What Happens When You Stop Advertising on Amazon

I’ve got a food product on Amazon that I manufacture and am the only seller of. There are similar products in my category, but nothing quite the same. I’ve been selling on Amazon for about 5 years, 3 of which I’ve used an agency to manage content and advertising. The agency costs $12k a year, and the ads were about $35k this year. I’m debating dropping both completely. I know the sales volume will go down, but my bottom line will increase.

Has anybody dropped all advertising, and if so, what effect has it had? How much did sales drop off? Did you become invisible? Did Amazon punish you for not forking over piles of ad money?