emotional. You just uploaded the creatives, you spent days on them, and stopping feels like failure. That is why the rule has to be set with a clear head, before you spend the first euro.

A good stop rule has three traits:

• it is a number, not a feeling ("if I spend €45 with no sales, I stop");
• it is tied to your margin, not to the budget you feel comfortable spending;
• it always leads to a decision: continue, change something, or shut it down.

How to calculate the threshold from your margin

The starting point is your real margin per sale: what you keep from a sale after product cost, shipping and store fees.

A widely used rule of thumb is: stop if you spend twice the margin of one sale without selling anything. It is not a universal law, but it is a good starting point: it gives you enough spend to collect some data without burning through your budget.

An example:

• selling price plus shipping: €28.50;
• costs (product, shipping, fees): €16.93;
• real margin per sale: €11.57.

Twice the margin is about €23. If you want to give the test more room, you can raise the threshold, but you have to decide that upfront and write it down.

Minimum return: the second threshold

Sales are coming in, but is the campaign actually worth it? This is where the minimum return on ad spend comes in: the ratio of revenue to spend below which you lose money.

Here is how to calculate it: revenue per sale divided by margin per sale. With the numbers above, €28.50 divided by €11.57 is about 2.46. That means for every euro you spend on ads, you need to bring in at least €2.46 to avoid a loss.

If the return stays below this threshold after a reasonable number of sales, the campaign is not sustainable as it stands: change it or shut it down.

The three possible decisions

At the end of every test, whether you hit the threshold or reached the end date, pick one of three paths:

1. Continue: cost per sale is below your margin and the return is above the minimum. You can increase the budget gradually.
2. Change: there are signals (clicks, add-to-carts, a few sales) but the numbers don't add up. Change one thing at a time: the audience, the creative or the price.
3. Stop: no signals, threshold exceeded. Shut it down without regrets and write down what you learned.

That last part matters most. One line written at the end of every test ("audience too broad", "photos unclear") is worth more than any course.

Key takeaways

• Set your maximum budget and stop threshold before you launch.
• Calculate the threshold from your real margin, not from your budget.
• Use the minimum return to tell whether your sales are worth it.
• End every test with a decision and one line about what you learned.