Skip to content
English
Submit a ticket!
  • There are no suggestions because the search field is empty.

Your campaign is active but not spending

If your campaign reads Active but spend sits at zero — or well below your daily budget — something is blocking delivery, and it's usually quick to find.

Why this happens

"Active" only means the campaign is switched on and past its start date. It doesn't mean the ad platform is able to deliver it.

Billing holds, empty audiences, spend limits, and pending reviews all stop delivery while the campaign still reads Active. Ad spend is billed by the ad platform directly, so a payment problem there is invisible from here.

Who this affects

Anyone whose campaign has been live a few hours with zero or near-zero spend, on any connected ad platform.

Fastest fix

Check billing on the ad platform first. A billing hold silently halts delivery and is by far the most common cause.

  1. Open the ad platform's billing or payments settings for that ad account (Meta Ads Manager, Google Ads, and so on).
  2. Confirm a valid, non-expired payment method is attached.
  3. Clear any outstanding balance or failed payment.

Delivery usually resumes within a few hours. You may need to set the campaign back to active if the ad platform paused it.

Other causes and fixes

  • The schedule hasn't started: A start date in the future means nothing spends until it arrives. Open the campaign and check the start date, the time, and the time zone.
  • The audience is too narrow to find anyone: Stacked interest filters, low-volume keywords, a tight radius, and a narrow age range leave almost nobody eligible. Widen the location, broaden the age range, then remove interest filters one at a time or look for broader keywords.
  • Bid or budget is too low to compete: If your budget can't win impressions in the auction, you'll see little or no spend. Raise the daily budget, or switch to automatic bidding if you set a manual bid.
  • A spend limit has already been reached: Account-level and campaign-level spend caps stop delivery silently once hit. Check both. See "Change the Facebook ad spend limit".
  • The ad set is active but the ads inside it aren't: An ad set can be on with every ad inside it paused or rejected. Open the campaign and confirm at least one ad is active and approved.
  • Retargeting audience is too small: If you're using a retargeting or remarketing audience, this is a likely cause. It's recommended to have at least 1,000 users for a Meta retargeting campaign to run. 
  • The campaign is still in review: Nothing delivers until the ad platform approves it. See "Why your ad is stuck in review, and how long it takes".
  • Location and language barely overlap: One small city plus a language few people there speak can shrink the audience to almost nothing. Remove the language restriction and recheck the estimated audience size.

If spend is happening but you can't see it yet

Check the date range in the reporting. Many default reporting views do not include same day metrics.

If nothing works

Gather this before you contact support through your settings page:

  • Campaign name and the ad platform it runs on
  • The start date and daily budget you set
  • Confirmation that billing on the ad platform is current
  • What the ad platform's own reporting shows for the same dates