A campaign that spends nothing feels like a broken product. It is almost never the budget. Raising a budget that is not being consumed changes nothing, and it is the first thing most people try.
Step 1: Ask for the diagnosis, not the numbers
Check my Google account performance and tell me why my [campaign name] campaign is not spending.
This pulls keyword-level diagnostics rather than a summary. What comes back covers quality score, first-page bid estimates, and whether keywords are eligible to show at all.
Step 2: Read the three usual causes
Your bid is below the first-page estimate. The most common cause by far. Your ad is technically eligible and never wins an auction. The diagnostic shows the estimated bid needed against what you are bidding.
Low quality score. Google charges you more, and shows you less, when the keyword, ad copy and landing page do not line up. A score of 3 or below on a keyword you care about needs the ad text and landing page brought closer to the search term.
Rarely shown due to low search volume. The keyword is too obscure to trigger. Nothing is broken, there simply is not enough demand. Replace it with a keyword that has real volume.
Step 3: Fix the actual cause
For bids below the estimate:
Raise the bid on those keywords to just above the first-page estimate.
For low quality score, change the ad and the page, not the bid. Raising the bid on a badly matched keyword makes you pay more for the same poor result.
For low search volume, go back to research:
Find keywords in my space with real search volume that I am not bidding on yet.
Step 4: Give it a day
Auction data does not update instantly. Change the bids, then check again the next day rather than the next hour. Changing bids repeatedly within a few hours mostly resets learning and teaches you nothing.
FAQ
Should I just raise the daily budget?
Not if the campaign is not consuming what it already has. An unspent budget means the campaign is not entering or winning auctions, and a larger unspent budget is still unspent.
How long should a new campaign run before I judge it?
Give it a few days of real delivery. If it has spent nothing at all in 24 hours, that is a delivery problem worth diagnosing now rather than waiting.
Does this work for Performance Max as well?
Account performance reads cover your campaigns generally. Keyword-level diagnostics are specific to Search, since PMax does not expose keyword bidding in the same way.
What if everything looks fine and it still will not spend?
Check the boring things: billing on the account, whether the campaign or ad group is paused, whether the ads were disapproved, and whether the geographic targeting actually includes people.