Google Ads Campaign Active and Enabled, But No Impressions and No Clicks

Your Google Ads campaign is active and enabled, but there are no impressions or clicks. What could be the reason?

Google Ads campaign is active, but No Impressions or Clicks – The Story So Far

You signed in to your new Google Ads account, created your campaign with the right keywords, ads, targeting and added a payment method in your account to start advertising.

Your campaign is enabled and active, and every diagnosis check returns an ‘Approved’ status. Everything is set and you are eagerly waiting for the clicks and conversions to start appearing in your campaign.

But there is one problem.

The campaign is not generating even a single impression!

It All Starts with Impressions

Ad Impression is a campaign metric that is ignored by most advertisers.

When an ad from an advertiser account is displayed, it is considered as an impression. As it is not directly contributing to campaign cost like clicks (except in video campaigns where impressions will cost you money), most of the advertisers ignores it.

On any ad platform, an impression confirms that the initial ad review process is complete, your ad is compliant with the advertising policies of the specific ad platform, your payment method is verified by the system and the ad is visible to potential customers.

If your ads are not getting impressions, then that is a matter of concern. Without impressions, there will be no clicks and no customers.

Reasons for No Impressions and No Clicks in Google Ads

Your Google Ads Campaign is New

 All new ads need to go through a rigorous review process in Google Ads.

The review process is necessary to make sure the advertiser and the ads a compliant with applicable laws, and Google Ads advertising policies. This ensures a safe environment for everyone using the Google search engine and interacts with ads.

The review process is tougher for new accounts without prior advertising history. As the advertiser is completely new, Google needs more time to verify the type of business, it’s compliance with advertising policies and law, and to ensure a legal payment source to fund the account to cover the advertising cost.

For new accounts this can normally take 24-48 hours. And more if the account needs a more complex review.

Once the account and ad review process are over, the system can again take more time to evaluate the campaign budget, bidding strategy and ad targeting to determine the eligibility of the ads to enter in the ad auction.

We will discuss more about these 3 components (budget, bids & targeting) later in this blog.

Your Account Needs a More Complex Review

Sometimes based on the type of business that you have, your account may need a more complex review. Your whole website including the source code will be checked, not just the landing page. Similarly, not only the video that you want to promote, but the whole content on your YouTube channel will be reviewed by the Google Ads system.

If your business model, keywords, ads or any content on the website is not compliant with any of the Google Ads policies, your ads will be moved to a more complex review process.

Google does this rigorous review to ensure the safety of users who uses Google search. To ensure that the Google Ad system is used by genuine advertisers promoting legal businesses.

Your Business Type or Business Model Can Not Use Google Ads

Google Ads is an excellent choice for businesses of any size. But not all types of businesses are allowed to use Google Ads.

Google don’t allow certain types of businesses to use Google Ads. This is mainly because of the existing laws and the policies Google formulated to protect the customers and to protect the integrity of its search engine business.

Businesses promoting gambling, adult content, guns, promotion of alcohol or tobacco are not allowed to use Google Ads. Products like prescription drugs and financial services needs specific certifications to run ads.

You can check the official Google Ads policy page here

Many policies are country specific. For example, a campaign allowed to run in US may not be allowed in India based on applicable country specific laws.

When the Google Ads system detects such an issue on a website, usually the ad will be disapproved. Account of repeated offenders can be suspended.

When your ads are not getting any impressions, it is a good practice to check your account for ad disapproval or account suspension notifications.

Issues with Your Payment Profile Can Prevent Your Ads from Showing

Every Google Ads account needs a legitimate and valid payment profile attached to it to start running ads.

Google Ads has a very sophisticated evaluation mechanism to validate all payment methods.

Make sure your payment profile is approved by Google before starting to advertise.

Low Daily Budget & Low Bids

One of the most common reasons that prevents a new Google Ads campaign from showing impressions is low budget and low bid.

Low budget and low bids, below a certain threshold can prevent your ad from entering in the ad auction.

The minimum bid threshold requirement depends on your business type, advertising location and competition in that area. If your daily budget and bids are not high enough to reach that threshold, your ads will not get any impressions.

So, if your ads fail to trigger impressions during the initial phase, try increasing the daily budget and bids considerably. This will help you to get your campaign up and running.

Narrow Targeting can Prevent Impressions

 Another factor to consider is your targeting. It could be your keywords, target location or a very specific target audience that you are trying to reach with your ads.

If you are using a small number of specific keywords in a very restricted match type (exact) that can prevent your ads from getting impressions. Targeting a small geographical area, targeting a very specific small audience (like a very specific topic or remarketing list) or targeting a small number of placements, all this can result in no impressions for your ads.

Very limited targeting prevents the system from finding the right auctions to engage your ads. So, when your campaign is not getting impressions even with approved ads, revisit your campaign targeting and make sure it is broad enough for the system to run your ads.

Initially Automated Bid Strategies Can Create Issues

Many new advertisers believe creating a campaign and selecting a Google recommended bid strategy is all that is needed to make a campaign work. But that is not true!

Automated bid strategies heavily depend on historical data for guidance to set the bids internally. When you have a new Google Ads account without any previous advertising history, the system lacks the guidance it needed to set effective bids.

This can result in your campaigns ‘freezing’, without getting any impressions or clicks.

In such a state, the best possible action that you can take is switching to manual bidding for a few days. Manual bidding will help you to raise the bids manually till your ads start triggering impressions and getting clicks.

And if you are running a performance max campaign, increase your daily budget considerably to get early traction.

You can switch to a suitable automated bid strategy again later, once the campaign performance becomes steady and consistent.

Conclusion

Google Ads is a big ad machine with many moving parts. And many internal and external factors can result in your ads getting no impressions of clicks. When this happens slowly start analyzing the factors mentioned above one by one till you find the actual cause of the problem.