Why Is My Facebook Ad Active but Not Running? Troubleshooting Common Ad Issues

In the world of digital advertising, seeing your Facebook ads labeled “active” is typically a good sign. It means your ad has been approved and is ready to go live. But what happens when they’re not actually running? For many small business owners, this can be a confusing and frustrating experience. Luckily, there are a few common reasons why this might be happening, and some simple steps you can take to resolve the issue.

1. Budget and Bidding: Why You Need to Spend Enough to Compete

Facebook operates on a competitive bidding system where advertisers are essentially bidding for ad space in front of users. If your budget or bid is too low, your ad may lose out to higher-spending competitors. Simply put, if you’re underbidding, your ad won’t show as often or at all.

Tip: Increase your daily or lifetime budget and review your bid strategy. A minimum daily budget of at least $10 is recommended for most campaigns, depending on your audience size. If you’re running campaigns on a limited budget, set realistic expectations about how many people you’ll reach.‍

Example: If your audience is 50,000 people, and you’re only spending $5 a day, your ad might not be shown to enough people to generate noticeable results.

Fix: Use Facebook’s Delivery Insights tool to see if your ad is under-delivering due to budget constraints. Adjust the bid type (cost-per-click vs. cost-per-impression) based on your campaign goals. Don't want to deal with the complex Facebook dashboard? Use Roya instead.

2. Audience Targeting: Striking the Right Balance

Facebook’s strength lies in its advanced targeting options, but this also means ads won’t perform well if your audience is either too narrow or too broad. Too narrow of a target limits reach, while a broad audience may water down the relevance of your ad.

Example of Audience Targeting Errors:

• Too Narrow: Targeting only “women, aged 25-30, living in a 1-mile radius” for a local retail store might be too small for Facebook’s algorithms to prioritize.

• Too Broad: Targeting “everyone aged 18-65 within a 50-mile radius” might result in low engagement because the ad is too general.

Fix:

• Narrow your audience, but not too much. A good target audience size is between 100,000 and 500,000, depending on your local market size.

• Use Facebook’s Audience Overlap tool to identify and refine overlapping interests or behaviors that could be over-restricting your ad reach.

• Try Lookalike Audiences if your custom audience isn’t performing well. Lookalike Audiences based on existing customers or website visitors tend to perform better as Facebook can use more data to optimize delivery.

Tip: Don't want to make targeting decisions manually? Roya uses AI targeting, which means you don't have to do this yourself anymore and your audience won't be too broad or too narrow.

3. Creative and Placement Mismatch: Are You Using the Right Ads in the Right Places?

Your ad creative (the visuals and copy) must align with the placements you’ve selected. For example, certain creatives perform better in the Facebook feed, while others are designed for Instagram Stories. Facebook’s automatic placements are helpful, but you still need to ensure your creative fits each platform.

Example: A 1:1 square image might perform well in the Facebook news feed but won’t look good in Instagram Stories, which favors vertical formats (9:16). If your creative is not properly optimized for each placement, Facebook might limit its reach.

Fix:

• Use the Right Formats: Make sure your ad creative fits the placements you’ve selected (e.g., Stories should use vertical images/videos, while feed ads should be square or landscape).

• Use Facebook’s Creative Tools: Facebook offers tools to preview and adjust your ad creative for each placement. Be sure to test your ad for all placements, such as mobile vs. desktop, Facebook, Instagram, and Audience Network.

4. Campaign Objective Misalignment: Are You Sending the Right Signals to Facebook?

When creating a Facebook ad campaign, it’s crucial to select the right objective. Facebook uses this objective to determine how your ads will be delivered. If you choose the wrong one (for example, selecting a Conversion objective without having proper tracking in place), your ad might not deliver at all.

Example: If you choose “Conversions” as your campaign objective but don’t have the Facebook Pixel properly installed on your website, Facebook won’t be able to track conversions. Without this tracking, your ad’s performance will plummet.‍

Fix:

• Align Objective with Goals: Ensure the campaign objective matches your end goal. For example, if your goal is to drive traffic to your website, select “Traffic.” If your goal is to collect leads, use the “Lead Generation” objective.

• Set Up Tracking: Install the Facebook Pixel on your website for any campaigns that involve conversions, and make sure event tracking is configured correctly.

• Monitor Conversions: Use Facebook’s Event Manager to ensure your Pixel is firing correctly. Without proper tracking, Facebook will struggle to optimize your ad delivery.

5. Low Relevance Score or Quality Ranking: Is Your Ad Resonating?

Facebook assigns a relevance score (or ad quality ranking) based on how well your ad resonates with your target audience. If your relevance score is low, Facebook deprioritizes your ad, meaning fewer people will see it.

Example: If your ad is overly promotional or doesn’t engage your audience, your relevance score may drop below 5/10, which negatively impacts delivery. Ads with scores of 8-10 typically perform best.

Fix:

• Improve Your Creative: Test different variations of your ad to see which resonates best with your audience. Refresh your creative if you notice a drop in performance.

• Refine Your Targeting: Ensure your ad is reaching the right people. The better your ad aligns with your audience’s interests and behaviors, the higher your relevance score will be.

• Engagement Tactics: Use calls to action (CTAs) that encourage engagement. Ads with high engagement rates (likes, comments, shares) tend to have higher relevance scores.

Conclusion

Running Facebook ads isn’t just about hitting “launch” and hoping for the best. To really get results, it’s about regularly tweaking and optimizing different parts of your campaign—things like your budget, who you’re targeting, the format of your ads, and your campaign goals. When these pieces all work together, you’ll be able to solve the issue of your ads being active but not actually running effectively.

If your ads aren’t performing as well as you’d like, it could be time to take a closer look at your strategy and make some adjustments. And remember, Facebook ads are never a one-and-done thing. They need constant attention—testing, tweaking, and fine-tuning to keep improving.

Using a tool like Roya will help simplify your ad strategy and save you time and money, especially when it comes to managing ad performance over time.  

Whether you use a tool or not, the key is staying on top of the changes and always looking for ways to optimize your ads. It’s a process, but one that can make a big difference in reaching your audience and growing your business.