What to check before you touch anything
- Do both flags actually apply to the same time window? Sometimes one status is current and the other is a holdover from an earlier period that hasn't refreshed in the interface yet.
- What do Impression Share lost (budget) and Impression Share lost (rank) show separately? This lets you quantify which factor is cutting into volume harder right now, instead of relying on the text status alone.
- How close is actual CPA to target? If CPA is already at or below target and the budget just isn't there, the budget constraint is the primary issue. If CPA is meaningfully above target, the target constraint is primary, even with a technically sufficient budget.
- Could both flags share one root cause? A target CPA set too low can itself reduce your bid competitiveness, so the campaign wins fewer auctions — and the budget then never gets "used up" either. What looks like two separate constraints may really be one (an under-set target).
- Check your change history — were both budget and target adjusted recently at the same time? The system may just be showing a mixed picture from a transition period, not a settled state.
Possible approaches
- If the lost Impression Share numbers show rank is the dominant constraint (the target is what's holding you back), it usually makes more sense to loosen target CPA first and leave the budget alone — while the target is preventing auction wins, extra budget won't get spent anyway.
- If budget is the dominant constraint (the campaign wins enough auctions but runs out of budget early), it makes more sense to raise the budget first, leave the target as is, and see if the other flag clears on its own.
- Google generally recommends using comparative lost Impression Share as the priority signal, rather than changing both parameters at once "just in case" — otherwise you won't be able to tell which change actually reduced the constraint.
- If both constraints persist together and trace back to one root cause (the target is simply too aggressive for the auction), it's worth stepping back and reassessing whether the target CPA is realistic in the first place, rather than making a narrow budget tweak.
- In some cases, when the business isn't ready to raise the budget or loosen the target, the only realistic path is to narrow the campaign's footprint (less competitive geos or keyword segments) so the existing budget and target become compatible at a smaller, more realistic volume.