“Why aren’t ads shown in Google AdWords?” – this is the question customers ask contextual advertising specialists almost on a daily basis. And this does not mean the incompetence of employees. The specialists did a good job: they selected the right semantics, came up with good information and advertising messages.
Attention! You may well not see your ad, while it is available to other users.
Checking this is easy – you need to study the statistics. If impressions are being made, and visitors are moving to the site, then everything is in order. Otherwise, you should audit the advertising campaign parameters and if no errors were made during configuration, make a request to the technical support service , why there are no impressions in Google Ads.
How can I check that my ad hasn’t been shown in Google Ads?
Check why ads aren’t showing properly. The popular search for ads in incognito mode is unfortunately incorrect. If you see an advertisement and don’t click on it, you’ll lower your CTR without knowing it. This can subsequently lead to an increase in the cost of a click.
You should use a special tool available in your account – “Preview and diagnostics of ads”. It makes it possible not only to make sure that impressions occur in the campaign without harming the CTR, but also to find out why Google AdWords does not show ads:
To do this, go to your account, and then find the “Tools and Settings” icon (in the form of a wrench). In the drop-down menu, select “Planning” and select the desired tool by name.
There are many reasons why Google Ads is not showing. Consider the most popular – those that most often affect the situation.
Ad campaign budget is limited
Google Ads allows you to set bid rates, social or demographic restrictions, geo-reference or time limits. It is also possible to set a daily budget for the campaign, that is, choose the maximum amount of expenses for displaying ads. The system analyzes this parameter using a special algorithm, and then decides how often and at what price the advertisement will bid.
Your ads will likely not show up every time you enter keywords if your campaign budget isn’t sufficient. For example, if 500 people request a service or product in an hour, only 50 users will see the ad due to the limited funds.
Google Ads provides tools to help you assess whether your campaign has enough budget. Using them, you can find out the estimated number of potential impressions missed due to lack of funds pledged for advertising.
Ads will not be shown if:
The budget does not cover the entire amount of traffic from the search, so not everyone who has applied to the system with a search query sees ads;
If the limit of funds allocated to the campaign is reached, impressions will not be available until the beginning of the next day.
Attention! If you want more visitors to be attracted as a result of an advertising campaign, regardless of whether they made a deal, increase the budget.
Ad delivery method
There is an accelerated and standard method for calculating impression frequency. The choice of method determines how quickly the campaign budget is spent. With the standard approach, the demonstration is carried out in equal parts during the day.
Information! Keep in mind that uniform exposure does not guarantee that every user will see an ad when they enter a key query. Frequency will depend on budget constraints.
If the accelerated method is selected, impressions will be carried out with the highest frequency without restrictions. The disadvantage of this approach is the rapid depletion of the daily budget. After it is exhausted, the display of advertising stops until the next day. The accelerated method is relevant in the case when you need to get as much traffic as possible, but the funds for maintaining the advertising campaign are not limited.
The rate is lower than the competition
Low, non-competitive click-through rates are one of the most common reasons why paid search results don’t show up. Even if there is an understanding that the cost of a click on an ad is huge, there is a chance that someone then one of the competitors is ready to pay more.
Competition in the contextual advertising market is rarely overcome easily. To check whether a sufficient bid is set for keywords, you need to use an additional tool offered by the system.
Important! Reducing rates inevitably leads to uncompetitive ads. It is required to constantly monitor the effectiveness by reducing or raising the rate for the transition to the site.
Poor Ad Quality Score
An important factor influencing ad delivery is Quality Score. Rather, the definition of this indicator is influenced by the values of more than 100 factors. The main ones are:
Ad relevance. This parameter demonstrates how adequately the keyword is chosen for the information and advertising message. Advertising must fully satisfy the user’s intent and respond to his request;
Landing page quality. GoogleAds evaluates whether the landing page is useful for the user who clicked on the ad. Among other things, the quality indicator reflects the correctness of the structure and presentation of site information, as well as the presence of text that responds to the user’s request;
Expected CTR. A calculated indicator that characterizes the probability of a transition to a site from a search engine. It is influenced by factors responsible for ad visibility: extensions, average position, format.
Calculated on a scale from 1 to 10, the indicator determines the cost of a click and the position in the paid issue. The higher the quality score, the lower the cost of attracting one user and the better the position on the search page.
Often, advertisers pay a lot of attention to the quality indicator, and in vain. It’s not enough to just set up ads, to get the best CPC you need to do it better than your competitors. A negligent attitude to the quality indicator leads to an increase in the cost per click and, as a result, the advertising budget.
Thanks to the built-in tools of the contextual advertising system, you can analyze the quality score and, based on it, implement changes to optimize it using AdWords tips.
Important! Displaying the status as “average” or “above average” is a good sign. In the case of a “below average” rating, you should immediately start working with a quality score.
Moderation not passed yet
Newly created advertising campaigns are moderated for about two days. New or changed listings are also subject to a mandatory review for compliance. The duration of their moderation varies from a few minutes to a whole day, and it takes a little more time to check ad units on the Display Network.
If all the deadlines for moderation have expired, but the demonstration has not started, then you need to contact support. As in the case when the approval of the advertisement was denied. The fact is that moderation is almost always carried out automatically, and some ads that comply with the law on advertising, with the correct keywords and spelling, are rejected by mistake. In this case, you should send a request for manual verification.
Hint! We should not forget that there are areas of activity where you can advertise only if you have certain permits.
The ad was rejected by the system
In the account interface, the “Ads” tab displays the “Status” column, which contains information on all ads. If any of them is rejected by hovering the mouse over the tooltip, you can find out the reason for the rejection. If the campaign is large in volume, then you should set up an appropriate filter so as not to waste time searching for disapproved ads.
Google automatically analyzes your site’s accessibility. Impressions stop when a 404 error is encountered or the landing page takes a long time to load. To respond to such a situation in a timely manner and avoid downtime in impressions, you can set up a special email notification.
Temporal targeting
It should be remembered that if time targeting is set to certain hours, then you should check for impressions during these specific hours. An error in setting the ad display time often leads to the fact that it is not visible to the user at the right time.
When checking impressions, it is also important to take into account the time zone, which can be incorrectly set. Professionals rarely make these kinds of mistakes, but they are popular among beginners.
New account in the system
A newly created account in Google Ads is necessarily checked by the system for compliance with security rules and does not work at full capacity for several days. Advertisements on a new account appear in the search engine results only after its approval.
History of actions of a specific user
If you do not periodically clear your browser cache and never click on contextual advertising, then with a high probability the system will stop showing you more than 2-3 paid ads in special placement and guaranteed delivery. Google Ads considers such impressions to be those that are very unlikely to lead to a targeted action.
Keyword requested multiple times in a row
This situation is the most common reason why the ad does not appear. If during one session you enter queries from the same topic several times in a row, but do not click on the ads, the system will stop showing advertising positions in the search results. Google’s logic is simple – such a user is not interested in advertising on this topic, so the impressions must be stopped.
Impressions block negative keywords
By carefully preparing your keywords and collecting an exhaustive list of negative keywords, you can mistakenly include words that users use in their searches in this list. When checking for an ad, you should keep this in mind, and be very careful when compiling a list of requests.
Ads are blocked by AdBlock
You may be using a special program or browser plugin that blocks intrusive ads. To see the ad, you must disable such an application (AdBlock). If for some reason this is not possible, you should use a different browser or view from another computer.
