> ## 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, Taboola > Zero-Conversion Spend for Taboola 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 > Sum of spend on Taboola **campaigns** that recorded zero conversions across the entire window. The campaign-level twin of [Wasted Spend](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/taboola/wasted-spend) (which is publisher-level). A whole campaign with no conversions is a bigger problem than a single bad publisher; it usually means the campaign goal, audience, or creative is fundamentally misaligned with native inventory. **Excludes campaigns younger than 7 days** to avoid penalising still-learning smartBid runs. | | | | -------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | | **What it counts** | Spend (account currency) summed across campaigns where `conversions = 0` AND `clicks > 0` AND `campaign_age >= 7 days` over the 30-day window. | | **Cost basis** | Whatever the campaign was bidding on (CPC, CPM, smartBid CPA). | | **Currency** | Account currency. | | **Conversion attribution** | Click-through, last-click within Taboola's window. A campaign that drove clicks which converted via another paid channel is counted as zero-conversion (Taboola did not get the credit). | | **Attribution window** | 30-day click default (configurable 1, 30 days). On a 7-day window, more campaigns appear "zero-conversion" simply because the long-tail conversions have not yet posted; this card uses 30D for that reason. | | **Bot / invalid traffic** | IVT-filtered before billing. | | **Time window** | `30D`. Campaigns younger than 7 days are excluded. | | **Alert trigger** | `>$0 on any campaign >7D old`. Practical action threshold: any campaign with **>£500 spent and zero conversions across 7+ days** should be paused or fundamentally restructured. | | **Roles** | owner, marketing, finance | ## Calculation Calculated automatically from your Taboola data. See the At a glance summary above for what the metric tracks and the worked example below for a typical reading. ## Worked example The same UK supplements brand. Window 02 Apr 26 to 01 May 26. | Campaign | Age (days) | Spend (£) | Clicks | Conversions | Status | | ------------------------------------------- | ---------- | ---------- | --------- | ----------- | ----------------------- | | Article Distribution | 142 | 4,200 | 18,400 | 142 | OK | | Product Promotion (smartBid) | 92 | 6,800 | 22,100 | 412 | OK | | Premium Publisher (paused 12 Apr) | 67 | 2,400 | 9,800 | 68 | OK (paused) | | Lookalike Retargeting | 41 | 1,600 | 4,200 | 132 | OK | | **Vitamin D3 Awareness Campaign** | **22** | **820** | **2,800** | **0** | **ZERO-CONV ALERT** | | **Magnesium Newsletter Drop** | **14** | **480** | **1,400** | **0** | **ZERO-CONV ALERT** | | Probiotic Discovery (new) | 4 | 180 | 600 | 0 | Excluded (\<7d age) | | **Total zero-conversion spend (this card)** | | **£1,300** | **4,200** | **0** | **8.7% of total spend** | What's interesting: 1. **The Vitamin D3 Awareness campaign is the bigger problem.** £820 spent over 22 days with 2,800 clicks and zero conversions is a clear signal that something is wrong: the audience is right (people clicked) but the conversion tag did not fire. Most likely cause: the campaign is targeting an awareness goal in Backstage rather than conversions, so the Taboola pixel is not even configured to track purchases. **Action**: pause, switch goal to "conversions", reconfigure pixel events, restart with smartBid CPA bidding. 2. **Magnesium Newsletter Drop (£480) is more borderline.** 14 days is at the boundary of the alert threshold; native conversions can take 7, 14 days to surface. Wait until day 21, then act if still zero. The 1,400 clicks suggest the targeting works; the question is whether the landing page or pixel is breaking the conversion path. 3. **Probiotic Discovery (4 days old) is excluded by design.** SmartBid's learning phase is 50, 100 conversions; a 4-day-old campaign with 600 clicks is normal exploration. Do not flag as wasted; revisit at day 14. 4. **8.7% zero-conversion spend is a yellow flag.** Healthy native accounts run 3, 6%; this account has two distinct misconfigured campaigns. Fixing the Vitamin D3 pixel issue alone would drop the figure to 3.2%, well within healthy range. 5. **Don't confuse this card with [Wasted Spend](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/taboola/wasted-spend).** Wasted Spend is publisher-level (which sites within converting campaigns are wasting); this card is campaign-level (which whole campaigns are wasting). The two should be read together. Quick sanity tests: * One campaign zero-conv with high clicks = pixel or goal misconfiguration. Fix the campaign config first; do not pause. * One campaign zero-conv with low clicks = audience too narrow or bid too low. Widen targeting or raise bid. * Multiple campaigns zero-conv suddenly = global tracking outage. Check the pixel snippet across the site. * Zero-conv campaign older than 30 days = pause or restructure. Past learning, no signal, no value. * All campaigns under 7 days old = no data to act on; let the algorithm learn. ## Sibling cards merchants should reference together | Card | Why pair it with Zero-Conversion Spend | | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | [Taboola Wasted Spend](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/taboola/wasted-spend) | The publisher-level twin. This card identifies bad campaigns; that one identifies bad publishers within otherwise-good campaigns. Read together for the full picture. | | [Taboola Clicks vs Conversions](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/taboola/clicks-vs-conversions) | The pixel-health canary. If zero-conv campaigns have healthy click volumes, the issue is almost always a tracking or goal misconfiguration. | | [Taboola Total Spend](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/taboola/total-spend) | Context. £1,300 zero-conv on a £15k account is yellow; £1,300 on a £3k account is critical. | | [Taboola Conversions Trend](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/taboola/conversions-trend) | If account-level conversions are healthy but specific campaigns are zero-conv, the issue is campaign-config; if account-level conversions also dropped, suspect a global tracking outage. | | [Taboola Conversion Actions](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/taboola/conversion-actions-breakdown) | What conversion events does the campaign expect? Sometimes a campaign is set up to track an event that the site does not fire. | | [Outbrain Zero-Conversion Spend](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/outbrain/zero-conversion-spend) | If the same merchant has zero-conv on both networks, the issue is almost certainly site-side (pixel, checkout, goal config), not network-specific. | ## Reconciling against the vendor's own dashboard **Where to look in Taboola Backstage:** [Backstage → Campaigns → Performance](https://backstage.taboola.com/backstage/), sort the "Conversions" column ascending. Campaigns with zero conversions and >7 days of activity are the action set. Backstage does not surface "zero-conversion spend" as a single number; this card derives it. **Why our number may legitimately differ from a manual Backstage cut:** | Reason | Direction | Why | | ------------------------------ | ----------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | **Time zone** | Boundary days off | Backstage uses account time zone; this card uses UTC. Marginal at 30D. | | **Long-tail conversion lag** | Card runs slightly high | A campaign labelled zero-conv today may pick up 1, 2 conversions in days 7, 14. The 7-day age threshold is designed to mitigate but not eliminate this. | | **Attribution window changes** | Direction depends | Window changes reflow conversions retroactively. | | **Campaign age threshold** | None | Both this card and any reasonable manual analyst cut would exclude \<7-day-old campaigns. | | **Pixel vs CAPI dedup** | Marginal | Taboola dedupes pixel and server-side events; both this card and Backstage UI reflect deduplicated counts. | **Cross-connector reconciliation:** | Card | Expected relationship | What causes legitimate divergence | | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | [`outbrain.out_zero_conversion_spend`](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/outbrain/zero-conversion-spend) | Independent. If both fire simultaneously, suspect a site-side issue (pixel, checkout, goal config). | Different network campaigns; usually independent unless the issue is site-side. | | [`google_analytics.ga_revenue_by_channel`](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/google-analytics/revenue-by-channel) | Zero-conv campaigns should still show GA4 sessions if pixel fire is the issue (clicks land, GA4 fires, Taboola pixel does not). | Discrepancy here = pixel issue specifically; absent in GA4 = audience or landing page issue. | | [`shopify.total_revenue`](/nerve-centre/kpi-cards/shopify/total-revenue) | Zero-conv on Taboola does not necessarily mean zero-revenue on Shopify; the conversions may have fired but credited to other channels. | Multi-touch attribution complicates the read. | ## Known limitations / merchant FAQs **Should I just pause every zero-conversion campaign?** No, not without diagnosing first. A zero-conv campaign with healthy click volumes is almost always a pixel or goal misconfiguration; pausing destroys the audience signal you've already paid for. **Diagnose first**: (1) check the campaign's conversion-goal setting in Backstage; (2) verify the Taboola pixel fires on the order-confirmation page; (3) check that the audience is reaching the right landing page. If clicks are reasonable but conversions zero, fix the config and resume. Only pause campaigns that are both zero-conv and have low click volumes (audience too narrow / bid too low to find inventory). **A campaign has been zero-conv for 30 days, what now?** Pause it. After 30 days with 7+ days of clicks and zero conversions, the campaign has had every chance; native's 30-day attribution window means even the longest-tail conversions should have surfaced. Pause, restructure (new audience, new creative, new landing page), and relaunch as a fresh campaign rather than reactivating the old one (smartBid retains learning state and will not re-explore). **Why does this card exclude campaigns under 7 days old?** SmartBid's learning phase needs 50, 100 conversions before it stabilises; for a fresh campaign, 7 days is the minimum window where zero-conversions becomes diagnostic. Including \<7-day campaigns would create a constant stream of false alerts on perfectly normal new campaigns. **My zero-conversion spend dropped to zero, am I doing well?** Maybe. Zero on this card is healthy IF you also have multiple campaigns running. Zero on this card with only one or two campaigns running can mean you are too narrow; the algorithm is not exploring enough. Healthy native accounts run 5, 10 campaigns, of which 1, 2 may be zero-conv at any time as part of normal exploration cycle. **The same campaign has high spend and zero conversions but high engagement (CTR, time-on-site), should I keep it?** That is the classic upper-funnel signal: the audience is engaging with your content but not buying yet. Two paths: (1) accept that this is brand-awareness spend and move it to a brand-awareness budget line; (2) layer a retargeting campaign on the audience this campaign generated, the close usually comes on the retargeting layer. **Pure last-click measurement under-counts upper-funnel value**; treat the engagement as a leading indicator before pausing. **Why doesn't Taboola auto-pause zero-conversion campaigns?** Because zero-conv on a 14-day window is sometimes false (long-tail conversions not yet surfaced). Auto-pausing would kill campaigns that would have converted on day 18, 22. The platform errs toward letting smartBid keep exploring; the human judgement (this card surfaces the candidates) is the corrective. **The campaign has zero conversions but 5,000 clicks, what's most likely wrong?** In order: (1) **Pixel not configured for purchases.** The campaign is set to "Awareness" goal, so Taboola is not even tracking conversion events. Check campaign goal in Backstage. (2) **Pixel fires but the merchant didn't tag the right event.** The pixel is on the site but tracking page-views instead of purchases. (3) **Landing page broken.** Users click, land, bounce immediately; check landing page load time and form completion rate in GA4. (4) **Audience genuinely doesn't convert.** Less common; if the previous three are clean, the audience-product fit is wrong; pause and rebuild. **Can I trust the figure for "today" or "this week"?** Use 30-day for action. A 7-day window for this card is too noisy; native's conversion lag means 7-day zero-conv is mostly normal exploration. The 30-day figure is the actionable read. *** ### Tracked live in Vortex IQ Nerve Centre *Zero-Conversion Spend* is one of hundreds of KPI pulses Vortex IQ tracks across Taboola and 70+ other ecommerce connectors. Nerve Centre runs the detection layer; Vortex Mind investigates the cause when something moves; Ask Viq lets you interrogate any number in plain English. [Start for free](https://app.vortexiq.ai/login) or [book a demo](https://www.vortexiq.ai/contact-us) to see this metric running on your own data.