Why is My Facebook Ad Still in Review?

There’s nothing worse than launching a brilliant new Facebook campaign, only to hit refresh and see that dreaded "In Review" status still sitting there hours later. Your launch is on hold, your timeline is slipping, and you’re left wondering what’s going on behind Meta’s curtain. This guide will walk you through exactly why your Facebook ad might be stuck in review, how long the process should typically take, and what you can actually do to get things moving.

Understanding the Facebook Ad Review Process

Before launching your ad to the world, Meta runs it through a mandatory review process. Think of it as a quality control check to ensure everything on the platform is safe, compliant, and provides a good user experience. This process applies to every new ad and every change you make to an existing ad.

Here’s what Meta is checking for:

The Ad Itself: This includes your image or video, your primary text, the headline, and the call-to-action button. Everything is scanned to ensure it complies with Facebook's extensive Advertising Policies.
Targeting: The review system looks at who you’re targeting to make sure you aren't using discriminatory practices, especially for ads related to housing, employment, or credit.
The Landing Page: The review doesn’t stop at the ad. Meta's bots will also visit the destination URL your ad links to. They’re checking to see if the page is functional, matches the content of the ad, and doesn’t have a disruptive user experience (like aggressive pop-ups).

For the most part, this review is handled by an automated AI system that can approve ads in a matter of minutes. However, if the AI flags something it's unsure about, or if the ad relates to a sensitive category, it gets punted to a human review queue, which naturally takes longer.

How Long Should a Facebook Ad Review Actually Take?

Meta's official line is that most ads are reviewed within 24 hours. In reality, it’s often much faster - sometimes just a few minutes, especially if you’re an established advertiser with a long history of running compliant campaigns.

However, if 24 hours have passed and you're still seeing that "In Review" status, it’s a sign that something else might be going on. Several factors can influence the review time:

Your Account History: New ad accounts are subject to more scrutiny. Meta doesn’t know you yet, so they’re more cautious. Accounts with a long, positive track record often get their ads approved faster.
System & Staffing Levels: During high-volume periods like holidays (think Black Friday) or major global events, the system gets bogged down. Similarly, weekends and regional holidays can mean fewer human reviewers are available, leading to delays.
The Content of Your Ad: An ad for a local bakery is likely to fly through. An ad promoting weight loss supplements, a controversial political topic, or cryptocurrency is going to get a much closer inspection, often by a human, which adds time.
Subsequent Edits: This is a big one. If you edit any part of your ad while it’s in review (or even after it’s been approved), you essentially send it to the back of the queue to start the review process all over again.

Common Reasons Your Facebook Ad is Stuck in Review

If your ad has been stuck for more than a day, it probably falls into one of these common delay-causing scenarios. By understanding why it’s stuck, you can figure out how to fix it.

1. Your Ad Account is Brand New

If you’ve just set up your ad account, patience is your best friend. Meta’s system is designed to be wary of new accounts to prevent spam and scams. Your first few ads will almost certainly take longer to be approved as the system and human reviewers get a sense of who you are. This is completely normal.

What to do: For your first campaign, create something simple and indisputably compliant. A traffic campaign pointing to your homepage or a blog post is a great way to start building trust and a positive advertising history with the platform.

2. There's a Potential Policy Violation (Even a Subtle One)

This is the most common reason for delays. You might not think you’re violating any policies, but Meta's rules are very specific and can be easy to breach unintentionally. A simple word choice can be the difference between instant approval and getting stuck in review limbo.

Common (and often accidental) violations include:

"You" Language & Personal Attributes: Using language that seems to call out a user’s personal characteristics is a huge red flag. For instance, instead of "Struggling with back pain?" you should say "Learn about our back pain relief solutions."
Unrealistic Claims: Avoid making sensationalized or guaranteed claims like "Lose 10 pounds in 3 days!" or "Double your income overnight!" If it sounds too good to be true, the ad likely won’t get approved.
Restricted Niches: Ads related to weight loss, financial products, dating, alcohol, supplements, and similar categories are under a microscope. They often require manual review, which takes more time.
Before-and-After Images: These are explicitly against policy as they can imply unrealistic results and prey on insecurities. Avoid them at all costs.

3. You Edited the Ad After Publishing

Found a typo in your ad copy just after hitting "Publish"? It's tempting to jump in and fix it, but every single edit - no matter how small - resets the review process. Your ad is pulled from its place in the queue and put at the very end. If a human was about to review it, you’ve just lost your spot. If you keep making small tweaks, your ad will be caught in a perpetual cycle of re-review.

What to do: Proofread everything five times before you publish. It’s better to have a tiny typo in an approved ad than a perfect one that’s been stuck in review for two days.

4. Problems With Your Landing Page

Meta's responsibility extends to where they send their users. If your landing page is broken, misleading, or provides a poor experience, your ad won't get approved. The bot crawls your linked URL during the review process, looking for specific red flags.

Keep an eye out for these landing page deal-breakers:

404 Errors: The link must be live and working. A broken link is an instant trip-up.
Content Mismatch: If your ad hypes a 50% off sale for shoes, but the landing page is a generic homepage with no mention of the sale, that’s a fail.
Disruptive Pop-ups: Immediate pop-ups that obscure content or are hard to close will get your ad flagged.
Lack of Legal Info: For many business types, especially in e-commerce or lead generation, Meta expects to see clear links to a Privacy Policy and Terms of Service.
Redirects: Your display URL should match the final URL. Unexpected redirects are a classic spam tactic and are flagged immediately.

What You Can Do When Your Advertising is Stuck in Review

Okay, so your ad is stuck. Don’t just duplicate the campaign in a panic - that will just flood the system with more ads to review. Instead, follow these steps methodically.

Step 1: Be Patient (Wait For at Least 24 Hours)

Annoying advice, I know, but it’s critical. Most reviews complete within one business day. If you jump the gun and start making edits or contacting support too early, you may inadvertently cause the very delay you're trying to avoid.

Step 2: Scrutinize Your Ad for Policy Violations

While you wait, put on your "Meta Policy Enforcer" hat. Open the official Facebook Advertising Policies page in one tab and your ad preview in another. Read your copy out loud. Are you making any promises you can’t keep? Are you using "you" too directly? Is your landing page up and running smoothly? If you find a clear issue, you can duplicate the ad, fix the mistake, and submit the new version.

Step 3: Check Your Account Quality Page

Your Account Quality dashboard is the source of truth for all account and ad-level notices. Navigate there to see if there are any alerts related to your page, ad account, or Business Manager that might be causing a system-wide delay for you. You can check it by going to Facebook Business Suite > All Tools > Account Quality.

Step 4: Contact Meta Support (The Last Resort)

If a full 48 hours have passed and there are no obvious violations, it might be time to get in touch with a real person. Meta has a Business Help Center with a surprisingly helpful chat support function for advertisers.

When you contact them:

Have your Ad Account ID and the specific Ad ID ready.
Be polite and concise. Clearly state which ad is stuck and for how long.
Simply ask if they can check the status and manually push it for review if it’s genuinely stuck. Often, this is all it takes for an agent to escalate it and get it approved in minutes.

Final Thoughts

Seeing your Facebook ad stuck in review is frustrating, but it’s a standard part of the process. In most cases, it’s a temporary delay caused by common issues like a new account, a backed-up review queue, or a subtle policy violation. By being patient, proactively checking for compliance issues, and knowing how to contact support, you can navigate these delays and get your campaigns running smoothly.

Once your ads are approved, the real work begins: analyzing their performance. The tricky part is that your conversion data might be in Shopify or Salesforce, your web traffic data in Google Analytics, and your ad spend locked inside Facebook Ads Manager. We built Graphed to solve this headache by connecting all your data sources into one, unified dashboard. You can ask for real-time reports in plain English, like, "show me a dashboard comparing my Facebook ad spend vs. my Shopify revenue for the last month," and get an instant, current view of your real performance without needing a single spreadsheet.