How to Pause a Facebook Ad

Pausing a Facebook ad is a simple and reversible way to control your ad spend and refine your strategy. Whether an ad is underperforming, you need to adjust your budget, or you're waiting for new creative, turning it off takes just a few seconds. This guide will walk you through exactly how to pause your ads, explain the difference between pausing and deleting, and cover what happens next.

When Should You Pause a Facebook Ad?

Pausing an ad isn't a sign of failure, it's a fundamental part of managing a successful advertising strategy. It gives you the breathing room to analyze, optimize, and redeploy your budget effectively. Here are the most common scenarios where pausing an ad makes perfect sense.

1. The Ad is Underperforming

This is the most obvious reason. If an ad isn't delivering the results you need, it's time to pause it and diagnose the problem. Keep a close eye on your key performance indicators (KPIs):

Return on Ad Spend (ROAS): If your ad is costing more than it's generating in revenue, it's a prime candidate for a pause.
Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) / Cost Per Lead: If the cost to acquire a customer or a lead is higher than your target, pouring more money into the ad won't fix it.
Click-Through Rate (CTR): A low CTR often signals that your ad creative or copy isn't resonating with your audience. Pausing gives you a chance to test new visuals or messaging.
Frequency: If your ad frequency is getting too high (e.g., the same person seeing your ad many times in a short period), you might be experiencing "ad fatigue." Pausing the ad to introduce fresh creative can solve this.

2. To Manage Your Budget

Budget management is an ongoing process. You might need to pause ads to:

Reallocate Funds: You may notice one campaign is a clear winner, wildly outperforming others. It's smart to pause the underperformers and shift that budget to scale your successful campaign.
Control Overall Spend: Perhaps you're nearing your monthly ad budget or need to temporarily reduce marketing expenses. Pausing campaigns is an instant way to stop the outflow of cash.

3. For Testing and Optimization

Pausing is a critical component of A/B testing. For example, you might be running two ad sets against each other with different audience targeting. Once you have enough data to determine a winner, you can pause the losing ad set to funnel all your budget into the one that works better.

4. External Factors Have Changed

Sometimes, the reason for pausing has nothing to do with the ad's performance itself.

Out of Stock: There’s no point running ads for a product you can't sell. Pause the campaign until your inventory is replenished.
Website Downtime: If your website is down for maintenance or experiencing technical issues, pause all your ads immediately. Sending paid traffic to a broken link is like throwing money away.
Promotions Have Ended: If your ad promotes a seasonal sale or a limited-time offer, be sure to pause it the moment the promotion ends to avoid confusing and disappointing potential customers.

How to Pause a Facebook Ad: a Step-by-Step Guide

Pausing an ad is done inside the Meta Ads Manager. The process is the same whether you want to pause an entire campaign, a specific ad set, or a single ad.

First, it's helpful to understand the structure:

Campaign: The highest level, where you set your advertising objective (e.g., purchases, leads). Pausing a campaign stops everything inside it.
Ad Set: Sits inside a campaign. This is where you define your target audience, budget, schedule, and placements. Pausing an ad set stops all the ads just within that ad set.
Ad: Sits inside an ad set. This is the creative itself - your image, video, and copy. Pausing a single ad only affects that one ad.

The Easiest & Fastest Way to Pause Ads (Recommended)

The toggle switch is your best friend in Ads Manager. It's the quickest way to turn things on and off.

Go to Meta Ads Manager: Navigate to adsmanager.facebook.com.
Select the Correct Level: On the top left you get to choose between the Campaigns, Ad sets, and Ads tabs. Choose the right one depending on what you want to pause. For example, if you want to turn off a specific campaign, then stay on the Campaigns tab.
Find the Toggle Switch: To the left of your campaign, ad set, or ad name, you'll see a blue toggle switch.
Click the Toggle: Simply click the toggle. It will turn from blue (active) to gray (inactive). That's it! Your ad is now paused.

Once you are in your dashboard, check the Delivery section to confirm if the campaign, ad set, or ad you paused is marked as Inactive or Not Delivering.

How to Pause Multiple Facebook Ads at Once (Bulk Action)

If you're looking to save time by deactivating multiple ad components at once, here is how you can bulk-deactivate your Facebook ad elements:

First Step, Same Process:

Similar to the process of individual deactivation, navigate to the Facebook Ads Manager and into "campaigns." 2. Tick Away:Next to your ad components, you'll find selection options to their left. Begin by checking these boxes for whichever elements you want to pause. The available options for you to click above will become "Duplicate," "Edit," "More," a bin-shaped icon, and a "Rules" selector. Decide if you want to pause campaigns, ads, or a combination of both types. 3. Clicking "More" and Deactivating Ad Elements:After selecting your ad components to deactivate and clicking on "More," several new options will appear. Click on the 'Turn off' button, and all the selected campaigns or ad elements will be disabled.

Pausing vs. Deleting an Ad: Please Read This First!

This is a critical distinction that trips up many beginners. Choosing the wrong one can lead to permanently losing valuable data.

Pausing (Turning Off) an Ad

What it is: Temporarily stops the ad from running and spending money.
Reversibility: It is 100% reversible. You can reactivate your campaigns by simply clicking on the same toggle.
Data Preservation: All historical performance data (reach, clicks, conversions), social proof (likes, comments, shares), and the Facebook ad learning data are preserved.
Best For: Use this for budget changes, performance review, A/B testing, website updates, or almost any reason that might require your ads back later.

Deleting an Ad

What it is: This leads to the permanent removal of the ad from your ad set and your account.
Reversibility: It is not reversible at any cost. Once an ad set or a campaign is deleted, the data is permanently gone.
Data Deletion: Deleting an ad permanently removes all historical performance data, which is counterproductive for marketers as it prevents tracking success and learning from past campaigns.
Exception Cases: Deleting might be considered if you're cleaning out obsolete drafts or campaigns that never went live, but even then, replicating past campaigns can aid learning and future success.

Conclusion: Never Permanently Delete Your Meta Ads.

Remember to always use the pause button.

Key Takeaway: Always choose pause (turn off). It preserves all your marketing data, historical performance, ad insights, and your AI learnings. Avoid deleting anything unless you're just doing some cleanup of blank drafts, ensuring that your marketing efforts remain effective.

Now, What Does Meta Do Right After I Pause My Ad?

Your Bill Stops: Once your ad is paused, the spending stops immediately. However, you might still receive a final invoice for any ads delivered before you paused them.
Data Preservation: Your ad performance and KPIs will remain safely stored, ensuring no data is lost.

It's essential to be aware of the learning phase that can occur when reactivating a paused ad. A short period where your ad underperforms is expected as Meta's AI readjusts to the ad's requirements. Avoid editing too soon after reactivation to allow the AI to stabilize.

Conclusion (Final Thoughts)

As we've covered, properly managing your Facebook ads by pausing them instead of deleting allows you to revisit successful campaigns in the future. Using the pause function helps preserve past data and saves time in the long run.

Keeping an eye on your data ensures your marketing strategy is efficient and well-informed. If you need more help managing large-scale campaigns, feel free to reach out for support.