Most people think Google Ads or Amazon PPC “isn’t running” because something is
By Michael Erickson Facchin · June 22, 2026 · Curated by George's Blog
Most people think Google Ads or Amazon PPC “isn’t running” because something is broken.
In reality, in 90% of cases, nothing is broken.
The system is just filtering you out.
And there are only a few real reasons why your campaign is not serving impressions.
I like to group them into 4 practical layers.
The first layer is structure.
Your campaign might be “active”, but if ad groups or ads are paused, you’re invisible. I’ve seen accounts where campaigns were enabled, but 100% of ads inside were inactive. Zero delivery. Zero impressions. Zero chance of learning.
The second layer is eligibility.
Even if everything is switched on, your ads still have to pass review, policy checks, and approval cycles. A disapproved asset is not a warning sign. It’s a hard stop. No approval means no auction entry.
The third layer is constraints.
This is where most budget leaks and “no traffic” complaints actually come from.
Too low bids, too strict targeting, limited audiences, or budgets that are simply not competitive enough to win auctions.
You can be perfectly set up and still not show, just because you’re not aggressive enough to enter the auction in the first place.
The fourth layer is data dependency.
Automated bidding systems don’t work without signal. If conversion tracking is weak, delayed, or missing volume, the system slows down delivery. Not because it’s broken, but because it’s blind.
And then there’s the part most people ignore entirely: competition.
Even if everything is perfect on your side, you are still competing in a live auction. Someone else is always willing to pay more, convert better, or have stronger relevance.
So when someone says “my ads are not running”, the real question is not what’s wrong.
It’s where exactly the system is filtering you out:
Structure, eligibility, constraints, data, or competition?
Because each layer has a completely different fix.