What's The Problem? Troubleshooting A Common PPC Issue

It’s happened to all of us - you log into your account to find that a campaign has stopped serving. Yesterday it was ticking along nicely and now, for some reason, it’s no longer working and you’re missing out on traffic and revenue. It’s a common problem faced by account managers and an equally common problem posed in job interviews. So what are your next steps?

1) Make Sure Everything Is Turned On

I know, you’ve been doing this job for years and managing millions of pounds in spend. I get it.

Even so, take five minutes to look through the account and make sure that all your campaigns, ad groups, keywords and ads are actually enabled. Things can slip through the cracks and every now and then a campaign that shouldn’t have been paused is switched off.

2) Check Your Bids & Budget

We’re all working towards a set budget and towards the end of the month things can become tight. Look at the account budget to make sure you haven’t exhausted the total monthly spend and your campaigns still have money available. In an ideal world, you’d be on top of your budgeting and would have flagged that you’re close to 100%, but the next best thing is to come to your client with a solution and a recommended amount to get things moving again.

Similarly, take a look at your bids. When you’re managing multiple campaigns on a tight budget sometimes bids can be lowered beneath the point where ads are actually able to serve. If things don’t look right, push up your bids or bid strategy targets to ensure they’re set at a level where your campaign can work effectively.

3) Ad & Keyword Disapprovals

Even on an account that’s been running for years, ads and keywords can occasionally be disapproved out of the blue for reasons that don’t make sense to anyone but the bot who automatically flagged them. Filter your keywords and ads by status to check for any disapprovals and send them through for manual review. If you have a dedicated account rep, even better! Send them an email asking for a priority review to ensure any impact is minimised.

4) Look At Your Automated Rules & Scheduling

Automated rules make account management much easier, but they can cause problems if they run when they shouldn’t. Take a look at the rules set up in your account to make sure nothing has been triggered incorrectly & remove or adjust them as needed to fix the problem.

Similarly, ad scheduling can cause problems if it’s applied incorrectly. Check the scheduling in the campaign settings to make sure that your campaign is running when it should be.

5) Check The Change History

Keeping track of all the changes made in an account is tough. The Change History is your friend here with a detailed list of every single change made in the account, when it was made and who made it. If you’ve looked through the options above and are still stuck, filter the change history to the specific campaign and see if you can identify anything in the past few days that might have led to the campaign stopping serving.

If you’re working as part of a team this is particularly helpful as you’ll be able to see any changes your colleagues might have made that you weren’t aware of.

6) Look Outside The Account

If you’ve looked through your account and nothing stands out to you, the problem might lie somewhere else. The best step here is to go to your client’s website and make sure that it’s active and hasn’t had any downtime overnight. A website going down will stop traffic from any campaigns pointed towards it and, while this should be flagged when you check ad disapprovals, you can never be too careful.

To make life easier, Google has created a 404 Checker Script that can automatically email you when any destination URLs lead to a 404 error, making it much easier to diagnose any problems.

7) Ask For Help

Run through all the steps above and still no closer to finding an answer? Ad revenue is the engine that drives all the major platforms and they have a vested interest in getting your campaign live again. Contact platform support with a detailed explanation of the problem, when it occurred and the steps you’ve taken to troubleshoot it and let them do the work for you. Often you’ll get a response within an hour outlining exactly what’s causing the problem and how to fix it.

With how complex digital campaigns can be, troubleshooting is just as much a part of campaign management as optimisation. When you spot a problem in your account, take a breath and then methodically work through any potential issues. Often it’s a quick fix to get your campaign performing like it should and there are plenty of support options available to you.

Need help with your ad account? Get in touch.