I've had clients and prospective clients come to me with this problem recently. They set up their Google Ad Campaign and set their desired cost per acquisition (CPA) using the Target CPA (tCPA) bid strategy, now they figured it was just a matter of kicking back to watch all of the leads come pouring in.

As many have discovered, it's not that easy. You see, tCPA is considered an automated bidding strategy that leverages Google's machine learning algorithms. If you start off a new campaign with this type of bid strategy, it's very common to see low ad impressions. This is usually due to the campaign being put into "Learning Mode".

Setting your Target CPA too low can also result in the campaign struggling to get ad impressions, clicks and conversions.

If you're going to start a campaign off with Max Conversions Target CPA bid strategy, you want to start with a higher Target CPA until it's generating some conversions. Once it's hitting the Target CPA consistently, you can gently start to lower the Target CPA to your desired CPA.

I personally like to start off my campaigns using Manual CPC or Maximize Clicks bid strategy. Once the campaign starts generating conversion data, Google's machine learning algorithm will start to learn which visitors are more likely to result in a conversion.

At that point, I then experiment with more automated bid strategies like tCPA, Maximize Conversions, and Target Return On Ad Spend (tROAS) if you're able to track sales revenue with your campaign.

If you're still experiencing low ad impressions, it may be because you're starting your campaign with match types that are too conservative and barely have any search volume.

Or your overall bid is just too low for the keywords you're bidding on.