Clicks and Clarity with Claire
If you’re spending real money on Google Ads and still asking, “Why isn’t this working?”—this podcast is for you.
I’m Claire Jarrett, Google Ads strategist and founder of Jarrett Digital. Each week, I break down what’s actually going on behind the numbers—so you can stop wasting ad spend, start attracting qualified leads, and scale with confidence.
No fluff. No jargon. Just clear advice, real audits, and proven strategies from accounts managing four to six figures in monthly ad spend.
Whether you're DIY-ing your ads or working with an agency, this is the clarity you've been missing.
Clicks and Clarity with Claire
The Cookie Banner That Was Hiding Every Conversion
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$981 spent and zero conversions showing. But the salon was actually getting bookings.
Claire found a cookie consent banner quietly blocking conversion tracking, Acuity Scheduling not syncing with Google Ads, and 48 booking clicks that never showed up in the data.
She explains how to check if your tracking is silently broken — and why a small banner at the bottom of your page might be costing you everything.
Welcome to Clicks and Clarity with Claire.
I audited an eyelash extensions salon that had spent $981 on Google Ads with zero results.
No leads. No bookings. Nothing.
But when I dug in, the story was more interesting than that.
The business had actually run 2 sets of campaigns. The first set, which spent that $981, had broad keywords with almost no negatives. So the ads were showing for people looking for DIY lash kits, cheap eyelash extensions, and every variation of eyelash that had nothing to do with booking an appointment at a salon.
The second set of campaigns was actually better. The keywords were more relevant. Eyelash extensions near me. Lash studio near me. Hybrid lashes. The click-through rates were reasonable. And the business owner told me she had actually got clients from it.
So why did she stop running it?
Because the tracking was not showing any conversions.
The salon used Acuity Scheduling for bookings. And Acuity is notoriously bad at syncing with Google Ads. The data just does not flow back properly. So even when someone clicked the ad, went to the website, and booked an appointment through Acuity, Google Ads did not know about it.
The dashboard showed 48 booking link clicks but only 1 form contact.
48 people clicked through to book. 1 showed up in the conversion data. That is a massive tracking gap.
And then I found the cookie consent banner.
It was sitting at the bottom of the page. Small. Easy to miss. Not the full-screen type that forces you to click accept before you can browse. Just a quiet little banner at the bottom that most people would scroll right past.
If a visitor does not click accept on a cookie consent banner, you cannot track them. The cookies that Google Ads uses to attribute conversions do not fire. The visitor books an appointment, but as far as Google is concerned, they never converted.
So the tracking was quietly being blocked for a significant portion of visitors who never even noticed the banner was there.
Bear in mind, this was in California where cookie consent is legally required. So you cannot just remove it. But you can make it prominent. Full screen. Impossible to miss. People these days are used to clicking accept. They do it automatically. But only if they see it.
The hidden banner at the bottom was the worst of both worlds. It was technically compliant, but it was blocking the data that the entire campaign depended on.
Now, on top of all that, the ad copy was not pushing the salon's strongest selling points. They offered an express service, lash extensions in about an hour instead of the usual 2.5 hours. They did celebrity-style lashes. Neither of those were mentioned prominently in the ads.
And the ad strength was below excellent. Which means the ads were not showing in every relevant auction. Which means higher cost per click and fewer impressions.
If you have a cookie consent banner on your website, check what it looks like on mobile. Check whether it actually forces the user to make a choice before they can browse. And check your conversion data against your actual bookings.
If there is a gap between what Google says happened and what actually happened, the cookie banner might be the reason.
That is it for today.
If you want me to check whether your conversion tracking is actually working or whether something is quietly blocking it, book a free audit at clairejarrett.com.
So many thanks for listening.
Bye for now.