At a glance
Total spend on entire campaigns that produced zero primary conversions in the window. The campaign-level analogue of Wasted Spend: if Wasted Spend hunts bad search terms inside healthy campaigns, this card hunts whole campaigns that are not earning their place.
| The formula | SUM(metrics.cost_micros) ÷ 1,000,000 aggregated across FROM campaign rows where metrics.conversions = 0 AND campaign.status = 'ENABLED' AND cost_micros > 0. Only campaigns that spent in the window without converting contribute. |
| GAQL resource + metric | FROM campaign with WHERE campaign.status = 'ENABLED' AND metrics.conversions = 0 AND metrics.cost_micros > 0. Returns one row per zero-conversion campaign. |
| Account currency (single by design) | Account currency from customer.currency_code. Multi-currency advertisers run separate accounts per currency; this card is single-currency per account. |
| Conversion attribution model (configurable) | Whatever you have set in Google Ads. DDA is default for new accounts, Last click for older. Switching model can flip a campaign in or out of “zero conversions” if a previously credited conversion is now uncredited. |
| View-through inclusion (excluded by default) | Uses primary conversions only. A campaign that drove 50 view-through conversions but zero click-through conversions appears here as fully wasted, even though Google’s All-conversions view would credit it. This is intentional for Search/Shopping; for Display/YouTube it can be misleading, see FAQs. |
| Bot / IVT filter | Google’s Invalid Click Filter strips bots before reporting. Residual IVT is more pronounced on Display Remarketing, so Display campaigns may appear in this card slightly more than they should. |
| Micros conversion | cost_micros divided by 1,000,000 to get account-currency units. |
| Real-time vs ingestion lag | 1-4 hour lag. A campaign with a conversion in the last hour may still appear in this card briefly. Re-check before pausing on the same day. |
| MCC aggregation | Per child account only, the engine does not sum zero-conversion spend across MCC children. |
| Time window | 30D. Shorter windows over-flag campaigns that simply did not get a conversion-cycle worth of clicks; the 30-day window is the minimum statistically defensible read for most accounts. |
| Alert trigger | > $0 of zero-conversion campaign spend triggers a flag; > $500/30D triggers an action prompt. Drives sentiment_key: zero_conversion_spend. |
| Roles | owner, marketing, finance |
Calculation
Calculated automatically from your Google Ads data. See the At a glance summary above for what the metric tracks and the worked example below for a typical reading.Worked example
A UK fashion brand with £27,400 of total Google Ads spend over the 30-day window covering 14 Mar 26 to 12 Apr 26. The card flags £680 of spend across two zero-conversion campaigns.| Campaign | Status | Spend | Conversions | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Display Remarketing - Past Visitors | ENABLED | £420 | 0 | Below-volume: 1,200 impressions, 12 clicks. Audience too small. Pause or merge. |
| Search - “vintage 90s style” | ENABLED | £260 | 0 | Inventory mismatch. Brand sells contemporary, not vintage. Was launched as a test, never delivered. Pause. |
| Search - “summer dress” | ENABLED | £4,200 | 87 | NOT in this card (87 conversions). Healthy. |
| Search - “branded keywords” | ENABLED | £210 | 14 | NOT in this card (14 conversions). Healthy. |
| PMax - Apparel | ENABLED | £18,400 | 482 | NOT in this card. Healthy. |
| Total this card | £680 | 0 | 2.5% of total spend. |
- The £680 (2.5% of total spend) is fully recoverable by pausing two ENABLED campaigns. Five-minute action.
- Display Remarketing zero-conversion is the awkward case. A small remarketing campaign (£420 / 30D) at zero conversions could be (a) genuinely unprofitable, (b) too small an audience to ever convert, or (c) driving view-through conversions invisible to this card. Cross-check All Conversions for the same campaign before pausing. If All Conversions also shows zero, pause immediately. If it shows 8-12 view-through, the campaign is doing brand-defence work and the £420/mo may be defensible.
- The “vintage 90s” test campaign is a textbook learning about test-budget hygiene. Set a £200 spend cap on test campaigns, auto-pause at zero conversions after that. Otherwise these creep along bleeding for months.
- Spend > £500 on a zero-conversion campaign is rarely OK. At that level you’ve given Smart Bidding enough volume to learn; if it cannot find a conversion, the campaign’s targeting or creative is broken, not under-optimised.
- Compare to last period. If this card was £200 last 30D and £680 this 30D, something new went wrong. If it has been £600-£700 every month for a year, you have a stable bleed pattern, sweep it monthly.
- Card is zero: account is well-curated. (Or: every campaign got at least one conversion by chance.)
- Card is > 5% of total spend: open it now, pause the worst offender.
- A single campaign at > £1,000 zero-conversion: check if conversion tracking is broken on its landing pages first, before pausing. See Clicks vs Conversions.
- New campaign in learning phase showing zero conversions on £100 spend: not in this card yet (probably), but track it. Set a £200 cap to auto-pause.
- Card spikes during promo cycles: bargain-hunter clicks did not convert, expected, do not over-react.
Sibling cards merchants should reference together
| Card | Why pair it with Zero-Conversion Spend |
|---|---|
| Google Ads Wasted Spend | The keyword/search-term level analogue. This card finds dead campaigns; that one finds dead queries inside live campaigns. |
| Google Ads ROAS by Campaign | Where you redeploy the recovered budget (toward the higher-ROAS rows). |
| Google Ads All Conversions | Critical sanity-check before pausing a Display campaign. If All Conversions > 0 but primary = 0, the campaign is driving view-through value. |
| Google Ads Clicks vs Conversions | If clicks held but conversions cratered for a campaign, the cause may be tag failure rather than campaign quality. Check before pausing. |
| Google Ads Spend by Campaign | Context for the absolute number, a £680 zero-conversion bleed in a £30k account is small; in a £3k account it is one-fifth. |
| Google Ads Conversion Drop | If multiple campaigns suddenly hit zero conversions, the cause is account-wide (tag breakage or attribution shift), not per-campaign. |
| Google Ads Quality Score | A campaign with low Quality Score keywords pays premium CPCs for irrelevant traffic, this is the underlying cause of many zero-conversion campaigns. |
| GA4 Revenue by Channel | Independent check. If GA4 shows revenue from a campaign Google Ads marks zero-conversion, the pixel is misfiring on that campaign’s landing pages. |
Reconciling against the vendor’s own dashboard
Where to look in Google Ads UI: Google Ads > Campaigns, filter by Status = Enabled, sort Conversions ascending. Campaigns with Conv. = 0 and Cost > 0 in the date range are the rows this card sums. The total at the bottom should match this card to within 1-2%. Google Ads > Reports > Predefined > Performance > Campaign gives the same view in report form, useful for downloading the list. Other Google Ads views that look like the same number but aren’t:- Conv. = 0 with Status = Paused/Removed: not in this card. Past zero-conversion campaigns no longer running aren’t draining current budget.
- All conv. = 0: a stricter filter. Some Display campaigns will pass the primary-conversions filter (zero) but fail the all-conversions filter (have view-through). Those are NOT in this card under primary-only logic.
- Lost IS (rank/budget): a coverage problem, not a conversion problem.
- Predefined > Account performance: account-rolled view; misses campaign-level breakdown.
| Reason | Direction of divergence |
|---|---|
| Real-time event-ingestion lag (1-4 hour). A campaign with a conversion in the last hour may still appear here. | This card may show ~5-10% more zero-conversion spend than the live Google Ads view; corrects within 4 hours. |
| Attribution-model change mid-window. Switching DDA <-> Last click can flip a campaign in or out of zero-conversion status. | Both this card and the UI re-render with new model; no drift. |
| Currency. Both use account currency. | None. |
| Campaign status changes mid-window (PAUSED -> ENABLED). The card uses current status; the UI snapshots historical. | Marginal, only matters if a campaign was toggled. |
- Driven conversions Google’s pixel missed. Tag-fire failures on specific landing pages cause pixel under-reporting. Cross-check against Clicks vs Conversions and the commerce platform’s UTM-tagged orders.
- Driven offline conversions (phone, in-store) the merchant doesn’t import into Google Ads. Common for services/B2B, less common for ecom.
- Driven multi-touch paths where Google Ads was an early click and got no last-click credit. The session value is captured by the closing channel. Cross-check with GA4 path analysis before pausing.
- Driven conversions outside the attribution window. Default 7-day click window per conversion action; a high-consideration product (jewellery, furniture) may convert at day 14+ and never be attributed back.
- Driven view-through assists that the primary-conversions filter excludes. For Display Remarketing especially, this can be material; check All Conversions for the campaign before pausing.
| Card | Expected relationship | What causes legitimate divergence |
|---|---|---|
google_analytics.ga_revenue_by_channel (Paid Search/Shopping) | If GA4 credits revenue from a campaign this card marks zero-conversion, pixel under-reporting is the likely cause. | Pixel misfire, longer attribution windows in GA4. |
shopify.total_revenue (UTM-filtered to the campaign’s UTM) | Should be approximately zero for any campaign in this card. | If Shopify shows revenue, the conversion pixel on those landing pages is broken. |
bigcommerce.total_revenue | Same logic as Shopify. | Same as Shopify. |