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Underpromoted products: products that sell more than their ads
Nexus finds products that bring in a larger share of your product revenue than of your ad spend, and products that sell well with no ad at all. They appear as findings on Insights > Top findings.
Problem and intended user
The media buyer (the person who runs your paid ads) spends most of the budget on a few products. Other products keep selling with little or no ad support. The ecommerce manager (the person who runs the store) wants to know which of those deserve an ad. Without that view, budget keeps following the same products, and products that could grow with more reach stay unadvertised.
Current workflow
Without Nexus, you export ad spend by ad from Meta Ads Manager and product sales from Shopify admin reports. You work out which product each ad promotes, split the spend of ads that show several products, and add it up per product in a spreadsheet. You then compare each product's share of spend with its share of revenue, and check which products have no ad at all.
Prerequisites
- A connected Meta or Google Ads account that has synced ad spend.
- Ads linked to products. Nexus links an ad to a product from the product page the ad sends people to. You can add a link by hand on the ad's detail with Link Product.
- Scored products. Nexus scores your products from your order and customer data.
- Enough history and spend. A store with little linked spend, few selling products or a recent ad connection gets no "little of your ad spend" finding.
How Nexus works
Nexus uses fixed rules, not AI, to pick the products. It looks at a recent stretch of whole days, and each card names the dates it covers.
- Nexus adds up the ad spend of every ad linked to a product. When one ad shows several products, Nexus splits its spend equally between them.
- For each product, Nexus compares its share of your product revenue with its share of the spend that Nexus could link to a product.
- A product with a live ad whose share of spend is well below its share of revenue or of orders gets the finding "sells well but gets little of your ad spend".
- A product that sells well with no live ad gets one of three findings: it had ads before, it has never been advertised, or Nexus cannot link any ad to it. A Performance Max asset group that is on, in a campaign that is on, and sends people to the product's page, on your store's main domain or its myshopify.com address, counts as a live ad for that product. One that is paused or removed, or that sits in a campaign that is off, counts as an ad it had before, as long as it showed ads within the last year.
- Nexus skips products it cannot judge fairly: new products, products with few orders and products that lose money on each sale. For the "sells well but gets little of your ad spend" finding, it also skips products customers often return.
- Nexus makes a finding only for a product that earns at least 1% of your product revenue over those dates, so a product with a smaller share gets none. It shows up to 10 findings at a time, the products with the largest share of revenue first.
When too little of your ad spend is linked to products, Nexus keeps the product findings but says only what it can check: that none of your ads link to the product. Most of your spend then goes to pages that are not about one product, such as your homepage or Performance Max, and some of those ads may still promote it. Nexus also shows one more finding that asks you to link the ads that promote a single product.
Nothing runs until you act. The finding only links to the page where you act.
Start an ad from a finding
- Open Insights > Top findings.
- On a product finding, select Create an ad for this product, or Create a dedicated ad on a "little of your ad spend" finding. The Creative Wizard opens with the product selected.
- Choose an angle and the other inputs.
WARNING
When your store's plan uses credits, the cost appears next to Generate creatives before you press it.
- Select Generate creatives.
If the product has no photo, the Creative Wizard says so and does not generate. Add a product photo in Shopify, or choose another product.
Look at a product's ads first
On a "little of your ad spend" finding, select See this product's ads. Ad performance opens in a new tab, grouped By product, on the dates the finding covers, with the product's row highlighted.
Link your ads to products
On the finding that asks you to link your ads, select See ads with no linked product. Ad performance opens in a new tab, grouped By product, on the Unclassified row. Open an ad that promotes one product and use Link Product to link it to that product. Leave brand and homepage ads that sell your whole range unlinked.
Exact output
Each finding is a card on Top findings.
In each title, Product name stands for the name of your product.
| Card title | What it means | Links on the card |
|---|---|---|
"Product name sells well but gets little of your ad spend" | The product has a live ad, but its share of spend is well below its share of revenue or of orders. | Create a dedicated ad, See this product's ads |
"Product name sells well and has no live ads" | The product was advertised before, and no ad for it is live now. | Create an ad for this product |
"Product name sells well and has never been advertised" | No ad has ever been linked to the product. | Create an ad for this product |
"Product name sells well with no ad we can link to it" | Some of your ad spend is not linked to any product, so Nexus cannot tell whether an ad promotes this product. | Create an ad for this product |
"Product name sells well, but none of your ads link to it" | Most of your ad spend is not linked to products. None of your ads link to this one, but an ad on your homepage or in Performance Max may still promote it. | Create an ad for this product |
"Product name sells well, but its linked ads have stopped" | Most of your ad spend is not linked to products. An ad linked to this product ran before, and none has been live since the date in the description. | Create an ad for this product |
| "Most of your ad spend is not linked to products" | Too little of your ad spend is linked to products to compare spend between them. It appears next to the product findings. | See ads with no linked product |
The description under the title gives the product's share of your product sales and orders over the dates the card covers and, on a "little of your ad spend" finding, its share of the ad spend Nexus can link to products.
What to do with it
| What you see | Decision or action | Owner |
|---|---|---|
| A "little of your ad spend" finding | Check the product's ads, then make a dedicated ad or move budget to the product's ads in Meta Ads Manager | media buyer |
| A "no live ads" or "never advertised" finding | Make an ad for the product with Create an ad for this product | creative strategist |
| A "no ad we can link" or "none of your ads link to it" finding | Check whether an ad already promotes the product. If one does, link it; if none does, make one | media buyer |
| The "link your ads" finding | Link each ad that promotes a single product under Ad performance, and leave brand and homepage ads unlinked | media buyer |
Expected value and measurement
More of your budget can reach products that already sell. To check, open Ad performance, grouped By product, and compare the product's spend and return on ad spend before and after its new ad. On the product's page under Insights > Products, compare its revenue over the same periods. Other changes in the same weeks, such as a sale or a price change, affect the same numbers, so the effect of one ad cannot be isolated.
Limitations and exceptions
- Spend counts for a product only when the ad links to that product. Google Shopping and Performance Max ads usually do not link to one product, so their spend counts for no product.
- Nexus splits the spend of an ad that shows several products equally between them. The real split can differ.
- An ad that Nexus cannot link to a product does not count for any product. When much of your spend is not linked, Nexus shows the "link your ads" finding and no "little of your ad spend" finding. Product findings then say only that none of your ads link to the product.
- A Performance Max asset group counts as a live ad for a product only when it sends people to that product's page on your store's main domain or its myshopify.com address. Its spend still counts for no product. A paused or removed asset group that sends people to the product's page counts as an earlier ad only when it showed ads in the last 365 days, and the date in the finding is the last day it did.
- Revenue and spend cover nearly the same days, but their start and end can differ slightly, because sales and ad spend are counted on different day boundaries.
- A product that earns less than 1% of your product revenue gets no finding, even when it has no ad. A store shows at most 10 of these findings at once.
- Nexus does not recommend a budget. The decision stays with you.
- A finding stays open while the gap stays. It closes by itself when the product gets a live ad or enough spend, or when nobody acts on it for some weeks. A finding you moved to In Todo or In Progress never closes by itself.
- When your ad data is out of date or your products have not been scored recently, Nexus shows no new findings of this kind. If the data stays out of date, the open findings close after a while too.
- In Demo Mode the cards are sample data. The shares are worked out over a small set of sample products.