Reasons why Facebook ads cannot be delivered normally and corresponding solutions

In 2024, Facebook ads will still be an important tool in the marketing world. Facebook is one of the largest social networking platforms in the world, with billions of active users, which means advertisers can reach a very wide range of potential customers.

As a Facebook marketer, it can be very frustrating to open your Facebook Ads Manager only to find that your ads are not running.

To help you through the trials and tribulations of Facebook advertising, we’ve compiled a list of the most common reasons why your Facebook ad campaign isn’t working, and what you can do to fix it.

The audience is too small

Facebook requires advertisers to run campaigns targeting a minimum audience size. If you don’t have 1,000 active users in your target audience, your ads will not run on Facebook.

There are many ways this can happen:

The targeting parameters you selected simply do not have enough users

You exclude almost all of your audience in order to be more efficient

Your customer upload list does not match the number of people you expected

Your positioning layer settings are incorrect

First, ask yourself this question: Can your ad be seen by people outside of your special audience?

If no, then you won’t be able to market to your selected audience because it’s not big enough.

If so, your action item is to grow your audience in a confident way. You may just need to add more users to your list. Maybe you need to add some additional behaviors or interests. Maybe you should expand your demographic limits. Whatever the case, you’ll have to reach 1,000 users or more to run a campaign on Facebook.

Ad related post is not available

If the post associated with your ad is unavailable, here are some reasons why:

The post may have been removed;

You may no longer have permission to view the post;

You may have used a post that cannot be used in an ad;

Ads may contain expired offers/events;

The product you are advertising cannot be found because the product ID is missing or the product line is out of stock (or deleted);

This post is a shared post;

Shared posts cannot be promoted by anyone other than the original post owner

The best way to fix this is to choose a different post or adjust permissions. Depending on the cause, you can also:

1. Select another post

2. Create a new offer and ad in a new ad group

3. Get permissions from page administrators or editors

4. Check your catalog to see if the product you want to promote is in stock

After making the necessary changes, switch the ad group back to Active status. If Active, the "Needs Update" sub-status will no longer appear.

Ads with poor or low engagement

Facebook has a responsibility to its users to ensure that the environment is engaging and entertaining. For ad campaigns, this means that ads that have little or no engagement or poor engagement will not be shown as often as ads with a lot of positive engagement.

There are three factors at play in all creatives:

Quality Rank: A ranking of the perceived quality of an ad. Quality is measured by feedback and post-click experience on the ad.

Engagement Rank: A ranking of the ad’s expected engagement. Engagement includes all clicks, likes, comments, and shares.

Conversion rate ranking: The ranking of the expected conversion rate of the ad. Your ad will be ranked based on the optimization goal.

The easiest way to deal with this is to create a new ad and hope it leads to better engagement.

If that doesn’t work and you’re having a hard time gaining traction, try putting your ads into engagement campaigns, then once you’ve built good engagement, leverage those ads in new campaigns.

If these methods don't work, you can use other strategies based on the ad relevance diagnostics you see.

Ad still under review

As mentioned before, Facebook’s team reviews every ad before it goes live to ensure that it complies with the ad policies and terms of service. There are two types of ad reviews: automated system reviews and manual reviews done by actual members of Facebook support staff.

According to Facebook’s Business Help Center, “Most ads are reviewed within 24 hours, but in some cases it may take longer.” This means that sometimes it can take longer than 24 hours to review an ad, especially during the holiday season when most brands are running Facebook ads.

To ensure you don’t run into this problem, plan and schedule your ads ahead of time. In the Budget & Schedule section of the ad creation process, select a start and end date. This way, you’ll have a few extra days in case your ad needs to be manually approved by the Facebook team.

However, some changes may trigger a new review process for previously scheduled or currently running ads:

1. Advertising materials (text, images, videos or links)

2. Audience Targeting

3. Optimization

4. Billing events

Because these changes will force a restart of the review process, please do not edit your ad until it has been approved (or rejected).

Ads have "politically sensitive content"

Facebook is now increasingly restricting politically sensitive content.

While the definition of “political content” will vary from country to country, it’s safe to say that anyone advertising around any of these topics will have to tread carefully to comply with Facebook’s policies.

If your ad can’t run because it’s deemed political, you’ll see a notification in Ads Manager.

As mentioned in the above notice, you need authorization to run these ads.

You can find the exact requirements for your country by following the instructions below.

There are many reasons why your ads might not be running on Facebook, but unless you’re completely breaking all the rules, there’s no reason to keep them that way.

Hopefully, one of the above scenarios will give you some ideas for getting your ads showing again!