Why is My Meta Ad Not Delivering?

That sinking feeling when you launch a new Meta ad campaign and check back an hour later to find zero impressions is deeply frustrating. A big goose egg in your "Amount Spent" column can feel like your ad has been launched into a void. This guide will walk you through the most common reasons why your Meta ads aren't delivering and provide clear, actionable steps to fix them and get your campaigns running smoothly.

Is Your Ad Simply Stuck in Review?

Before you dive into complex troubleshooting, start with the most common and simplest reason for a delay: Meta's ad review process. It's the first gate every new ad and every significant ad edit must pass through.

What the Ad Review Process Is

When you submit an ad, Meta's automated systems (and sometimes human reviewers) check it for compliance with their Advertising Policies. They are looking for anything from prohibited content and misleading claims to issues with your landing page. This process is mandatory and can sometimes take a little while.

Generally, most ads are reviewed within 24 hours, but it’s not unusual for it to take longer, especially during peak advertising seasons or if your ad is flagged for a manual review. If you've just published your ad, the best first step is often to wait.

How to Check Your Ad's Status

Go to your Meta Ads Manager.
Find your campaign, then the relevant ad set, and finally the ad in question.
Look at the Delivery column.

You’ll see a status like "Processing," "Scheduled," "In Review," "Learning," or "Active." If it says "In Review," then you just need to be patient. Editing the ad during this phase will reset its place in the review queue, so try to avoid making changes unless necessary.

Was Your Ad Rejected for a Policy Violation?

If the delivery status shows "Rejected," you’ve found your problem. A rejected ad will not spend a single cent until the issue is resolved. This means your ad or its destination URL violated one of Meta's policies.

Common Reasons for Rejection

Ad rejections can happen even to experienced advertisers. Some common slip-ups include:

Prohibited Content: Your ad may be promoting something on Meta's restricted list, like weapons, tobacco, or unsafe supplements.
Misleading Claims: Making unrealistic promises ("Lose 30 pounds in 30 days!") is a surefire way to get rejected.
Image and Video Issues: Images that contain too much text, sensual content, or shocking visuals are frequently flagged.
Landing Page Problems: If your landing page doesn't work, has pop-ups, or doesn't deliver on the promise made in your ad, Meta can reject the ad.
Personal Attributes: You can't call out users' personal characteristics, even if you know them from your targeting. For example, "Are you struggling with debt?" is not allowed, but "We help people manage their finances" is okay.

How to Fix a Rejected Ad

When an ad is rejected, Meta provides a reason. In Ads Manager, you can click on the rejected ad's status to get more details. Read the feedback carefully.

Step 1: Understand the Rejection. Read the policy Meta has cited to understand what you need to change.
Step 2: Edit Your Ad. Duplicate the ad and make the necessary adjustments to the ad copy, creative, or landing page.
Step 3: Submit for Another Review. Publishing the edited ad will send it through the review process again.
Last Resort: Request Another Review. If you've reviewed the policies and genuinely believe your ad was rejected by mistake (which does happen), you can request another review.

Could It Be a Billing Problem or Spending Limit?

One of the easiest issues to fix is also one of the most overlooked. If Meta can't charge you, they won't run your ads. It's a simple, but effective, showstopper.

Check Your Payment Method

Go to the Billing & Payments section of your Ads Manager. Look for any notifications or alerts. Common issues include:

An expired credit card.
A failed payment due to incorrect card details or insufficient funds.
The payment method being flagged for security reasons by your bank.

If you're using a pre-paid balance, make sure it hasn't run out. Update your primary payment method or clear any outstanding balance, and your ads should resume delivery shortly after.

Have You Hit Your Account Spending Limit?

Every Meta ad account has an account-level spending limit. This is a total cap on what your account can spend. It’s meant as a safety net to prevent accidental overspending, but it can also halt all your campaigns if you hit it unintentionally.

You can check and adjust this limit within the Billing & Payments settings. Once you raise or remove the limit, your campaigns should start delivering again, assuming you have the budget available at the campaign level.

Is Your Budget and Bidding Strategy Holding You Back?

Sometimes, the issue isn't a technical error but a strategic one. Your budget and bid strategy tell Meta how to spend your money, and if those instructions are too restrictive, Meta may simply choose not to spend it at all.

1. Your Budget is Too Small

Meta's system works as an auction. If your daily budget is extremely low (e.g., $1/day) for a competitive audience, it may not be enough to secure even one successful outcome. Therefore, Meta’s algorithm may not even attempt to enter you into enough auctions to get meaningful delivery. A good rule of thumb is to set a daily budget that's at least a few times higher than your estimated cost per result.

2. Your Bid Cap or Cost Cap is Unrealistic

When you set a Bid Cap, you're telling Meta the absolute maximum you're willing to pay for a specific action. If that cap is far below what other advertisers are bidding for the same audience, you will lose almost every auction, and your ad will get little to no delivery.

Similarly, a Cost Per Result Goal (or Cost Cap) sets an average cost you want to achieve. If that goal is unrealistically low (e.g., setting a $5 cost per purchase for a $200 product), Meta's algorithm will predict it can't hit that target and may preemptively limit your ad's delivery to avoid failing.

The Fix: If you’re using one of these strategies, try increasing your cap or switching to the "Highest Volume" bidding strategy. This gives Meta much more flexibility to compete in the ad auctions and find the most cost-effective results available, which will often fix delivery problems immediately.

Are You Struggling with Your Audience and Targeting?

Who you're trying to reach has a huge impact on delivery. Your audience targeting could be too specific, too broad, or in direct competition with your other ads.

1. Is Your Audience Size Too Small?

This is an easy trap to fall into when trying to be hyper-relevant. If you layer too many targeting options - for example, targeting people in a small city who like a niche brand and are having a birthday this week - your potential audience might shrink to just a few hundred people. Meta avoids showing ads too frequently to the same users, so if your audience is tiny, delivery will be minimal or non-existent. A good sign of this is an "Audience is too specific" warning while building your ad set.

The Fix: Broaden your targeting by removing some of the less critical layers until your estimated audience size is in a healthier range (usually tens of thousands at a minimum, depending on your budget).

2. Are Your Ad Sets Vying for the Same Eyeballs?

Audience overlap happens when two or more of your active ad sets are targeting similar groups of people. When this occurs, your own ads are essentially bidding against each other in the auction. To avoid driving up your costs, Meta’s system will automatically bench one of the competing ad sets to prevent an internal bidding war. The result is that one or more of your ad sets may suddenly stop delivering.

The Fix: Use detailed audience exclusions. For example, if Ad Set A targets Fans of Brand X, and Ad Set B targets Fans of Brand Y, exclude the Brand Y fans from Ad Set A, and vice versa. You can also use Meta’s "Audience Overlap" tool in the Audiences section to see how much of a problem this is across your account.

When Your Ad Is Delivering and Abruptly Stops

What if your ads were working great but then suddenly tanked? This is often a classic case of ad fatigue, especially if your campaign has been running for a while.

Ad fatigue is what happens when your target audience has seen your ad so many times they start to ignore it or, even worse, develop a negative association with it. The algorithm picks up on these signals - like declining click-through rates (CTR) and rising costs - and delivery begins to decline as the ad becomes less competitive in the auction.

Spotting Ad Fatigue

Look for these two warning signs in your Ads Manager columns:

Rising Frequency: This metric tells you the average number of times a person has seen your ad. A high frequency (generally above 3-5 for a new audience, though this varies widely by industry) is a leading indicator of fatigue.
Decreasing Performance: Is your CTR dropping while your Cost Per Result is climbing? That’s your audience telling you they've tuned out your creative.

How to Fix Ad Fatigue

The solution is simple: introduce something new.

Refresh Your Creative: The easiest fix is to swap in new ad creative. It could be a brand new image, a different video hook, or slightly reworked ad copy.
Rotate Your Audiences: Pause your current ad set and launch a new one targeting a different interest or lookalike audience that hasn't seen this creative before.
Change Your Offer: If fresh creative doesn't work, consider testing a new offer or call-to-action to re-engage your audience from a different angle.

Final Thoughts

Fixing an undelivered Meta ad is almost always a logical process of elimination. Start with the basics: check the ad status, policy notifications, and your billing settings. If those are all clear, move on to your strategy and assess your budget, bidding, and audience to make sure you aren't inadvertently holding the algorithm back.

Once your ads are running, the challenge shifts from delivery to performance, which means connecting the dots between your ad spend, website traffic, and a final sale. We know how much time is wasted downloading CSVs from Ads Manager and lining them up with data from Google Analytics or Shopify just to understand campaign ROI. With Graphed, we’ve connected those sources for you. That way, instead of wrestling with spreadsheets, you can just ask a question like, "Show me my Facebook Ad spend vs. my Shopify revenue for the last 30 days" and get an instant, real-time dashboard showing exactly what's working so you can make smarter decisions faster.