Facebook ads active but not spending: a diagnosis table for store owners

The first check is the Delivery column for the campaign, the ad set and the ad, not just the campaign. Meta's help page says these levels can have different statuses. Its own example is a campaign that appears active while the ad set or ad shows In review after recent changes. Meta recommends checking every level when you have delivery issues.

So an active campaign that does not spend is not yet a contradiction. Find the lowest level whose status is not Active and read that status before you touch budgets, audiences or creative.

The table in the worksheet is a suggested triage order from this article, not an Adrails feature and not a Meta ranking. No source ranks which cause is most likely. The order simply puts statuses Meta describes as stopping or delaying delivery first (Off, Ad set off, No ads, Scheduled, In review, Processing, Preparing, Rejected, error icons, Completed, Inactive). Performance explanations come after, because they matter once the ads are eligible to run.

Meta says you can hover over some statuses, like errors and warnings, for more detail and any suggested action. Do that where it is available. For a Rejected ad, Meta's help navigation lists a separate topic, Troubleshoot a rejected ad; the sources do not say Rejected shows hover text.

The sources do not say how long most statuses last in your account. The one stated duration is Processing, which usually takes a few minutes and can take up to 8 hours.

• Stoppers: Meta describes the ad, ad set or campaign as not running, not yet running, or unable to run.
• Performance hypotheses: the ads may be able to run, but delivery is slow or uneven. Test these; do not treat them as proven causes.
• Payment and account restriction problems appear in Meta's support topics. The sources reviewed do not say how they show in Delivery, so use those help pages.

This is a hypothetical example, not customer data. A store sets a $3,000 budget for a 30 day period. The straight-line target is 3,000 ÷ 30 = $100 a day. On day 10, expected spend is $1,000 and Ads Manager shows $240 spent.

Using Adrails' pacing formula, pacing is actual divided by expected: 240 ÷ 1,000 = 24 percent. The shortfall is $760. The remaining budget is 3,000 − 240 = $2,760 over 20 days, so the daily spend needed is 2,760 ÷ 20 = $138, which is 38 percent above the original $100.

The arithmetic only sizes the gap. It does not show why spend is low or that a $138 daily budget would deliver. Adrails' pacing guide notes that if the required rate is far above recent delivery, raising every budget at once may not be a clean catch-up. Find the cause first.

Meta's troubleshooting page for campaigns that slowed or stopped applies to campaigns using Advantage+ campaign budget (also called Campaign budget) that were delivering and then slowed. It suggests using breakdowns to see when results changed, then checking activity history for edits made just before that point. It also says Meta may spend up to 75 percent over or below the daily budget on a given day.

The edit patterns it names are frequent pauses through the day, budget or schedule changes near the end of the day, and extending the campaign schedule. Its example: doubling a daily budget at 10pm leaves the system only 2 hours to spend it, so that day may under-spend and the next day may compensate.

It then lists bid cap or cost per result goal, creative fatigue (shown as Creative limited or Creative fatigue in Delivery) and audience saturation as things to review.

Learning Limited is not on the stopper list. Meta defines it as an ad set that did not generate enough results to exit learning, and Adrails' guide describes it as a delivery diagnostic where the ad set keeps running with less signal. Do not treat it as the reason for zero spend, and do not choose a cheaper optimization event just to remove the label.

Likewise, Adrails' pacing guide separates pacing from performance: an account can be on pace and spend badly, or under pace because the system is declining expensive delivery. Record which kind of cause you found so the next edit matches it.

Keep one log row per investigation. Suggested columns: date and time; level checked; status shown; hover text or rejection reason, if any; last edit from activity history; cause category (stopper or performance hypothesis); one action; review date.

Hypothetical entry: ad set status In review after an edit on day 8; campaign shows Active; hover text none; cause category stopper; action wait for review to finish and avoid further edits; review date next day. If the status later changes to Rejected or an error, add a new row. This is a format example, not an observed outcome.

• Cannot be established from these sources: why a specific status appeared, how long it will last, or whether more budget will spend.