Skip this page if Google has suspended your whole account for a policy violation or for suspicious payment activity. A banner across the top of the account says so, and the fix is an appeal through Google's own form, not any of the checks below. Also skip it if you never finished setup and no campaign exists yet. Everyone else, whose campaign exists but whose ads are not showing, can use the rest.
Sort your problem into one of three buckets
"Not running" covers three different situations, and each has a different cure. In the first, Google has stopped the ad: it is paused, disapproved, or blocked by billing. In the second, the ad is allowed to run but almost never wins an auction. In the third, the ad runs but not where or when you expected, so you never see it. Work out which bucket you are in before changing anything, because edits made in the wrong bucket often make the real problem harder to spot.
Begin with billing and account-level notices
Open the account and look for any banner or notification before you look at campaigns. A declined card, an expired payment method, or a payment profile that needs verification will stop every campaign at once. Business owners lose weeks here because the warning email went to an address nobody reads. Check the billing summary, confirm the card on file is current, and look at the email address on the payment profile.
Read the status column like a diagnosis
Go campaign by campaign, then ad group by ad group, then ad by ad. Each level has its own status. A campaign can say Eligible while its only ad says Disapproved, which means nothing is showing. Hover over the status to see the stated reason. Common ones are Paused, Ended (an end date you set and forgot), Limited by budget, Disapproved, Under review, and Campaign pending. Under review is normal after any new ad or big edit, so wait for it to clear before you change more.
| What you see | Likely meaning | First move |
|---|---|---|
| Paused or Ended | Someone switched it off, or the end date passed | Turn it on or clear the end date |
| Disapproved ad | A policy rule blocked the ad | Open the policy detail, edit the ad, resubmit |
| Under review | Google is still checking the ad | Wait, and avoid piling on new edits |
| Eligible but zero impressions | Allowed to run but not winning auctions | Check keywords, bids, and targeting |
| Limited by budget | Money runs out before the day does | Raise the budget or narrow the targeting |
| Billing issue notice | Payment failed or needs verification | Fix the payment method |
Disapproved ads are usually fixable
Most disapprovals come from a few causes: a landing page that is broken or slow to load, claims the policy treats as misleading, restricted categories such as health or financial services, and capital letters or punctuation that look like shouting. Open the ad, read the stated reason, and fix that exact thing. Then check the page the ad points to by opening it on your phone. If it errors out, loads blank, or redirects somewhere odd, Google will not send traffic there.
When the ad is allowed but never wins
If statuses look clean and the Impr. column is still empty, the ad is probably losing the auction before it starts. Typical reasons are bids set too low for your market, a daily budget too small to cover even a handful of clicks, keywords marked Low search volume, or a narrow location and schedule. Our separate guides on Google Ads campaigns not getting impressions and on Google Ads not spending go deeper on this bucket, including negative keywords and the impression share report.
Check where and when the ad is allowed to appear
Look at the location setting. A radius drawn around the wrong address, or an option that excludes people physically in the area, can shrink your audience to nearly nobody. Next, check the ad schedule: a schedule that runs only on certain hours, combined with a small budget, can leave the ad invisible during the hours you happen to search. Also check the device and language settings. Finally, search for your own ad. Google does not guarantee it will show to you, and repeated searching can suppress it, so use the Ad Preview and Diagnosis tool in the account instead of refreshing results.
Few people search for this, but the problem is real
Across seven distinct queries that all ask some version of this question, the combined volume is about 50 searches a month. For the exact phrase, the busiest month in the last year was 2025-10 at 20 a month, and the quietest was 2025-09 at 10. That is a small crowd, so few people have written clear answers and most owners end up guessing. A small number does not mean the problem is rare or trivial. Rely on the account's own messages rather than on forum threads.
A sensible order for this week
First, confirm billing and look for account-wide notices. Second, check ad status at each level and read every stated reason. Third, open the landing page on a phone and fix anything broken. Fourth, review budget, bids, location, and schedule. Make one change at a time and write down the date, so you can tell which edit caused which result. If you change many settings at once and ads start running, you will not know why, and the problem may come back.
When outside help is worth paying for
Most of the steps above take an owner an afternoon. Outside help makes sense when the account is flagged for something you cannot decode, when a disapproval keeps returning after you fix it, when ads run but nobody can say whether they produce calls or sales because tracking is unclear, or when you have no time to learn the interface. A short account audit is a reasonable first step: it gives you a written list of what is wrong, and you can fix it yourself or hand it over.