Google Ads approved but no impressions? An eligible campaign not running is frustrating! This usually comes down to issues like low ad quality, limited budget, narrow targeting, or strong competition. In this blog post, you will find out the common reasons for this problem, fix it in minutes and gain best practices to avoid it in the future!
Contents
What is Google Ads are eligible but no impressions?
If you have recently enabled your Search campaign, it might require some time before it begins displaying impressions. Several factors contribute to this:
Ads that are newly created or edited undergo a review process that typically takes 24-48 hours to ensure they comply with all policy requirements.
If your campaign uses automated bidding strategies, there might be fluctuations in performance or changes in expenditure as Google Ads learns to optimize according to your specified objective.
If you make alterations to your campaign settings, it may take Google Ads some time to adjust how ads are delivered.
Try the Ad Preview and Diagnosis tool, it assists you in determining the reason behind a specific search term not being displayed. Keep in mind that the search results provided by these tools can change over time.
Top 10 reasons why Google Ads approved but not running
Google Ads approved but not showing any impressions is a common issue Mega Digital has seen across many client accounts. Below are 13 key reasons we’ve identified, based on our experience as a Google Partner, to help you pinpoint exactly what’s holding your campaign back!
1. Billing issues
If you’re using monthly invoicing, your ads might stop running once your campaign costs reach the specified account budget, regardless of the campaign status. This is a common issue for large advertisers or agency accounts that operate on pre-approved billing limits instead of real-time payments.
This doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with your campaigns. It simply means your billing limit has been reached.
What to do:
Go to Billing > Account Budgets to check if your budget has been exhausted.
If it has, you need to either increase the existing account budget or create a new one to resume ad delivery.
2. Payment issues
For advertisers using automatic payments (credit/debit cards, bank transfers, or prepaid funds), campaigns may stop running if Google is unable to successfully charge your account. This can happen due to an expired card, insufficient funds, or your bank declining the transaction.
Unlike monthly invoicing, this type of issue results in your entire account being paused until the outstanding balance is paid. It’s one of the fastest ways your ads can go from approved to inactive, without any warning in the campaign interface.
What to do:
Visit the Billing Summary or Transactions page in your account to check for declined payments or unpaid balances.
Ensure your primary payment method is valid and up to date, especially if your card recently expired or was replaced.
Add a backup payment method to reduce the risk of campaign disruption.
If the issue isn’t on your end, contact your bank or card provider to ensure they allow Google Ads transactions.
Negative keywords help filter out unwanted traffic. But if misused, they can accidentally block your ads from showing. This issue often happens when you add too broad or conflicting terms, especially in shared negative keyword lists across campaigns.
Let’s say you’re targeting the keyword “women fashion trends”. However, the word “women” is listed as a negative keyword, perhaps in another campaign where you wanted to target kids’ items. Then, your ad in the new campaign won’t appear. These types of hidden conflicts can harm your impressions.
What to do:
Review all levels of negative keywords: campaign, ad group, and shared library.
Cross-check your negative keywords against your targeted keywords to spot conflicts.
Use the Search Terms Report to identify relevant queries that are being blocked unintentionally.
Remove or narrow down overly broad negative keywords (e.g., “custom,” “free,” “cheap”) that may be restricting reach on high-intent searches.
4. Too restrictive keyword match types
Using only exact match keywords can cause your ads to appear for too few searches, especially if the search volume is low or if users phrase their queries slightly differently. As can be seen in the diagram, while this match type offers high relevance to users’ search intent, it often limits visibility.
For example, if you use the exact match keyword [custom leather boots], your ad won’t show for similar searches like “leather boots custom made”, even though the intent matches.
What to do:
Combine exact match with phrase match or broad match (with smart bidding) to increase reach.
Use Keyword Planner to check search volume for your keywords and identify broader variations.
Regularly monitor the Search Terms Report to discover valuable new terms and adjust match types accordingly.
Test performance across different match types to find the right balance between control and impressions.
When you choose a specific date range, Google Ads provides you with performance data for that selected period. Your campaign will not display impressions beyond the date range during which it has been active.
What to do:
Ensure that the selected date range encompasses both the start and end dates of your campaign by following these steps:
Click on the date range drop-down menu, located above the statistics table.
Select “Custom” from the options.
In the calendar pop-up, choose the start date and end date of your campaign.
Click “Apply” to confirm the date range.
6. Low bid targets & optimization goals
If you set a very low bid for your ads, it’s unlikely that your campaign will participate or succeed in many auctions, resulting in a lack of impressions for your ads. When using Smart Bidding and setting targets based on CPA or ROAS without considering past performance, this can restrict the effectiveness of your strategy, potentially leading to your campaign not serving at all.
What to do:
Ensure your campaign’s optimization strategy aligns with your goals.
Consider if your manual or automated bidding targets are achievable based on historical performance. For Smart bidding, adjust CPA or ROAS targets to higher bids and potentially increase impressions.
If you still encounter challenges in optimizing bids, you can further seek guidance from Mega Digital. You will then receive support from experts in Google advertising services.
When you have a low budget, your ads may have limited serving as Google Ads aims to prevent exceeding your spending limit. Your campaign status might appear as “Eligible (Limited)” indicating under-serving or non-serving due to budget constraints.
What to do:
Check the budget report to gain insights into your campaign’s spending compared to the average daily budget. This will help you understand the impact on performance and spending limits.
To access the budget report in your Google Ads account, follow these steps:
Click on the Campaigns icon.
In the section menu, select the Campaigns drop-down option.
Click on Campaigns.
Hover over your campaign’s budget in the “Budget” column or click the pencil/edit icon to view a window displaying your average daily budget. You can make changes to the average daily budget and save them.
You can also review recommendations to improve your return on ad spend (ROAS).
To view the budget report, click on “View budget report.” This will redirect you to the “Budget report” page.
Consider increasing your budget to ensure your campaign has sufficient funds to run consistently throughout the day. These are what you can do to overcome Google Ads approved but no impressions issues.
8. Too narrow targeting
Targeting settings assist in reaching the specific audience interested in your business. However, it’s important to note that each time you add targeting or encounter issues with remarketing lists, the potential reach of your ads becomes more limited.
Besides, targeting a single postal code, a small radius, or a low-population city can restrict the reach of your campaign or prevent it from serving altogether.
What to do:
If the number of users on your audience list falls below Google’s requirements, your campaign may not be able to serve. Ensure that your audience size meets the necessary criteria for effective targeting.
For location targeting, here is how to effectively target ads for better results:
Go to the Campaigns tab.
Click on Settings.
Scroll down to the “Locations” section.
Edit or add locations where you want your ads to appear.
Exclude any locations you want to avoid.
Save your settings and monitor performance for adjustments.
9. Overlap targeting
If you have multiple campaigns or ad groups with similar targeting, there may be overlapping auctions where one campaign receives most of the traffic. This might be the reason why Google Ads is eligible but not running.
What to do:
Review your campaign’s targeting and adjust it to avoid overlap with other campaigns in your account. By refining your targeting, you can distribute traffic more effectively across your campaigns. Follow these steps:
Sign in to your Google Ads account.
Navigate to the Campaigns tab.
Select the campaign you want to review.
Click on the Settings tab for that campaign.
Evaluate the targeting options such as keywords, demographics, locations, and audience settings.
Identify any areas where you may want to make adjustments or refine your targeting.
To make changes, click on the Edit button next to the specific targeting option you wish to modify.
Make the necessary updates to your targeting settings.
Save your changes.
10. Lost impression share
Impression share data, particularly Lost Search IS (ad rank), reveals the percentage of time your ads were not displayed on the Search Network due to ad rank in the auction.
What to do:
To reduce ad rank, enhance your ad quality and adjust your bids. It’s important to note that impression share data might not be available if your campaign did not generate sufficient traffic.
Learn more about Google Ad Rank to understand why Google Ads are approved but no impressions.
11. Conversion tracking
If your campaign uses Automated bidding to optimize for conversions but is experiencing limited ad serving, it could be due to insufficient conversion data or incorrect conversion tracking setup.
What to do:
Use the Conversion tracking status troubleshooter to verify and ensure the accuracy of your conversion tracking setup.
Evaluate the historical performance of your targeted conversion action to ensure it happens frequently enough to be utilized effectively for Automated bidding.
12. Ad Quality
Ad quality refers to the user experience when viewing your Search ads. Higher ad quality typically results in better performance, including improved ad positions and lower costs. Different indicators of quality may exist depending on the ad type. For instance, the Ad Strength metric can be used to assess the quality of Responsive Search Ads. Google establishes specific quality thresholds through Ad Rank to ensure ads meet the required level of quality.
What to do:
Evaluate your Quality Score at the keyword level. A higher Quality Score indicates that your ad and landing page are more relevant and valuable to users searching for your keyword compared to other advertisers.
By reviewing and improving your quality score, you can enhance the overall quality and performance of your ads in Google Ads.
The presence of other advertisers participating in the same auctions as your campaign can impact the serving of your ads. When a new advertiser enters these auctions, it can influence the number of impressions your ads receive.
What to do:
To understand how your campaign is performing compared to others in these auctions, you can use the Auction Insights report. This report provides valuable information that can help you make decisions about how much to bid and how much budget to allocate for your ads. By analyzing the Auction insights report, you can optimize your campaign’s performance and stay competitive in the auctions.
Best practices to avoid Google Ads showing no impressions in the future
From our experience managing Google Ads accounts across global markets, here are 5 proven best practices we at Mega Digital recommend to help you avoid this issue entirely:
1. Set realistic budgets and bids
If your bids or daily budget are too low, your ads may never win a spot to be shown. For example, if you are promoting a local service in New York City with an average CPC of around $5 but set a daily budget of only $10, your ad might only show once per day, or not at all.
To stay competitive, use Google Keyword Planner to estimate realistic CPCs for your market. Set a daily budget that allows for at least 5-10 clicks, and if you’re using automated bidding, let the algorithm complete its learning phase before making adjustments.
2. Review location and schedule settings
Overly narrow location targeting or limited ad schedules can silently block your impressions.
For instance, if you’re targeting only Gulberg, Lahore, and your ad schedule is set from 6 AM to 8 AM, but your target audience is most active online in the evenings, your ads won’t show simply because they’re not eligible during actual demand windows.
Thus, use Google Ads’ Location Reports and Ad Schedule Reports to spot missed opportunities and make data-backed changes.
3. Monitor keyword match types and search volume
Relying too much on exact match keywords could limit visibility for your ads. If the keyword chosen is not very close to the user’s search term, your ads will not appear. To increase exposure but still remain relevant, you should combine exact, phrase, and broad match keywords.
For example, rather than only targeting [buy property in Almaty], consider adding phrase match versions like “property for sale in Almaty” or broad match keywords like “real estate agents near me”. Check your Search Terms Report regularly to identify winning search queries and tweak your keywords as needed.
4. Use Google’s Diagnostic tools
To stay ahead of potential delivery issues, it’s essential to use Google’s built-in tools not just reactively, but proactively.
Tools like the Ad Preview & Diagnosis Tool allow you to simulate how your ads appear (or don’t) for specific searches without affecting campaign performance.
Similarly, the Recommendations tab can help you spot areas that may soon affect visibility, like missing assets, low bids, or underperforming keywords.
5. Watch your impression share
One of the most important objectives for any advertising campaign is to maintain its health in an impression share so that the ads appear for the relevant searches. Impression share represents how often your ads show compared to how often they were eligible to show.
To avoid missing opportunities, metrics like Search Impression Share, Search Lost (budget), and Search Lost (rank) must be carefully monitored more frequently. For instance, if you notice your campaign for “handmade jewelry” in the U.S. is losing over 50% of impression share due to budget, it’s a clear sign to reallocate spend or raise your daily limit.
Final word
Google Ads approved but not showing may have left you confused and wondering what went wrong. In most cases, the problem comes down to common but fixable factors. With these practical fixes in this blog post, you can prevent the issue from holding back your performance!
If you’re facing other difficulties with Google Ads and finding it challenging to handle on your own, you can find exceptional Google Advertising services at Mega Digital!
