Why is My Google Ad Campaign Not Spending?

There's nothing more frustrating than launching a new Google Ads campaign, only to check back later and see zero impressions, zero clicks, and zero spend. Your ads are live, your budget is set, but nothing is happening. This guide will walk you through the most common culprits, from simple setup mistakes to more complex targeting issues, so you can diagnose the problem and get your ads running properly.

Start with the Basics: Account and Campaign Status

Before diving into complex bidding strategies or keyword research, start with the most common and easily fixable issues. It's surprising how often the problem is a simple switch that's been flipped off or a payment method that's out of date.

Is Your Account Active and Billing Correct?

Google won't run your ads if it can't charge you. This is the first place you should always look when a campaign isn't spending.

Payment Method Issues: Navigate to Tools & Settings > Billing > Summary. Check for any red notification bars. Common problems include an expired credit card, a recent charge that was declined, or a temporary hold from your bank. Google is very clear when there's a payment problem, so you should see it right away.
Account Under Review: Brand new Google Ads accounts are often subject to a review process to ensure they comply with advertising policies. This can take anywhere from a few hours to a couple of business days. If your account is new, a bit of patience might be all you need. You'll typically see a notification at the top of your account if it's under review.
Account Suspension: In more serious cases, your account could be suspended for policy violations. You would have received emails about this and will see a large, unmissable red banner across the top of your Google Ads interface. If this is the case, you need to address the policy issue first.

Check the 'On/Off' Switches at Every Level

Google Ads has on/off switches at multiple levels, and if any one of them is off, your ads won't run. Think of it like a chain of Christmas lights - one bad bulb can make the whole string go dark.

Campaign Status: In your main campaign view, find the campaign in question. Is there a green circle next to its name? If it's grey, it means the campaign is paused. Simply click the icon and select "Enable."
Ad Group Status: Click into your campaign and look at the list of Ad Groups. They also have an enable/pause status. It's possible for the campaign to be enabled while a specific ad group inside it is paused.
Ad Status: Go one level deeper into an Ad Group. Each individual ad (your headlines and descriptions) and each individual keyword has its own status. Your ads could be paused, or more commonly, "Under review" or "Disapproved."
Start and End Dates: A common self-inflicted error is setting an accidental start date in the future. Go to your campaign's settings and check the "Start and end dates" section. Make sure the start date is today or in the past, and that the end date hasn't already passed.

Low Bids and Budgets: The Financial Gatekeepers

If your account status is fine, the next most likely culprit is that your financial settings are too restrictive. Google Ads is an auction, and if you don't bid competitively, your ads simply won't have a chance to enter the auction and be shown to users.

Your Bids Are Simply Too Low

You might be willing to pay for a click, but if your bid is a fraction of what your competitors are bidding for the same keyword, Google's auction system will favor them. Your ad has essentially priced itself out of the market before it even has a chance.

In your keyword report, check the "Status" column. If Google thinks your bid is too low, you'll often see a notification like "Below first page bid estimate." This is a clear signal to increase your maximum cost-per-click (Max. CPC) bid for that keyword.

How to Fix It:

Use Bid Estimates: In the keyword table, you can add columns for "Est. first page bid" and "Est. top of page bid." These will show you rough estimates of what it takes to get onto the first page of search results. Use these as a guide to set a more competitive bid.
Start with an Automated Strategy: If you're using a Manual CPC bidding strategy, consider switching to "Maximize clicks" for a few days. This strategy tells Google to get you as many clicks as possible within your budget. It's a great way to kickstart a campaign and gather some initial performance data without stressing about setting the perfect individual keyword bids from day one.

Your Daily Budget Is Too Low

Sometimes your daily budget is too small to even afford a single click. For example, if you're targeting keywords like "personal injury lawyer," where a single click can cost $50, a daily budget of $10 means your ads will never run. Google's system won't bother showing an ad if it knows the budget is insufficient to cover the potential cost of a click.

How to Fix It: This is a straightforward fix: increase the daily budget. You don't have to break the bank, but ensure your budget is at least two or three times the amount of your average target keyword's estimated CPC. This gives the campaign enough breathing room to enter the auction and start spending.

Targeting and Keyword Issues: Is Your Net Too Small?

If your account and financial settings are correct, it's time to investigate your targeting strategy. A common mistake is being so specific with your targeting that you accidentally shrink your potential audience size down to zero.

Niche Keywords with Almost Zero Search Volume

While long-tail keywords are great for finding highly relevant traffic, it's possible to get too specific. If you're targeting a phrase that only gets 10 searches per month nationally, the chances of it getting searched in your specific small town on the specific day you're running ads are virtually zero.

How to Fix It:

Check Volume in Keyword Planner: Go to Tools & Settings > Planning > Keyword Planner. Enter your keywords and select your geographic targeting. This tool will tell you the estimated monthly search volume. If your keywords have zero or "low search volume," this is likely your problem.
Broaden Your Match Types: If you have all your keywords set to [Exact Match], you're telling Google to only show your ad when someone searches for that exact phrase. Try changing some keywords to "Phrase Match" or using Broad Match keywords to capture a wider range of relevant queries.

Overly Narrow Audience Targeting

Google Ads allows you to layer multiple targeting methods: location, age, gender, interests, device, etc. Each layer acts as a filter, reducing your potential audience size. If you combine too many filters, you can easily end up with an audience of zero.

Imagine you're targeting:

Location: a single small town
Age: 25-34
Device: Only iOS tablets
Audience: In-market for "Luxury Travel"

The number of people who meet all of those criteria in that specific town might actually be zero.

How to Fix It: Step back and remove some of your targeting layers. Start broader - perhaps with location and one audience segment. If the campaign starts spending, you can then cautiously add back other targeting layers one by one, keeping an eye on your impression volume.

Disapproved Ads and Policy Violations

All ads submitted to Google go through an automated approval process to check for policy compliance. If your ad or keywords are disapproved, they won't run. Look at the "Status" column for your ads. If it says "Disapproved," Google will provide a reason.

Common reasons for disapproval include:

Using trademarked terms in your ad copy.
Making unsupported claims ("Guaranteed to make you lose weight!").
Promoting restricted categories like pharmaceuticals or gambling without proper certification.
Landing page issues, such as a broken link or lack of a privacy policy.

How to Fix It: Click on the disapproved ad to read the specific policy violation. Edit your ad or landing page to comply with the rules and resubmit it for review. The approval process typically takes up to one business day.

Advanced Snags: Negative Keywords and Scheduling

If you've checked everything above and you're still not spending, the cause might be a more subtle setting you've overlooked.

Conflicting Negative Keywords

Negative keywords are essential for preventing wasted spend on irrelevant searches. However, you can accidentally add a negative keyword that conflicts with your actual target keyword.

For example, if you sell new cars and add the word "new" as a negative keyword (thinking you'll block searches for "new car reviews"), you've just blocked your ad from showing up for your target search "buy new car."

How to Fix It: In the left-hand menu, under Keywords > Negative Keywords, carefully review your negative keyword list at the ad group, campaign, and account levels. Make sure none of your negatives are canceling out your positives. Also, check the match type of your negative keywords, a broad match negative can unintentionally block a large volume of relevant traffic.

Restrictive Ad Scheduling

Check your campaign's "Ad schedule" setting. Did you accidentally set it to run only for one hour in the middle of the night? Or maybe you set a +25% bid adjustment for a certain time, but your base bids at other times are so low that they never show?

How to Fix It: Review your ad schedule to ensure you're eligible to show ads during peak search hours for your business. When in doubt, remove the schedule entirely and let your campaign run 24/7 for a day or two to see if that gets it spending.

Final Thoughts

If your Google Ads campaign isn't spending, it’s rarely a single, complex problem. It's almost always a hang-up in one of the areas we’ve covered: account status, billing, low bids, an overly narrow audience, or ad disapprovals. By systematically going through this checklist, you can isolate the bottleneck, make the fix, and get your campaign off the ground.

As campaigns start spending, monitoring that performance to ensure it’s efficient becomes the next challenge. We use our own AI analyst, Graphed, to connect all our ad accounts and quickly get the answers we need. We use simple prompts like, "Show me my top 10 Google Ads campaigns by spend in the US last week" to instantly get a real-time report, helping us spot issues and optimize our advertising without digging through endless spreadsheets.