Spend on ASINs that can’t convert. Pause immediately or reroute to in-stock siblings.
At a glance
Count of ASINs that have active ad spend AND zero available inventory (across all FBA / FBM warehouses). The shopper clicks your ad, lands on the product page, and sees “Currently unavailable”, you paid for the click and they bounce. The single fastest-moving fix on the dashboard, every dollar here is recovered the moment you pause.
| The formula | COUNT(ASINs) where (active_ad_spend > 0 in last 24h) AND (total_available_inventory = 0). Inventory is summed across FBA Available + FBA Inbound (treated as recoverable) + FBM On-Hand. |
| Reports API endpoint | Two: ad spend from Amazon Advertising POST /reporting/reports (per-ASIN spend); inventory from Amazon Selling Partner GET_FBA_INVENTORY_PLANNING_DATA and GET_MERCHANT_LISTINGS_ALL_DATA. Both connectors must be present for this card to render. |
| What “out-of-stock” means | Total available inventory = 0 across all fulfilment paths. An ASIN with FBA inbound but zero on-hand is still in this card (the shopper cannot buy today, even if stock arrives in 5 days). |
| ACOS vs ROAS framing | Will register as infinite ACOS / zero ROAS because the spend is recorded but no conversion is possible. |
| Attribution model | N/A, the click cannot lead to a sale. |
| Brand vs non-brand keyword scope | Both. Branded ads on OOS ASINs are especially painful (you bid to defend your brand and send the shopper away empty-handed). |
| Sponsored Products vs Brands vs Display vs DSP | All four can advertise OOS ASINs. Auto Targeting is the most common offender, auto-campaigns don’t pause OOS ASINs automatically. |
| Currency | Account currency only (the lost-spend figure shown alongside the count). |
| Amazon-only attribution gap | Not relevant; this card is about lost Amazon clicks specifically. |
| Time window | T (today). The inventory state is checked daily; an ASIN that ran out this morning shows up tonight. |
| Alert trigger | >0 ASINs. Drives sentiment_key: zero_conversion_spend. Any non-zero count fires the alert. |
| Roles | owner, marketing, operations |
Calculation
Calculated automatically from your Amazon Ads data. See the At a glance summary above for what the metric tracks and the worked example below for a typical reading.Worked example
A US home-goods seller, daily check on 12 Apr 26. Two ASINs are flagged.| ASIN | FBA on-hand | FBA inbound | Days OOS | Ad spend (last 24h) | Lifetime ad spend while OOS | Action |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| B0DXY5678 (“Memory Foam Mattress Topper, Queen”) | 0 | 0 | 4 days | $156 | ~$580 | Pause ASIN-level ads. Auto-campaign needs ASIN exclusion. |
| B0FFF3456 (“Bamboo Pillow Set, 2-pack”) | 0 | 240 (ETA 18 Apr) | 1 day | $68 | $68 | Pause for 6 days, resume on stock arrival. |
| Total wasted spend (24h) | - | - | - | $224 | $648 | - |
- **6,720/month if not paused. The 30-second fix recovers all of it.
- B0DXY5678 is the chronic-bleed pattern. 4 days OOS with no inbound, and an auto-campaign is still serving. Amazon’s auto-bidder doesn’t proactively pause OOS ASINs. The lifetime spend while OOS is $580; that’s pure waste.
- B0FFF3456 is the temporary-OOS pattern. Stock arrives 18 Apr (6 days). Best practice: pause until stock arrives, OR keep ads running at low spend to maintain rank (some sellers accept 5-10% wasted-spend cost as the price of preserving search rank during short OOS gaps). For OOS > 7 days, always pause; for shorter, judgement call.
- The cross-card pattern: an ASIN at zero inventory will also lose Buy Box (so it lights up Active Ads on No-Buy-Box ASINs too). The two cards together usually cover all structural waste.
- Auto-campaigns are the chronic offender. Amazon’s Auto Targeting doesn’t honour ASIN-level OOS by default, it keeps serving ads. Manual Sponsored Products campaigns can be set to “pause on OOS” via API automations; auto-campaigns require ASIN-level exclusions.
- Count = 0: clean. The goal state.
- Count 1-3 isolated ASINs with stock-on-the-way: short pause, schedule resume.
- Count >5 ASINs: structural inventory failure or supply-chain disruption. Cross-check with Amazon SP Inventory Health.
- Same ASINs reappearing weekly: chronic stock-out cycle, fix the supply chain, not the ads.
- Count rising during seasonal demand (e.g. pre-Christmas): supply chain didn’t keep up; immediate restock priority.
Sibling cards merchants should reference together
| Card | Why pair it with OOS Advertised |
|---|---|
| Active Ads on No-Buy-Box ASINs | OOS ASINs typically also lose the Buy Box. Often light up together. |
| Amazon Ads Zero-Conversion Spend | A campaign with OOS ASINs will appear here as zero-converting. |
| Amazon Ads Wasted Spend | The keyword-level twin of structural waste. |
| Amazon Ads ROAS by Campaign | Campaigns containing OOS ASINs show as ROAS-anomalous; this is the explanation. |
| Amazon Selling Partner Inventory Health | The full inventory dashboard, this card is a focused subset. |
| Amazon Selling Partner Days of Stock | Leading indicator: when DoS drops below 7, expect this card to fire within the week. |
| Amazon Ads Conversion Drop | Sudden ROAS / conversion drops often correlate with this card going non-zero. |
Reconciling against the vendor’s own dashboard
Where to look in Amazon Ads Console + Seller Central: Amazon Ads Console > Campaign Manager does NOT natively flag OOS. Amazon Ads and inventory data live in different consoles. Seller Central > Inventory > FBA Inventory, the “Available” column shows on-hand stock. Filter to ASINs with Available = 0 and cross-check against your active ad campaigns. Seller Central > Reports > Inventory and Sales > FBA Inventory, the canonical FBA stock report. Amazon Ads Console > Recommendations, sometimes flags “out-of-stock, advertising paused” suggestions, but unreliably. Why our number may legitimately differ from a manual cross-check:| Reason | Direction of divergence | Why it happens |
|---|---|---|
| Timezone. Both Amazon Advertising and Seller Central use PT (Pacific). | None. | Amazon’s reporting backend is in Seattle. |
| Inventory snapshot lag. FBA Inventory reports run on a 4-6 hour batch; live state may be slightly fresher in Seller Central. | Card is up to 4-6h stale on inventory state. | Selling Partner inventory API is the bottleneck. |
| Report-generation latency (1-3 hours). | Today’s count is provisional for ~24h. | Both reports batch-build hourly. |
| API rate limits. Selling Partner Inventory API is heavily rate-limited; large catalogues may have stale partial data. | Stale by up to 1 refresh cycle (~4h) in extreme cases. | Inventory API throttling. |
| Multi-warehouse aggregation. The card sums across all FBA warehouses; Seller Central UI shows per-warehouse. An ASIN with stock only in West-Coast FBA may still be considered “in stock” globally. | None, both views aggregate. | Aggregation rule is consistent. |
| Card | Expected relationship | What causes legitimate divergence |
|---|---|---|
amazon_sp.amzn_sp_inventory_health | The OOS ASIN list intersects with the SP inventory-health card’s “out of stock” list. Should be a subset (only the advertised OOS ASINs are here). | Non-advertised OOS ASINs are in the SP card but not this one. |
amazon_sp.amzn_sp_days_of_stock | Days-of-stock < 1 = OOS imminent. Should be the leading indicator. | The DoS card uses 30-day velocity; sudden demand spikes can cause OOS without the DoS warning firing first. |
google_ads.gads_zero_conversion_spend | No relationship; different ecosystem. | N/A. |
shopify.total_revenue | A merchant who sells the same SKU on Shopify and Amazon may have it OOS on Amazon but in stock on Shopify. The DTC site doesn’t help; the Amazon ad still wastes. | Stock pools may be separated by channel. |