Few things are more frustrating than building out a Google Ads campaign, only to search for your own ad and find nothing. This episode of Marketing tackles that exact scenario, drawing on this in-depth guide to diagnosing why Google Ads stop showing to walk advertisers through a systematic, prioritised troubleshooting process — from the embarrassingly simple to the surprisingly technical.

Here's what the episode covers:

• Billing issues as the first checkpoint — an expired card or outdated payment details silently halts all ad delivery, and it's the quickest fix on the list.
• Ad rank and why campaigns lose auctions — how bid amount, quality score, expected click-through rate, and landing page experience combine to determine whether your ad even enters the running.
• Quality score unpacked — why Google's 1–10 keyword score matters so much, what drags it down, and how tightening ad group structure around focused keyword themes can reverse the damage.
• Landing page experience as a ranking factor — slow load times, poor mobile optimisation, and a mismatch between ad copy and page content all feed directly into quality score and suppress visibility.
• Negative keyword conflicts — how an overzealous exclusion list can accidentally block your own ads from competing, and how to audit for these hidden suppressions.
• Budget limits, low search volume, geo-targeting, and account reviews — a rapid-fire sweep of the remaining culprits that quietly drain impressions without obvious error messages.

The episode closes with a practical checklist: confirm billing, verify ad status, audit ad rank signals, cross-check negative keywords, review budget and scheduling, and validate location and language targeting. The Google Ads Ad Preview tool gets a specific shout-out as an essential, impression-safe diagnostic resource.

For more on building a focused paid media strategy, don't miss the episode Why Marketing on Every Social Media Platform Isn't a Success Strategy — a useful companion for anyone thinking critically about where and how to concentrate ad spend.

PPC