When to pause spend: diagnosing a broken funnel fast

Short answer: Pause or throttle when tracking is wrong, the site is down, stock is gone, or CPA blows past sustainable margins—fix the leak before you fund it.

“Always on” is a strategy; blind always on is negligence.

Triage order

• Site health and forms/checkout—5-minute real tests.
• Tracking fires—Tag assistant, conversion tests.
• Recent changes—landing swaps, price moves, negative keyword blunders.

Partial pauses

Often better than account-wide stops: exclude bad geos, devices, or audiences while you investigate.

Post-mortem

Document root cause and add monitoring—repeat failures indicate process gaps, not bad luck.

Frequently asked questions