Solved: Meta Ads Active But Not Spending

Hi there,

Thanks for reaching out!

Happy to give you some initial thoughts on this. It's a really common and frustrating problem to have your Meta ads approved and 'active' but see a big fat zero in the 'Amount Spent' column. Usually it's not a simple bug, but a signal the platform is giving you about your campaign setup. Don't worry, it's almost always fixable.

The short answer is that your ads aren't winning any 'auctions' to be shown to users. The long answer, and the one that will actually help you fix this for good, involves understanding why you're losing those auctions and how to build campaigns that the algorithm loves to spend money on. Let's get into it.

So, what's actually going on? The simple checks first...

Before we go deep into the strategy, it's worth ticking off the common technical glitches. More often than not it's one of these simple things, and it's a quick fix. I'd just quickly run through this list first.

-> Ad Approval Status: I know you said it says 'Active', but sometimes this can be misleading. It can be 'Active' but still stuck in a final review stage, especially if it's a new account or you're advertising in a sensitive category. Click on the ad level and check the 'Delivery' column. Does it say "In Review" or "Learning"? Sometimes an ad can get flagged and rejected after initially being approved, which will also halt spending. If it's been over 24 hours, this is less likely, but always the first place to look.

-> Billing and Account Limits: This is a big one. Is your payment method verified and correct? If it fails, all your ads stop. More importantly, check your account spending limit. This is a seperate limit on the entire ad account that you can set. If you've hit it from a previous campaign, no new campaigns will spend until you increase or reset it. It's easy to forget you've set one up months ago.

-> Budgets and Scheduling: Double-check your campaign start date. It's a silly mistake but we've all done it - set it to start tomorrow by accident. Also, look at your daily budget. If it's incredibly low, like £1 a day, and you're in a competitive space, the algorithm might struggle to find any auctions it can even enter. Tbh, for a lead gen campaign, you'd want to start with at least £10-£20 a day to give the system enough data to work with.

-> Bid Strategy: Are you using 'Lowest Cost' (the default) or did you set a 'Cost Cap' or 'Bid Cap'? If you set a manual bid cap and it's too low, you'll simply never win an auction. For example, if you tell Meta "I will not pay more than £0.10 per click" but the going rate in the auction is £0.50, your ad will never be shown. Unless you have a very good reason and lots of data, I'd say you should always start a new campaign with the 'Lowest Cost' bid strategy and let Meta figure it out for you.

If you've checked all of that and everything looks fine, then we need to move on to the more likely reason: your campaign isn't competitive enough to win auctions.

You'll need to understand the Meta Auction...

Here's the most important thing to get your head around: Meta Ads is not a vending machine where you put money in and get a guaranteed number of impressions out. It's an auction, and you're competing against possibly thousands of other advertisers trying to reach the same person at the same time.

Meta has two jobs. First, to make money for its shareholders. Second, and more importantly for its long-term survival, is to keep users on the platform. If they bombard users with rubbish, irrelevant ads, people will stop scrolling. So, their whole system is designed to find a balance. They want to show the user an ad they might actually be interested in, and they want to show the advertiser's ad to a user who might actually take an action (like filling out your form).

To decide which ad wins the auction, Meta calculates a "Total Value" score for every single ad that's eligible. The ad with the highest score gets shown. It's not just about who bids the most. The formula is basically:

Total Value = (Advertiser Bid) x (Estimated Action Rate) + Ad Quality

A £0 spend means your Total Value score is consistently too low to beat anyone else competing for your audience. The algorithm is essentially saying, "Based on the information you've given me, I predict this ad will perform so poorly that showing it would be a waste of the user's time and your money." It's harsh, but it's valuable feedback.

Let's break down those components.

I'd say you need to diagnose your "Low Value" problem...

If your ads aren't spending, you have a problem in one of those three areas. Let's work out which one it is.

1. Your Bid (Less Likely, But Possible)

As I mentioned, if you're using the default "Lowest Cost" bidding, this is probably not the issue. This strategy tells Meta "get me the most results for my budget," and it automatically adjusts your bid in real-time to be competitive. However, if your budget is extremely low for a competitive audience, it might still struggle. For an instant form campaign, a £20 daily budget should be more than enough to get *some* delivery. The problem is almost certainly elsewhere.

2. Your Estimated Action Rate (Very Likely The Problem)

This is the big one. This is Meta's prediction of how likely a person who sees your ad is to actually complete the action you're optimising for (in your case, filling out the instant form). If the algorithm predicts a very low chance of this happening, your Total Value score plummets, and your ad doesn't get shown.

What causes a low Estimated Action Rate prediction?

-> Your Audience is Too Small/Niche: This is the number one cause of £0 spend for new campaigns. If you've layered on 10 different interests and behaviours and your potential reach is only "50,000 people", you're making it incredibly hard for the algorithm. It looks at that tiny pool and thinks, "The chances of finding anyone in this highly specific group who is ready to fill out a lead form *right now* is almost zero." As a result, it doesn't even bother trying. Your audience needs to be broad enough to give the algorithm room to work.

-> Your History is Working Against You: If you've run ads from this account before that had very low conversion rates, the algorithm remembers. Your account and pixel have a quality history. A new campaign might be penalised based on past poor performance, leading the algorithm to predict another poor outcome. It's not fair, but it happens.

When we set up new campaigns, we follow a pretty strict prioritisation of audiences to give the algorithm the best possible chance of success. You want to start with audiences that have the highest intent or are most similar to your existing customers.

3. Your Ad Quality (Also Very Likely The Problem)

This covers everything about the ad itself: the image or video, the headline, the main text. Meta looks at things like engagement rates (likes, comments, shares), click-through rates, and negative feedback (people hiding your ad). A low-quality ad that nobody interacts with gets a low score.

If your ad creative is generic, boring, or looks just like every other ad out there, the algorithm knows from experience that users will just scroll past it. Why would it waste a valuable impression on an ad it predicts will be ignored? Common ad quality mistakes include:

-> Stock Images: They scream "AD!" and people have become blind to them. They look untrustworthy and lazy.

-> No Clear Hook: The first sentence of your ad copy and the first three seconds of your video are everything. If you don't grab attention and call out your specific audience and their specific problem immediately, they're gone.

-> Feature-Focused, Not Problem-Focused: People don't care about your service's features; they care about their problems. A good ad doesn't say "We offer expert consulting services." It says, "Tired of your ads spending £0 while your competitors scale? Here's why." It agitates a pain point before offering the solution.

We often use a framework called Problem-Agitate-Solve (PAS) for ad copy. It's brutally effective.

If your current ad copy doesn't follow a structure like that, there's a good chance the algorithm sees it as low quality and predicts (correctly) that nobody will engage with it.

You probably should follow this practical troubleshooting plan...

Okay, that's a lot of theory. What should you actually *do* right now? Follow these steps in order.

Step 1: Wait 24 Hours. Seriously. Sometimes the system is just slow, especially with new accounts or new campaigns. If it's only been 12 hours, give it a full day before you start changing things. Constantly tweaking a new campaign confuses the algorithm.

Step 2: Run the Technical Checklist. Go through the list from the first section: ad status, billing, limits, schedule, and bid strategy. Confirm everything is 100% correct.

Step 3: Fix Your Audience. This is your most powerful lever. Look at your ad set targeting. Is the "Potential Reach" meter in the yellow or red? Is it under 500,000 people? If so, it's almost certainly too small.
-> Action: Duplicate your ad set. In the new ad set, remove your most niche interest layers. For example, if you were targeting "People interested in 'Shopify' AND 'Small Business Owners' AND 'Marketing'", try just targeting "People interested in 'Shopify'". You want your audience to be at least 1-2 million for a cold traffic campaign. Broader is often better at the start, let Meta's algorithm find the buyers for you.

Step 4: Fix Your Creative. Look at your ad with honest eyes. Does it look like an ad? Is the hook compelling?
-> Action: In your new, broader ad set, create a new ad. Use a different image or video - maybe something more authentic, like a phone video of you talking to the camera. Re-write the copy using the Problem-Agitate-Solve framework. Make it feel less like an ad and more like a helpful piece of advice that solves a real problem.

Step 5: Launch and Wait. Turn off your original, non-spending ad set. Let the new one with the broader audience and better creative run. Don't touch it for at least 48-72 hours, even if spending is slow to start. Let the learning phase do its thing.

If after all that it *still* isn't spending, then you can try the last resort: duplicating the entire campaign. Sometimes, an ad set just gets "stuck" in a weird digital limbo, and duplicating it can reset it and kickstart delivery. But you should only do this after you've addressed the likely strategic issues with your audience and creative first.

We'll need to look at your Instant Forms specifically...

Since you're using Instant Forms (also called Lead Gen forms), there are a few extra things to consider. This format is designed for low friction. A user clicks, their details are pre-filled from their Facebook profile, and they hit submit. Easy.

This ease of use can be both a blessing and a curse. It generally leads to a lower Cost Per Lead (CPL) than sending traffic to a landing page, but the quality of those leads can often be much lower. People submit without really thinking about it. I remember one campaign we worked on for a B2B software client where we generated registrations for as little as $2.38 each on Meta using this format, which is amazing, but you have to be prepared to sift through them to find the good ones.

How does this relate to your £0 spend? Well, Meta's algorithm is now smart enough to optimise for *quality*. If you add a small amount of "positive friction" to your form, you can sometimes improve your results and even kickstart delivery. In your form settings, you can:

-> Add a Custom Question: Instead of just Name/Email/Phone, add a simple qualifying question. For example, "What is your biggest marketing challenge right now?" This forces the user to stop and think, meaning only more motivated people will complete it.
-> Use the "Higher Intent" Setting: This adds a review screen before the final submission, where the user has to confirm their details are correct. It's a simple step, but it weeds out accidental submissions.

Paradoxically, making the form slightly harder to complete can signal to the algorithm that you care about lead quality. This can increase the "Estimated Action Rate" for high-quality users, which boosts your Total Value score in the auction. It's something to test once you get the ads spending.

To give you a rough idea of what to expect cost-wise, here is a simple calculator. It's based on typical CPC (Cost Per Click) and Conversion Rate ranges we see. Your results will vary, but it helps set a baseline.

This is the main advice I have for you:

To wrap this all up, here’s a clear action plan. Don't just randomly change things; follow a structured process. This is how you properly diagnose and fix the problem, rather than just getting lucky.

As you can see, running paid ads effectively is a bit more involved than just setting up a campaign and hoping for the best. It's about understanding the system you're working within and making strategic decisions based on how the algorithm thinks. Issues like this are common, but they're also why businesses often turn to expert help.

Spending hours troubleshooting delivery issues is time you could be spending talking to the leads these campaigns should be generating. Having someone with experience who has seen and solved this problem hundreds of times before can be the difference between a failed campaign and a scalable lead generation machine.

I hope this detailed breakdown has been genuinely helpful and gives you a clear path forward. If you go through these steps and still find yourself stuck, or you'd just rather have an expert take a look under the hood, we offer a completely free, no-obligation initial consultation where we can review your ad account together.

Regards,

Team @ Lukas Holschuh