No change in acs 712 readings after connection to load

Its a hall sensor, it will be noisy and insensitive to small currents.

These sensors are used for 10, 20, 100A sort of current, where the magnetic field generated by
the current isn't tiny.

Which version of the ACS712 do you have?, some are 30A fullscale, some 20A, some 5A, IIRC