We run Shopify App Store Ads for our app across both category and search placements. Things had been steady for months.
Starting at the beginning of yesterday, every one of our search placement campaigns dropped to zero impressions and zero visibility — and has stayed there for a full day now. Our category placement campaigns are completely unaffected and keep running normally, which is the part that’s confusing me.
We went through the obvious checks and everything looks clean: all campaigns show as active/running, daily budgets are healthy and nowhere near exhausted, billing is valid with no failed charges, and we didn’t touch bids or negative keywords. One odd signal - when we manually search the keywords we bid on, our ads still show in our own home country’s IP, but nothing appears in our main markets (US, UK, CAN, etc.).
Have you seen search placements go fully dark like this while category kept running? I realize there may be no single answer here, but I’d really like to hear how others have handled this and what the actual cause turned out to be for you. Appreciate any thoughts.
The geographic split is the useful clue here. I would not change bids or keywords yet, because category delivery is still healthy and that would add another variable.
Shopify’s public status page currently reports all systems operational, but App Store Ads is not one of the listed components, so that does not rule out a search-placement issue. Before escalating, I would freeze one small evidence packet:
affected campaign IDs and keywords
the exact first zero-impression hour in UTC
search-versus-category impression exports for the same period
the markets where the app listing is available
screenshots from the same keyword checks in the home country and US/UK/CA
Shopify’s Help Center lists app-store-ads@shopify.com for App Store ad feedback. I would send that packet and ask whether search-auction eligibility or inventory changed by market for those campaign IDs.
Do the campaign reports show zero search impressions in each affected country at hourly level, or only after the daily rollup? That distinction would help separate reporting lag from delivery loss.
I’ve seen something similar where the campaign itself looked completely healthy, so I wouldn’t immediately start changing bids or rebuilding the campaigns.
The fact that category placements are still spending makes me think the issue is specific to the search auction or eligibility rather than the account as a whole. The home country showing ads while the US, UK and Canada don’t is especially interesting too. I’d check whether anything changed around market eligibility, keyword matching, targeting or Shopify’s search ad delivery before touching the campaigns.
I’d also take screenshots of the campaign status and the zero impression data now, then compare it again after another day. If it stays at exactly zero across every search campaign while category keeps delivering, I’d probably open a Shopify support ticket with the campaign IDs and specific markets rather than making a bunch of changes that could make the original issue harder to diagnose.
I’ve had similar situations with store data where everything looks fine at the surface but something is affecting a specific set of pages or queries. SiteGuru is useful for the SEO side because it makes those differences easier to spot instead of relying entirely on the main dashboard.
Hey @treynguyen, your search ads and category ads are two separate objects in the Partner Dashboard, each with its own Geotargeting list, so one can go dark while the other keeps serving normally. Open Apps > App ads, click into each search ad and read its Geotargeting selection - if it flipped to specific countries and regions, that kills search everywhere off that list while category carries on, which lines up with your ads still showing on your own IP. If geotargeting looks right, check whether your keywords still show a suggested bid or bid range; when that vanishes, your relevance score has fallen too low to enter the auction. Availability in a market feeds that score, so I’d verify your app is still installable for merchants in the US, UK and CA.
Hi there @treynguyen
A sudden regional drop like this can indicate search auction eligibility or marketplace targeting rather than a campaign setup issue, especially since category placements are still active. I’d look at impressions by country, keyword and placement and compare to the previous week to see where exactly you lost visibility. Also check if the listing or your app’s targeting or marketplace eligibility has changed recently. Don’t trust manual searches only, ad delivery can differ by user, location and auction dynamics. If the trend continues, note the times and affected regions, and this may help pinpoint if it’s a targeting or delivery problem.