Facebook Ads Not Delivering: Complete Diagnostic Checklist

The campaign is active. The status is green. The budget is set. But impressions sit at zero, hour after hour. Meta gives you no useful error message — just silence. Welcome to one of the most common and most frustrating problems in Facebook advertising: ads that should be running but aren't.

The reason this is hard to diagnose is that there are dozens of possible causes, and Meta exposes very few of them in the interface. You have to work through them systematically. Here's the complete checklist I run through every time a client says "my ads aren't delivering."

Layer 1: Account-Level Issues

Start at the highest level and work down. Account-level problems block everything underneath them.

1. Check Account Status

Go to Business Settings → Ad Accounts → click your account. Look for any warnings about restrictions, payment issues, or billing problems. Also visit facebook.com/accountquality to see asset-level issues across the entire Business Manager.

If there's a red banner anywhere, that's your problem.

2. Verify Payment Method

Go to Billing & Payments. Check that:

A valid payment method is on file

The card hasn't expired

There's no outstanding balance from a failed previous charge

Your billing threshold hasn't been triggered

Meta will silently stop delivering ads if billing fails. Check for any pending charges that didn't go through.

3. Account Spending Limit

In Billing settings, check whether you have an account spending limit set. This caps total spend across all campaigns. If it's set to £100 and you've already spent £100 this billing period, no campaigns will deliver until it resets or you raise the cap.

4. Business Verification

For certain ad categories (politics, financial services, employment, housing, credit), Meta requires business verification before delivery. If your business isn't verified, ads in these categories simply won't run.

Layer 2: Campaign-Level Issues

5. Campaign Status Toggle

Obvious, but check it. The toggle should be green at campaign, ad set, AND ad level. All three must be on. A green campaign with a paused ad set delivers nothing.

6. Campaign Budget Optimization

If you're using Advantage Campaign Budget (formerly CBO), the budget is at campaign level, not ad set level. Make sure the campaign-level budget is set high enough.

7. Bid Strategy

If you've selected Bid Cap or Cost Cap, your cap may be too low. Switch temporarily to Highest Volume bidding to test whether the issue is bid-related. If delivery resumes, your cap was strangling the campaign.

8. Special Ad Categories

If your business operates in housing, employment, credit, or social issues/politics, you must select the correct Special Ad Category at campaign creation. The wrong selection (or missing selection) will prevent delivery in restricted regions.

Layer 3: Ad Set-Level Issues

9. Audience Size

Check the estimated audience size indicator. If it shows red ("audience is too narrow"), you need to broaden targeting. If it shows green but estimated daily reach is very low (under a few hundred), you also have a problem.

10. Audience Overlap

If you're running multiple ad sets with similar targeting, they compete in the auction. The Audience Overlap tool (in Audiences) shows you the percentage. Anything above 30% overlap causes both ad sets to underdeliver.

11. Schedule

Verify:

Start date is in the past or now

End date is in the future or unset

Dayparting (if enabled) covers enough hours

Time zone matches your expectations

A campaign set to start "tomorrow" won't deliver today. A campaign with dayparting set to "3am-5am only" won't deliver during normal hours.

12. Optimization Event Volume

If you're optimising for Purchase but only generating 5 purchases per week, Facebook can't optimise effectively. Delivery becomes erratic and budget gets wasted while the algorithm flails. Switch to a higher-volume event temporarily.

13. Conversion Window

Check whether your conversion window matches your customer journey. A 1-day click window for a B2B product with a 30-day sales cycle means most conversions never get attributed, so the algorithm has nothing to optimise toward.

Layer 4: Ad-Level Issues

14. Ad Approval Status

The Delivery column tells you. Possible statuses:

Active — Approved and running

In Review — Waiting for Meta to approve

Rejected — Policy violation, won't run

Limited delivery — Approved but delivery is restricted

Not delivering — Catch-all for various issues

Click the ad and look at the right sidebar for specific reasons.

15. Creative Format Issues

Some creative issues prevent delivery:

Image dimensions wrong for selected placements

Video too long for placement (e.g., over 15 seconds for Stories)

Aspect ratios not supported in target placements

File size too large

16. Landing Page URL Issues

If your destination URL returns a 404, redirects to a restricted domain, or violates Meta policies, the ad won't deliver. Test the URL in an incognito window from the country you're targeting.

17. Trademark Flags

Using brand names or logos you don't own can trigger trademark flags that prevent delivery. Even mentioning competitor brand names in copy can cause issues.

Layer 5: Auction-Level Issues

18. Insufficient Bid Power

Meta's auction works on total value (bid × estimated action rate × ad quality). Even if your bid is reasonable, low estimated action rate or ad quality means you can't win impressions. Check Ad Relevance Diagnostics in the ad's Inspect view.

19. Saturated Audience

If you've been running similar ads to the same audience for weeks, frequency builds up and Meta starts protecting users from over-exposure. Delivery slows or stops. Refresh creative or expand audience.

20. Budget Too Low for Audience

A £5/day budget on a 5 million person audience won't generate meaningful impressions. The minimum daily spend to actually serve ads is roughly your CPM ÷ 1000 × the minimum reach you want. If your CPM is £20 and you want to reach 1,000 people per day, you need at least £20.

Layer 6: External Issues

21. Pixel Not Firing

If your campaign optimises for conversions but your Pixel isn't firing properly, Facebook can't measure the events it's optimising toward. The campaign keeps trying to find conversions that never get reported, then slows delivery. Test your Pixel events in Events Manager.

22. iOS 14.5 Conversion Limits

Due to ATT, iOS users can opt out of conversion tracking. If your audience skews heavily iOS and many users have opted out, your conversion data is incomplete. The campaign sees fewer conversions than are actually happening, which affects optimisation.

23. Domain Not Verified

For purchase optimisation campaigns, your destination domain must be verified in Business Manager and added to Aggregated Event Measurement. If not, certain conversion events won't count and delivery becomes inefficient.

24. Special Country Restrictions

Some countries have additional ad restrictions, especially around political content, financial services, and gambling. Targeting users in these countries with restricted categories may prevent delivery entirely.

The Quick Diagnostic Path

When I'm called in to fix delivery issues, I check these in order:

Account Quality dashboard — any restrictions?
Billing — payment failed?
Campaign/ad set/ad toggles — all on?
Audience size — too narrow?
Schedule — active right now?
Ad approval — actually approved?
Pixel events — firing correctly?
Audience overlap — competing with itself?

90% of delivery issues are in those eight checks. The remaining 10% require deeper investigation.

When All Else Fails

Sometimes Facebook's delivery system just gets stuck on a campaign for no apparent reason. The fix is to duplicate the campaign and launch a fresh version. The duplicate often delivers normally even when the original is mysteriously frozen. Don't ask why — Meta's systems aren't always logical.

If you're constantly fighting delivery issues instead of running campaigns, Pix-Vu automatically monitors delivery health across all your campaigns and alerts you the moment something starts underdelivering — usually before you'd notice manually.