Weekly Call w/ Gilbert — Doodla Inventory Crisis & Google Ads Review

Date: 2026-01-14
Attendees: Mark Hope, Gilbert Barrongo
Client: ^[1]

Overview

Mark and Gilbert reviewed Doodla's performance following a sharp Dec/Jan sales slump caused by FBA inventory stockouts. The call covered the failure of the Amazon AWD program, a new daily inventory monitoring process using Sellerize, and Google Ads budget and optimization updates. Inventory management was identified as the single highest priority — all other optimization work is secondary until stock levels are stable.

Key Decisions

Abandon AWD. The Amazon AWD program is not auto-transferring inventory to FBA and is incorrectly flagging products as expired. All future shipments will go directly to FBA.
40–50 day reorder threshold. Any ASIN with fewer than 40–50 days of supply in the Sellerize "Days Left" column triggers an immediate shipment.
Daily Sellerize inventory review. Gilbert and Carly will check the Sellerize inventory export every day and escalate any low-stock ASINs immediately.
Google Ads budget increase. Doodla's Google Ads budget will increase by $20/day, removing the budget cap on the PMax campaign and raising two $10/day campaigns.
Primary conversion goal fix. The Google Ads account has a warning for a missing primary conversion action; "Purchase" will be set as the primary goal.

Discussion Notes

Doodla Performance & Inventory Crisis

Sales were growing rapidly through mid-2025, then fell sharply in December when Yellow Cornmeal, Popcorn, and Black Beans went out of stock at FBA. Key metrics:

ROAS: Dropped to $3.28 (from ~$4.00 prior to stockouts)
Profit: YoY profit is down despite higher overall sales volume
Organic sales are growing, which partially offset the damage, but advertising effectiveness suffered directly from the stockouts

Mark's framing: "Everything else we're doing is a waste of time if we don't have any product. Advertising is a waste of time. Optimization is a waste of time."

Once a product goes out of stock on Amazon, it loses ranking and sales velocity attribution, making recovery slow even after restocking. Gilbert has been gradually increasing bids on the top three products (Yellow Cornmeal, Black Beans, Popcorn) to rebuild traction.

AWD Program Failure

The AWD program was intended to receive large pallet shipments and automatically replenish FBA as needed. In practice:

Amazon is not auto-transferring units from AWD to FBA
Amazon is incorrectly flagging inventory as expired (products have valid expiration dates printed on packaging)
Gilbert has been manually pushing units from AWD to FBA (e.g., Cranberry Beans, Great Northern Beans)
Gilbert submitted expiration date documentation to Amazon to resolve the flagged items

Resolution: Stop shipping to AWD entirely. All future shipments go directly to FBA. This is more expensive (Amazon splits shipments across multiple fulfillment centers), but it eliminates the AWD reliability risk.

New Inventory Management Process

Mark walked through the Sellerize inventory export and established a new daily monitoring workflow:

Tool: Sellerize → Inventory → Export

Key columns to monitor:
| Column | Purpose |
|---|---|
| Days Left | Primary trigger metric |
| Available Stock vs. Total Stock | Identifies inbound/reserved units |
| Daily Avg Units (30-day vs. 90-day) | Shows growth or deceleration in velocity |

Thresholds:
- < 40–50 days: Ship immediately — treat as an emergency
- > 100 days: Run a coupon or sale to move excess stock (e.g., 25lb Cranberry Beans at 600 days)
- 0 days, nothing inbound: Critical — example flagged on the call: 1lb Cranberry Beans

Specific ASINs flagged during the call:
- 1lb Cranberry Beans — zero stock, nothing inbound → ship today
- Pinto Beans 5lb — 4 days remaining → urgent
- Whole Wheat Flour 5lb — zero stock, 53 inbound (too late, will stock out)
- Great Northern Beans — zero stock, 35 inbound (too late)
- Canary Beans 1lb — completely out

Overstock flagged:
- 25lb Cranberry Beans — ~600 days → run aggressive coupon/sale
- 25lb Red Beans — very high days → run sale

ASIN cleanup: There are parent ASINs, bundle ASINs, and inactive listings polluting the Sellerize report. Gilbert will delete unused/parent ASINs from Seller Central to improve data clarity.

Yellow Cornmeal ASIN consolidation: There are two active Yellow Cornmeal ASINs (a legacy one and the primary FBA one). The plan is to sell out the legacy ASIN while shipping all new inventory to the primary FBA ASIN.

Sellerize → Google Sheet integration: Gilbert will pull the Days Left and sales velocity (30-day and 90-day) fields into the main inventory Google Sheet. Note: inbound/reserved detail is visible in the Sellerize UI but does not appear in the current export; Gilbert will check whether it exists in the FBA Inventory or AWD report tabs.

Google Ads — Doodla

Budget: Increase by $20/day total. Apply to the PMax campaign (currently budget-limited) and raise the two $10/day campaigns.
Conversion goal warning: One campaign is missing a primary conversion action. For e-commerce clients, the primary conversion is always Purchase (not form fills or calls, which are secondary). Gilbert will locate the campaign-level conversion setting and update it.
Brand search trends: Organic popcorn kernels brand purchase trend is up ~4x all-time. Cornmeal and cranberry beans brand searches are down — consistent with the inventory-driven ranking loss.
Sponsored Products vs. Sponsored Brands Video: ~96% of spend is going to Sponsored Products; SBV contributes ~7% of sales on ~4% of spend. Allocation looks healthy.

Google Ads — Quality Score Optimization (Cross-Client)

Gilbert has begun building a Quality Score (QS) audit checklist, starting with Tracti, to be applied across all accounts including Doodla. The checklist covers:

Expected CTR — keyword relevance and historical performance
Ad relevance — keyword-to-ad copy alignment
Landing page experience — the primary lever for improving QS

Keyword cannibalization was identified as a specific issue at Tracti: the same keywords appear in multiple campaigns, causing campaigns to compete against each other. Fix: assign each keyword to one campaign and add it as a negative in all others. AI can be used to scan for cannibalization across all campaigns at once.

Mark's framing on landing pages: "If you have a bad landing page, it doesn't matter how good the ad is. You need to be pushing account managers to improve landing pages. You should even say, I'm going to recommend we turn the ads off until you fix the landing page — we're just wasting money."

Gilbert will schedule meetings with account managers to align on landing page improvements for clients with low Quality Scores.

Action Items

[ ] Gilbert — Check Sellerize daily; ship to FBA for any ASIN < 50 days; create coupons for any ASIN > 100 days; coordinate with Carly
[ ] Gilbert — Ship 1lb Cranberry Beans to FBA immediately
[ ] Gilbert — Manually transfer all remaining AWD inventory to FBA
[ ] Gilbert — Submit expiration dates to Amazon for all flagged "expired" inventory
[ ] Gilbert — Delete unused/parent ASINs from Sellerize and Seller Central to clean up inventory report
[ ] Gilbert — Integrate Sellerize fields (Days Left, 30-day velocity, 90-day velocity, inbound/reserved) into the main inventory Google Sheet
[ ] Gilbert — Increase Doodla Google Ads budget by $20/day (PMax + two $10/day campaigns)
[ ] Gilbert — Fix Doodla Google Ads primary conversion action → set to "Purchase"
[ ] Gilbert — Begin Quality Score audit for Doodla Google Ads campaigns
[ ] Gilbert — Schedule meetings with account managers re: landing page improvements for low-QS clients
[ ] Mark — Delete unused/parent ASINs from Seller Central

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