Why Your Financial Adviser Google Ads Are Not Spending: 8 Things to Check

Check first. This is the most common blocker for new financial services accounts and the easiest to miss.

Google requires two separate verifications for UK financial advertisers:

Financial Services Verification -- confirms your FCA authorisation. Without this, your ads for regulated products will not serve. Check your account under Tools > Verification.

Advertiser Identity Verification -- confirms your business identity. Google may restrict serving until this is complete, even if your Financial Services Verification is approved.

For appointed representatives, Financial Services Verification must be initiated by your principal firm. You cannot complete it yourself.

Diagnostic: Go to Tools & Settings > Verification. Are both verifications complete? If either shows "Pending" or "Action required," that is likely your primary blocker.

Even with verification complete, new accounts face Limited Ad Serving -- a trust-based restriction that throttles impression volume until Google is satisfied the account is legitimate.

This affects financial services accounts disproportionately because Google classifies financial products as a sensitive advertising category with elevated fraud risk.

Diagnostic: Check your campaign's impression share in the Columns menu (add "Search impression share" and "Search lost IS (rank)" columns). If impression share is very low but "lost IS (rank)" is also low, the issue is likely serving restrictions rather than bid competition. An account under Limited Serving may show 2-5% impression share despite adequate bids.

What to do: Maintain consistent daily spend, keep ads compliant, and wait. Trust builds over 2-6 weeks of steady, clean activity. Do not create new accounts or make dramatic changes.

Financial services keywords are among the most expensive on Google. If your bids are set for a general B2C auction rather than a regulated-services auction, you may never enter the top positions where ads actually receive clicks.

Typical CPCs for UK financial adviser keywords:

• Pension advice: £35-£55
• Financial adviser + location: £15-£40
• Equity release: £40-£65
• Mortgage broker: £8-£25
• IFA near me: £20-£45

If your maximum CPC bid is £5 on keywords where the auction minimum is £15-£20, your ads simply will not appear.

Diagnostic: Check the "Top of page bid (first position)" estimate in the Keywords tab. Compare this to your actual bids or your Target CPA/ROAS targets. If Google's estimated first-page bid is 3-5x higher than your bid, you are priced out of the auction.

What to do: Either increase bids to competitive levels or narrow your targeting (fewer keywords, tighter geography) so your budget can support competitive bids on a smaller set of auctions.

Automated bidding strategies (Target CPA, Target ROAS, Maximise Conversions with a target) use historical conversion data to decide how much to bid in each auction. If your target is too ambitious relative to what the data suggests is achievable, Google will simply stop entering auctions because it calculates that no bid level can hit your target profitably.

This is particularly common when:

• You set a Target CPA based on what you want to pay (£50) rather than what the market costs (£200+)
• The account has fewer than 30 conversions in the past 30 days, so Google lacks sufficient data to bid intelligently
• You recently changed your conversion action, resetting the learning period

Diagnostic: Check your bid strategy report (click on the strategy name in your campaign settings). Look for "Limited by budget" or "Limited by bid strategy" status messages. If Google reports "Learning" for more than two weeks, or the strategy consistently underspends, your targets are likely too tight.

What to do: Temporarily switch to Maximise Clicks with a max CPC cap, or set a Target CPA 30-50% above what you ideally want. Once volume stabilises and data accumulates, gradually tighten your targets. Google needs room to learn before it can optimise.

Some financial niches simply do not have enough search volume to support the impression levels you expect. "Inheritance tax planning adviser Edinburgh" might have 20 searches per month. With 15% impression share during a ramp-up period, that is 3 impressions.

Diagnostic: Check the "Search volume" column in the Keywords tab. Keywords flagged as "Low search volume" are effectively paused by Google -- they will not trigger ads until search volume increases. Also check your Search Terms report: if it is empty or nearly empty, no one is searching for what you are targeting.

What to do: Broaden your keyword set. Use phrase match or broad match on your core terms. Add related queries that capture the same intent with different wording. Consider whether your geographic targeting is so narrow that it filters out most of the available search volume.

A common approach for local advisers is to target a 10-mile radius around their office. Depending on your location, this can dramatically reduce available search volume -- especially for niche financial keywords.

A 10-mile radius around a town of 80,000 people, targeting "pension transfer advice," might produce 5-10 searches per month. Combined with Limited Serving on a new account, that is effectively zero impressions.

Diagnostic: Check your location targeting in campaign settings. Calculate roughly how much of the UK population falls within your target area. If you are targeting less than 500,000 people on niche keywords, volume will be extremely limited.

What to do: For regulated financial advice (which is not location-dependent in the way a restaurant is), consider widening geographic targeting to your region or nationally. You can always qualify location during the enquiry process. The point of the ad is to start a conversation -- you do not need the prospect to be within driving distance of your office for the first call.

Check whether you have inadvertently restricted when and where your ads appear.

Ad scheduling: If your campaigns only run Monday-Friday 9am-5pm, you are missing evening and weekend searches. Financial planning research happens disproportionately outside business hours -- people research pension options and mortgage rates after work and at weekends.

Device adjustments: A -100% mobile bid adjustment means your ads never appear on mobile devices. While desktop conversion rates are typically higher for financial services, mobile still generates significant search volume and legitimate enquiries. A -50% adjustment reduces mobile bids; -100% eliminates them entirely.

Diagnostic: Check Ad Schedule and Devices in your campaign settings. Look for any bid adjustments that might be suppressing traffic on specific times or devices.

What to do: Unless you have specific data showing certain times or devices perform badly, start with no restrictions. Optimise based on your own performance data, not assumptions.

Overzealous negative keyword lists can block the very traffic you want. This happens when:

• Negative keywords are added at broad match when they should be exact match (negative broad match "free" blocks any query containing the word "free," including "free initial consultation pension adviser")
• Shared negative keyword lists from other campaigns or industries contain terms relevant to your financial services campaign
• Automated scripts or third-party tools have added negatives based on rules that do not account for your specific niche

Diagnostic: Review your negative keyword lists at both the campaign and account level. Cross-reference them against your target keywords. Use the Google Ads Keyword Planner to check whether your target queries are being blocked by negatives.

What to do: Remove any negatives that conflict with your positive keywords. Use exact match negatives where possible to avoid unintended blocking. Review shared negative lists carefully -- a list designed for a mortgage campaign may not be appropriate for a pension campaign.

Most underspending campaigns have one primary cause, not five. Work through the checks above and identify which category your problem falls into:

POLICY / TRUST: Verification incomplete or Limited Serving active. Fix: complete verification, maintain consistent activity, wait for trust to build.

BIDDING: Target CPA too aggressive, max CPC too low, or bidding strategy lacks conversion data. Fix: relax targets, increase bids, or switch to manual CPC temporarily.

TARGETING: Keywords too narrow, geography too tight, or ad scheduling too restrictive. Fix: broaden match types, expand location targeting, remove scheduling restrictions.

DEMAND: Not enough people are searching for your specific keywords in your target area. Fix: broaden keyword themes, expand geography, or accept that your niche requires patience.

NEGATIVE CONFLICT: Your negative keywords are blocking legitimate traffic. Fix: audit and prune negative lists.

If you are running adviser lead generation campaigns and multiple checks above show problems, fix the policy and verification issues first. Nothing else matters until Google is willing to serve your ads at full capacity.