Case study
The silent conversion-tracking failure
viaCMO did not fix this account. It caught what the owner could not see — conversion tracking had stopped firing, and the account was still paying for ads that could no longer be measured.
- Business
- An Australian industrial supplier
- Industry
- Industrial supplies
- Plan
- Action
- Ad spend
- ~$2,000–$2,800 / month
- Onboarded
- 29 May 2026
A broken conversion tag does not raise an alarm. The campaigns keep serving and the budget keeps spending. The only thing that stops is the measurement, and nothing inside the account flags that it has.
It is one of the most expensive failures in Google Ads, precisely because it is invisible. The dashboard still loads and the reports still arrive. The number that decides whether the spend is working has quietly gone to zero, and the account gives no reason to look.
Healthy at onboarding
At sign-up on 29 May 2026, viaCMO ran its 25-point pre-audit. The account scored 21 out of 25. Conversion tracking was firing normally, with 7 conversions recorded across the trailing 28 days.
The welcome report graded the account B — 62 out of 100 — on $1,992 of spend and 7 conversions, a cost per acquisition of about $285. Nothing on the account called for attention.
Welcome report
62/100
7 conversions recorded in the last 28 days. Tracking appears to be working.
What viaCMO caught
Over the next 19 days, the same check moved through three states. Each was dated. Each named the problem in the account’s own plain language. The overall score barely moved, from 21 to 19, but the conversion count told the real story: 7, then 1, then 0.
- Passing29 May 20267
Conversions · trailing 28 days
Onboarding pre-audit · 21/25
Conversions firing — Passing7 conversions recorded in the last 28 days. Tracking appears to be working.
At onboarding, the check passed. Seven conversions in the trailing 28 days, and tracking confirmed as working.
- Warning10 Jun 20261
Conversions · trailing 28 days
Health check · 21/25
Conversions firing — WarningOnly 1 conversion recorded in the last 28 days. This is low volume for reliable optimisation.
Twelve days later, the routine health check still scored 21 out of 25 overall, but the conversions check had flipped to a warning. Conversions had fallen from 7 to 1. In the report covering that window, the account had spent $2,237 to record a single conversion.
- Critical17 Jun 20260
Conversions · trailing 28 days
Health check · 19/25
Conversions firing — CriticalNo conversions recorded in the last 28 days. Conversion tracking may not be firing correctly.
One week later, the score dropped to 19 out of 25 and the check escalated to critical. The window from 20 May to 17 June recorded $2,556 in spend and zero conversions: an entire 28-day period of ad spend with nothing to measure it against. Without the health check, the owner would have had no reason to know.
$0
spent, with 0 conversions recorded
20 May – 17 June 2026
The fault was not in the Google Ads account
The diagnosed cause was not in Google Ads at all. It was on the business’s own website. The site’s Content-Security-Policy had begun blocking Google’s conversion-tracking domains, so the conversion tags could no longer fire.
No change to bids, budgets, or keywords inside the account would have found this or fixed it. The failure lived in the website’s server configuration, off-platform and invisible to anyone looking only at Google Ads.
viaCMO has no write-access to the website and made no change to it. Its role was to make an off-platform failure impossible to ignore, and to name it precisely enough that the owner could act on it.
What the account showed
- Campaigns serving as normal
- Budget spending in full
- No errors or alerts inside Google Ads
- Dashboard loading as usual
What was actually happening
- Conversion tags blocked by the website’s CSP
- Every conversion going unrecorded
- 28 days of spend with nothing to measure it against
- viaCMO’s conversions check escalated to critical
The recovery
Acting on the critical signal, the owner corrected the site’s Content-Security-Policy so Google’s conversion domains were allowed again. This was the owner’s fix, made on their own website. viaCMO changed nothing in the account.
The recovery is in the production data, not just the anecdote.
- Conversions resumed around 21 June 2026.
- The primary lead-form conversion was confirmed firing again by 24 June 2026.
- The 26 June report recorded 7 conversions; the 30 June monthly report sustained 7, at a CPA of about $402.
| Report | Period | Grade | Score | Spend | Conversions | CPA |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Welcome | 1–29 May 2026 | B | 62 | $1,992 | 7 | $285 |
| Ad-hoc | 12 May – 9 Jun 2026 | C+ | 50 | $2,237 | 1 | $2,237 |
| Ad-hoc | 20 May – 17 Jun 2026 | C | 47 | $2,556 | 0 | — |
| Ad-hoc | 29 May – 26 Jun 2026 | D+ | 35 | $2,771 | 7 | $396 |
| Monthly | 2–30 Jun 2026 | D+ | 32 | $2,811 | 7 | $402 |
Reading the grade
The grade keeps falling — B to D+ — even as conversions recover. That is correct, not a fault. viaCMO grades on a trailing 28-day window, which still includes the weeks that recorded zero conversions. Recovery shows first in the conversion count. The grade follows on a lag, as the dead period rolls out of the window.
Accountability, not access
viaCMO never touched the website, and did not need to. The value was independent monitoring that watched the account, noticed the failure, and named it, dated and specific and in plain English, before a full quarter of budget went unmeasured.
Conversion tracking breaking is one of the most expensive silent failures in Google Ads: the spend continues, the measurement stops, and nothing throws an error. An audit tells you where you stand once. Ongoing accountability is what catches the account going quiet.
It is the smoke detector, not the fire brigade. Noticing the fire is the job viaCMO does. Putting it out was the owner’s, and they had the signal they needed to do it.
viaCMO couldn’t fix their website. It made sure they knew they had to.