What to check before you touch anything
- Is the value rule actually active and applied to the specific campaigns/audiences/locations/devices it was built for? Value rules need to be explicitly turned on at the campaign level, and a rule that's configured but not connected to the right campaigns simply won't fire.
- Is there a gap between "Conv. value" and the dedicated column that shows the specific impact of value rules? (Google Ads has a separate column reflecting just the value-rule-adjusted portion — pull that into your report explicitly, rather than relying on the general Conv. value figure, where the effect is buried inside an aggregated number.)
- Are you expecting the wrong kind of change? Value rules affect the conversion value used for bid optimization and reporting — they don't create new conversions or change the conversion count. A jump in "reported" ROAS shouldn't be expected automatically if the rule is simply adjusting how an already-existing conversion's value is calculated.
- Keep in mind that only one value-rule adjustment can apply to a given conversion at a time when multiple rules overlap (say, both an audience rule and a location rule apply simultaneously) — conflicting or overlapping rules may not behave as expected if you haven't thought through their priority.
- Has the rule been running long enough, and has enough volume of conversions with the adjustment actually applied accumulated, for the effect to even be visible at the aggregate ROAS level, rather than getting lost in general data noise?
Possible approaches
- If the rule isn't technically connected to the right campaigns, that's the first thing to check and fix, before analyzing "why there's no effect."
- If the rule is connected and running, but the effect isn't visible in overall ROAS, look at the dedicated value-rule report/column, which shows the adjustment's specific contribution separately from the campaign's organic ROAS movement for other reasons, rather than the campaign's blended ROAS.
- Google recommends testing value rules gradually and evaluating their effect specifically by comparing before/after periods that are otherwise comparable, rather than expecting an instant, obvious shift in the overall report.
- If several value rules overlap in their conditions, it's worth explicitly thinking through their priority and how they interact, since Google applies one adjustment to a given conversion based on a defined priority logic, rather than summing the effect of multiple rules at once.
- If the volume of conversions with the adjustment applied is still small, it may simply take more time for the effect to become statistically visible at the overall campaign ROAS level — it's smarter to evaluate the rule's effect specifically within the affected segment rather than across the whole campaign.