How it works
A zombie is a product that lives in the advertising, takes budget and clicks, but never gets as far as a purchase. The money goes out, the sales do not come.
In the portal this group is called “Dormant”: they spend, but don’t sell. It differs from the “to remove” group in the size of the damage — a dormant product has not yet spent enough to be switched off without discussion.
Most often the matter is not demand but the product itself and its data: a price out of line with the market, a weak listing, the wrong category, the product being shown to the wrong people.
What it is not
A zombie is not a “product without impressions”. Products that are loaded into the feed but take no part in advertising are counted separately — through assortment coverage. Their problem is the opposite one: they spend nothing at all, and so never turn up in any spend report.