Occasionally, you may find that your video campaigns don't receive impressions or stop serving. In this article, we’ll walk you through common (and not so common) reasons why your video campaigns may not be serving. While we can’t cover every possible issue that can lead to ads not serving, this article outlines the most common issues.
Use diagnostic insights to identify why your campaign isn't serving
Diagnostic insights highlight issues that may be limiting your campaign’s ability to serve. Diagnostic insights also provide recommendations on how to resolve these issues. Learn more About diagnostic insights.
Example: An advertiser hasn’t gained any conversions or traffic after creating a campaign. They use diagnostic insights to discover that their campaign isn’t serving because their assets are disapproved, and view a recommendation to fix these disapproved assets.
In this article
Check these items in your account first
The date range in Google Ads
Google Ads will show you performance data for the date range that you select. Make sure that the date range includes your campaign’s start and end dates. Keep in mind that the pre-configured date range settings (for example, 'Last 7 days') won’t include today’s date. Learn more about date ranges in Google Ads.
The status of your Google Ads account
If your account is suspended, or if you have a billing issue on your account, you won’t be able to run your ads until the problem is resolved. Keep in mind that if other campaigns in your account are running, you don’t have to check on the status of your Google Ads account.
Is your account suspended? Appeal an account suspension.
Are you having a billing issue? Resolve a declined payment in Google Ads.
Your campaign start date
If the start date of the campaign is in the future, then you won’t see any impressions until the campaign starts.
Your campaign total budget
If you’re using a campaign total budget (not a daily budget), make sure that the budget hasn’t been fully spent. Otherwise, your campaign won’t receive additional impressions, as the campaign will no longer run.
Ad reviews
After you create, edit or resume a campaign, it may take some time for the ad to begin running. Bear in mind that:
- Most ads are reviewed within 1 working day. However, some reviews take longer if the ad requires a more complex review.
- If your ad is under review for more than 2 business days, contact us for information.
- Google reserves the right to prioritise ad reviews or re-reviews to ensure the overall stability of system operations, or temporarily restrict ad serving to ensure policy compliance.
Delays in ad serving or reporting
In general, your campaign should start serving or show results within a day. If you still don’t see results after 3 business days, and you can't spot any issues that are also mentioned in the rest of this article, contact us.
Six common reasons
1. The ad status is something other than 'Eligible'
Ads that are 'strongly restricted' or 'moderately restricted' aren’t eligible to serve on YouTube and Google video partners.
Learn more about The ad status is something other than 'Eligible'.
2. Your bid is too low
While it may be possible to serve ads with a low bid, you won’t win as many auctions and may not see any impressions.
Learn more about Your bid is too low.
3. Your budget is too low or the bid is too close to the budget
A low budget can limit the results of your video campaign.
Learn more about Your budget is too low or the bid is too close to the budget.
4. Your targeting strategy is too complicated
You may think that targeting one YouTube channel or combining different types of targeting will allow you to reach your target audience, but you may actually be narrowing your overall target audience.
Learn more about Your targeting strategy is too complicated.
5. Your remarketing list may have issues
Check your remarketing list for any potential issues that prevent ads from serving.
Learn more about Your remarketing list may have issues.
6. Your YouTube channel isn't linked to your Google Ads account
Some YouTube channels have a video ad control setting enabled, stopping ads from running from unlinked Google Ads accounts. This setting is available for channels within the YouTube Partner Programme. With this feature, channels can prevent unlinked Google Ads accounts from displaying videos as ads.
Learn more about Link YouTube channels or videos and Google Ads accounts.
Other considerations
- If the country isn’t eligible for YouTube monetisation, the campaign can’t serve.
- Review your bid adjustment settings. For example, if your ad is only scheduled to run on Tuesday, and you have -100% bid adjustment set for Tuesday, your ad won’t serve.
- Review your content exclusions. For example, pairing a restrictive targeting strategy with a limited inventory, or excluding your ads from all digital content labels, may limit or prevent your ads from serving.
- Make sure not to exclude 'youtube.com' as a placement. If you’re using a list of shared placement exclusions, open up that list and do a quick search for 'youtube.com' within that list of placement exclusions.
If your campaign performance stops unexpectedly
Consider changes made to your campaign
If you lowered the bid, narrowed your targeting or changed something else in your campaign’s settings, it may cause the campaign to not perform as well as it used to. To isolate when changes were made to the campaign, check your change history and undo any previous changes that you made.
Check your campaign budget compared to your ad group spend
If an ad group in your campaign stops serving, but other ad groups are fine, check the daily budget for the entire campaign. If other ad groups are cutting into the daily budget, you may see an ad group stop serving.
Some ads show zero views in Google Ads reporting
Not all video ad formats are able to increase the paid view count you see in Google Ads, including bumper ads and non-skippable in-stream ads. If you’re still seeing impressions on your video ads, your campaign is serving as expected.
