> ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.vortexiq.ai/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Zero-Conversion Spend, Google Ads > Zero-Conversion Spend for Google Ads stores. Tracked live in Vortex IQ Nerve Centre. How to read it, why it matters, and how to act on it. **Metrics type:** [Key Metrics](/nerve-centre/overview#metrics-types-explained) • **Category:** [Ad Platform](/nerve-centre/connectors#connectors-by-type) ## At a glance > Total spend on entire campaigns that produced zero primary conversions in the window. The campaign-level analogue of [Wasted Spend](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/google-ads/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. | What a paid-acquisition lead does with this: 1. **The £680 (2.5% of total spend) is fully recoverable** by pausing two ENABLED campaigns. Five-minute action. 2. **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](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/google-ads/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. 3. **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. 4. **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. 5. **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. Quick sanity tests: * 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](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/google-ads/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](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/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](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/google-ads/roas-by-campaign) | Where you redeploy the recovered budget (toward the higher-ROAS rows). | | [Google Ads All Conversions](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/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](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/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](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/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](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/google-ads/conversion-drop-alert) | If multiple campaigns suddenly hit zero conversions, the cause is account-wide (tag breakage or attribution shift), not per-campaign. | | [Google Ads Quality Score](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/google-ads/quality-score-distribution) | 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](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/google-analytics/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](https://ads.google.com/aw/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](https://ads.google.com/aw/reports) 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. **Why our number may differ from Google Ads UI (rare):** | 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. | **Why the BUSINESS metric often differs (the IMPORTANT one):** A campaign marked here as "zero conversions" may have: * **Driven conversions Google's pixel missed.** Tag-fire failures on specific landing pages cause pixel under-reporting. Cross-check against [Clicks vs Conversions](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/google-ads/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](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/google-ads/all-conversions) for the campaign before pausing. Cross-connector reconciliation: | Card | Expected relationship | What causes legitimate divergence | | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | [`google_analytics.ga_revenue_by_channel`](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/google-analytics/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`](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/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`](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/bigcommerce/total-revenue) | Same logic as Shopify. | Same as Shopify. | ## Known limitations / merchant FAQs **My zero-conversion spend is £0, is that good?** It usually means every ENABLED campaign got at least one conversion in 30 days; that's healthy. It can also mean you have very few campaigns running (no test campaigns, no Display, no Discovery), which may be over-cautious if you have growth headroom. **A new campaign is in this card with £200 spend, do I pause it?** Probably not yet. Smart Bidding needs 30-50 conversions to stabilise; pausing too early kills the test. Set a £500 spend cap and reassess at that point. If still zero conversions at £500, the test failed, pause. **My Display Remarketing campaign is here, but I think it's driving brand value, what now?** Open [All Conversions](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/google-ads/all-conversions) for the same campaign. If All Conversions > 0 (view-through assists), the campaign is doing brand-defence work and primary-only ROAS understates it. Decide based on the all-conversions read, not just this card. For most DTC brands, Display Remarketing is worth £200-£500/mo even at low primary-conversion rate; above that, scrutinise. **My ROAS by Campaign is fine, but this card is £900, why?** ROAS by Campaign only shows campaigns *with* conversions (you cannot compute ROAS on zero conversions, the denominator collapses). This card is the complement: campaigns excluded from ROAS rankings because they had zero. Always check both cards, the headline ROAS hides this £900 of bleed. **My zero-conversion spend rose from £200 to £900 month-on-month, what happened?** Three likely causes: (1) **Conversion-tracking regression on specific campaigns.** Check [Clicks vs Conversions](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/google-ads/clicks-vs-conversions) for those campaigns; if clicks held but conversions cratered, the tag broke. (2) **You launched test campaigns** that haven't found product-market fit. Normal but should be capped. (3) **Smart Bidding shifted spend** into broader audiences after Performance Max changes; review PMax asset signals. **Why is the threshold $500 not $0?** Any non-zero spend is technically wasted, but pausing on £20 of zero-conversion campaign spend wastes more management time than it saves. The £500 threshold is a recoverability heuristic: at that level, a 5-minute pause action recovers more than the cost of the analyst's time. **Multi-currency setup, how does this card work?** Google Ads accounts are single-currency. Multi-currency advertisers run separate accounts; this card is per-account, in account currency. The threshold is interpreted in account currency (£500 for GBP, €500 for EUR, \$500 for USD). **Can I trust the "today" zero-conversion spend?** No. Today's data is incomplete: most conversions take 1-4 hours to ingest, and some take much longer (cross-device, view-through windows). A campaign showing zero conversions today often picks up 2-3 conversions by tomorrow morning. Use the 30-day window, not today. **My PMax campaign is in this card, can I pause individual placements?** PMax has limited per-placement controls. Your levers: (1) tighten audience signals, (2) lower the budget cap, (3) account-level negative keywords (via Google Ads support). If a PMax campaign has £1,000+ spend and zero primary conversions over 30 days, the campaign's signals or asset quality are wrong; rebuilding is usually faster than tuning. **Why aren't paused campaigns in this card?** By design. Paused campaigns are not currently spending, so there's nothing to recover by pausing them again. The card focuses on ENABLED campaigns where action recovers budget. *** ### Tracked live in Vortex IQ Nerve Centre *Zero-Conversion Spend* is one of hundreds of KPI pulses Vortex IQ tracks across Google Ads and 70+ other ecommerce connectors. 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