You wake up, check your dashboards, and your stomach drops. Yesterday your campaigns were profitable. Today they’re down 30%. CPAs doubled. ROAS tanked. Your first instinct is to panic and start changing everything.
Kyle has a different approach. After managing $15M+ in ad spend, he’s seen every type of performance crash. His insight: “It doesn’t typically drop 30% without something breaking. If ads are working, they’re going to continue to work. Maybe you’ll have fluctuations daily, just like the stock market, but you’re looking at general trends. So typically something broke when you drop 30% plus.”
The key is systematic diagnosis. When campaigns crash, something specific broke in your system. Your job is finding what broke before making any optimization decisions.
Kyle’s 5-Step Emergency Diagnostic
Work through these five categories in order. Don’t skip ahead. The issue is usually hiding in the first three steps.
Step 1: Verify Tracking Issues
- Is the pixel still firing? (Check via Pixel Helper or Events Manager)
- Are conversion events recording? (Compare event count to yesterday)
- Any site updates or deployments in last 48 hours?
- UTM parameters still working correctly?
- Tag Manager changes or breaks?
- Server-side tracking still connected?
Step 2: Check Site and Offer Changes
- Inventory issues? (Out of stock on key products)
- Pricing changes? (Prices went up, shipping costs changed)
- Checkout broken? (Test the complete purchase flow)
- Form submission working? (Test lead capture forms)
- Page speed degraded? (Run PageSpeed Insights)
- Promo codes expired? (Check active offers in ads vs. site)
Step 3: Audit Auction Conditions
- CPM spikes in your account? (Compare to last week)
- Seasonal factors? (Holidays, industry events)
- Policy violations? (Check for disapproved ads)
- Creative rejections? (Any ads flagged or removed)
- Competitor activity? (Did someone flood the market)
- Platform issues? (Check status.facebook.com or Google Ads status)
Step 4: Analyze Creative Performance
- Frequency rates climbing? (Above 3-4 is concerning)
- Click-through rates declining? (Compare to last week)
- Hook rates dropping? (First 3 seconds of video)
- Engagement rates falling? (Likes, comments, shares down)
- Search impression share loss? (Google Ads specific)
Step 5: Review Budget and Pacing
- Budget caps accidentally set? (Daily or lifetime limits)
- Learning phase resets? (Recent changes caused re-learning)
- Pacing issues? (Spending too fast or too slow)
- Feed problems? (Product catalog errors)
- Campaign scheduling? (Accidentally paused or limited hours)
- Payment method? (Billing issues limiting delivery)
Click here to get Kyle’s Emergency Drop checklist.
How to Use This Checklist
When to use it: Anytime performance drops 20%+ overnight or campaigns suddenly stop delivering results.
How to work through it:
- Start at Step 1 and work sequentially
- Check every item in each category before moving to the next
- Document what you check and what you find
- Don’t make changes until you identify the root cause
Why this order matters: Steps are arranged by probability. Tracking issues cause more sudden drops than creative fatigue. Work from most likely to least likely causes.
What not to do:
- Don’t start changing bids, budgets, or creative immediately
- Don’t pause everything in panic
- Don’t make multiple changes simultaneously
- Don’t assume you know the issue without checking
Once you identify what broke, fix that specific thing. Give it 24-48 hours to stabilize before making additional optimizations.
Print this checklist and keep it somewhere accessible. When performance crashes, pull it out and work through systematically. Most issues are found in the first three steps. Track what you find each time you use this checklist. Over time, you’ll develop pattern recognition for your specific accounts and know where to look first.
For more, watch the full Q&A interview with Kyle here.
