Short answer
The number of results can change because of external source updates, reprocessing, duplicate merging, and search index changes.
This does not necessarily mean the creatives were deleted forever.
Context
The system receives ad materials from several external sources.
Each source:
- has its own data structure
- updates on its own schedule
- may change material availability
- may send incomplete information
- may delete or update old records
Because of that, search reflects the data available to the system at the moment of the latest update.
How it works
Before a creative becomes available in search, it goes through several stages.
- Data collection — the system receives ad material from an available source.
- Validation — the system checks whether the received format can be processed and whether media files are damaged.
- Normalization — data from different sources is converted into a common structure.
- Classification — the system may determine language, category, brand, format, country, landing page type, and related keywords.
- Deduplication — if one material appears in several ads, the system may identify them as duplicates and merge them.
- Indexing — the processed material is added to the search index.
The search index is optimized for speed, but it updates separately from the main data store. That is why there can be a delay between receiving a creative and seeing it in search results.
Why result count increases
The number of results can increase after:
- new creatives are collected
- media processing is finished
- reindexing is completed
- language or category is refined
- a new source is connected
- incomplete metadata is fixed
For example, the system may first fail to identify a creative's language. After reprocessing, the material gets the value Ukrainian and starts appearing under the matching filter.
Why result count decreases
The count can go down when:
- the material becomes unavailable at the source
- duplicates are merged into a single result
- classification changes after more accurate processing
- the selected time range changes
- the ad status changes and the creative no longer matches the filter
A creative can remain in the system while no longer matching the current filters.
Active and available creative are different things
Activity describes the state of the ad at the source.
Availability describes whether the system can show information about it.
An inactive creative can still stay available for research. At the same time, an active ad may temporarily not appear if its data has not yet been collected or indexed.
Search and collections work differently
Search shows the current state of the index.
A collection stores links to materials the user selected earlier.
That means a creative can:
- stay in a collection but disappear from older search filters
- have outdated metadata inside the collection
- become partially unavailable
- be merged with another record
- get a different category or language
What an approximate number of results means
For large sets, the system may show an estimated number of results.
This helps open the page faster without counting the entire data set first. After more filters are applied or the index is refreshed, the number may become more precise.
Use the approximate count to understand scale, not as a fixed analytical metric.
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