I have come across this more times than I can count: a business excitedly starts new ads, particularly through Google Ads. The account is set up, payment method added, ads created, and everything is approved, marked as eligible. You have green lights across the board… but your ads are not delivering! Your website receives conversions through other traffic sources such as organic search traffic, but your ads show zero.
Why Are My Google Ads Not Delivering?
Google has a great new AI feature (as of June 2026) that I recommend taking advantage of listed in the top menu bar as “Ask Advisor”. You can click this to open a chat. The advisor will automatically analyze your campaigns to provide advice. If it does not pick up on the issues you are seeing, let it know that you are receiving zero impressions and need help.
The system will run a check on your ads. However, be warned that this is not a comprehensive check. It cannot see issues on the backend. Like most AI, it will tend to agree with you if you ask: “is x the problem?” and it will switch its answers sometimes to, “yes, you’re right, x is the problem!”...and unfortunately whatever your “x” might be is normally NOT the problem. Yes, it can be confusing. But, it’s a place to start.
My first piece of advice is to follow whatever the advisor says to do. There is a possibility that you missed an easy-to-chang setting.
New Or Reactivated Account Limitations
If you have just created your Google Ads account, or decided to use it again after a long period of dormancy, you will find yourself running into some invisible limitations. The advisor can point some of these out. One in particular is for search ads. If you choose to run a campaign that uses AI in any way (i.e. nowhere in your selections have you picked something labeled “manual” on the Google back end), then it limits your bids to exactly $0.01 for each keyword. That means your ads only bid a single cent for each keyword. Most auctions will be looking for something on the lower end around $1-$3, not a few cents (this is heavily dependent upon your industry though!).
Using the AI version means you do not have control over this one-cent limit. In this case, you have to switch the campaign to manual. Then you can remove the one cent limit. This does not apply to everyone, but in general the recommendation would be to change this, let the ad run and serve impressions, then you can change it back to the AI version so it loses that one-cent limit.
If you have no policy issues with assets, no bidding issues, or other notifications on your account and you STILL see zero, it’s time to bring in the experts. For new or reactivated accounts, Google’s system often has an automatic limitation put in place. Even though everything is green across the board and the AI advisor says nothing is wrong, there might be something on the backend that only a Google representative can fix. It is often a flip of a “switch” for them. A common limitation I have seen is ad spend limits which the automatic system has flagged to be around zero since you are brand new OR coming back after a long period away.
No worries, head over to the “help” section of the navigation bar in the top right, and it will allow you to send a message to describe your issue; problems are often resolved rather quickly.
One last note, no matter whether your account has been dormant or you are starting a new one, Google tends to put a 3-5 business day hold on your account to verify it. There will be no notices or errors you can see. Your entire account can show green across the board and still be under a hold. If the designated 3-5 business days have passed since you created and turned on your first ad campaign, contact Google for help.
Once you have one ad running, this should not be an issue in the future! Now if your ads are successfully running but not converting…that’s a different story to be explained in a different blog.
Have you tried troubleshooting your ads but you want a second set of eyes? Contact B’s Media Solutions for help on why your website is not converting through your ads!