“Performance Max is not spending” covers three different situations: a campaign that has not started yet, a campaign that is allowed to spend but cannot find auctions worth entering, and a campaign that is blocked outright. They look identical in the budget column and need opposite responses — patience, a loosened constraint, or a repair. The checks below are in the order that settles which one you have, and each is something Google Ads documents rather than folklore.
An average daily budget is an average, not a ceiling: a campaign can spend up to twice it on a single day, and over a month it is limited to roughly 30.4 times it. A quiet Tuesday means nothing on its own. What does mean something is the Limited by budget status, which appears when the budget is low enough to hold the campaign back, and which comes with a recommended daily budget calculated from recent performance and settings.
Compare the month, not the day: if the monthly total is near the budget times the days elapsed, nothing is wrong
A budget raised in the middle of learning restarts it; raise it once, deliberately, rather than a little every morning
Check billing and account status first: a suspended account or a payment problem stops serving regardless of budget
A target CPA or target ROAS that is stricter than the account has ever achieved leaves few auctions worth entering, and the campaign quietly sits out. Google Ads says so through the bid strategy status rather than an error: Learning after a change, Limited when inventory, bid limits, budget or the strategy itself is the constraint, and Misconfigured when a conversion-based strategy has no usable conversion action — for instance when the action is not enabled or is not included in the Conversions column. Read that status before deciding the campaign is broken.
Google lists inactive or unverified conversion tracking among the reasons a Performance Max campaign does not run, and it is the first thing to check when the numbers look stranger than the settings explain. A conversion-based strategy with no incoming conversions has nothing to learn from; a tag that stopped firing after a site change looks exactly like a campaign that lost its audience. Our conversion tracking guide covers the statuses and what each means.
Narrow locations or languages, a long list of negative keywords, and campaign-level exclusions all shrink the pool of eligible auctions, and Google lists targeting that is too narrow among the causes of low traffic. Other campaigns in the same account compete for the same queries: a Search campaign with an identical eligible exact-match keyword is prioritised for that query, so a busy Search campaign can leave Performance Max with less to do than the budget suggests. Turning Final URL expansion off also reduces the searches the campaign can serve.
Performance Max builds ads from what you supply, so a thin asset group can only appear in a few formats. Google lists low creative asset coverage among the reasons for low traffic, and its optimisation guidance asks for an Excellent or Good Ad Strength with at least 20 text assets — 15 headlines and 5 descriptions — at least 7 images, being 3 landscape, 3 square and 1 portrait, and at least one video. Audience signals are suggestions that speed up learning, not a boundary; adding relevant ones helps the ramp-up.
Check account and billing status, then the campaign and asset group status, then the age of the campaign against the review and ramp-up windows above. Only then look at conversion tracking, the bid strategy status, the budget status, the targeting and the assets — in that order, because each one can explain what the next appears to show. Give any single change a week or more before judging it, and write down what you changed and when. Most rebuilt Performance Max campaigns are simply campaigns that were never given the time to finish learning.
Accuracy check: reviewed against current Google Ads Help documentation on 22 September 2026.
New or edited ads are reviewed for policy compliance, which Google says takes 24 to 48 hours, and Google recommends allowing 7 to 14 days for an automated bidding strategy to ramp up. A bid strategy can need around 50 conversion events or three conversion cycles to calibrate, and Google suggests running a new campaign for at least 6 weeks before judging it.
Not by itself. An average daily budget is an average, not a cap: a campaign can spend up to twice it on a single day and is limited over the month to about 30.4 times it. A day under budget only matters if the month as a whole stays far below.
Yes. A target that is stricter than the account can achieve leaves few auctions worth entering. Google Ads shows this through the bid strategy status, which can read Limited for bid limits, budget or the strategy itself, or Misconfigured when a conversion-based strategy has no usable conversion action.
It can. Google lists inactive or unverified conversion tracking among the reasons a Performance Max campaign does not run, and a conversion-based bid strategy has nothing to optimise toward without it. Check the conversion action status before changing budgets or targets.
Rarely, and not while it is still learning. Google advises against major modifications during the initial ramp-up, because every change to budget, bidding, goals, audiences or targeting can restart learning. Change one thing, wait, and read the result before changing the next.
Everything you need to run Performance Max yourself is here. It will spend whatever budget you give it, so if you would rather have someone keeping it honest, we can.
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