When you create a Facebook ad, it goes through several steps before it is live and ready to be delivered to your target audience. The main stages an ad goes through are:
Draft
This is the initial state of your ad after you’ve filled in the ad creative and set the campaign, ad set and ad level settings. At this point, the ad is saved but not yet sent for review.
In Review
Once you submit your ad for review, it will enter the “In Review” status. Facebook’s ad review system checks your ad to make sure it complies with Facebook’s Advertising Policies. Things it checks for include:
- Ad content – to ensure there is no prohibited content
- Targeting – to check audience targeting settings are compliant
- Landing page experience – to check the landing page matches the ad creative
The ad review process usually takes less than 24 hours. Some ad accounts in good standing can get ads approved even faster.
Processing
If your ad makes it through the review process, it will enter the “Processing” status. This means your ad is approved and now Facebook’s ad serving system is taking the steps needed to deliver your ad.
Things that happen during processing include:
- Ad matching – Facebook finds users in your target audience to show your ad to.
- Budget and bid optimization – Facebook determines the optimal bid and budget allocation for your campaign.
- Delivery optimization – Facebook’s system pre-caches your ad creative and landing page to ensure fast loading times when serving your ad.
For simple text and image ads, processing can take less than an hour. Video ads and ads using certain formats like carousel or collection ads take longer, sometimes up to 24 hours.
Active
Once your Facebook ad finishes processing, it will enter the “Active” status. This means your ad is now live and being delivered to your target audience.
At this point, you will start to see ad results coming in like impressions, clicks, video views, etc. Your cost per result will also start accumulating based on your bid strategy and budget.
Common issues during processing
Sometimes an ad may get stuck in the processing stage if there are issues detected. Here are some common reasons why a Facebook ad might not proceed from processing to active status:
Landing page errors
Facebook continuously checks the landing page quality when serving your ad. Some landing page issues that can block your ad include:
- Page not found (404 error)
- Page not working (500+ error)
- Page redirecting to another URL
- Page loading too slowly
- Page content not matching ad creative
To fix landing page errors, double check your page to make sure it’s working, matches your ad, and loads fast on mobile and desktop.
Missing ad assets
Facebook ad creative like images and videos needs to be stored on Facebook’s servers so they can quickly load when serving your ad. Issues like a missing image or video file can prevent your ad from going live.
To avoid this, make sure all ad assets are uploaded correctly into Facebook. Double check the preview to make sure images, videos, and any other files are displaying properly.
Targeting errors
Facebook does additional checks on your ad targeting when processing your ad. Some potential issues include:
- Audience too narrow – You’re targeting a very small subset of people.
- Location targeting invalid – Your targeted countries, cities or areas have changed.
- Age / gender targeting incompatible – Your targeting combination is impossible, like only targeting 85+ year old men.
Review your audience targeting settings and make sure there are enough potential people you could reach. Expand your targeting if needed to help your ad deliver.
Budget too low
For your ad to deliver, there needs to be enough budget to get at least 500 impressions per day. If your budget is too low like $1 per day, your ad may not proceed past processing.
Increase your budget to a minimum of $5 per day for each ad set. Set your campaign budget high enough to comfortably cover each ad set too.
Bid too low
Similarly, your ad needs a high enough bid to compete and win auctions to show to users. An extremely low bid like $0.01 could prevent your ad from delivering.
Check your bid amounts and increase to at least $0.25 per click or action. You can also switch to automatic bidding to have Facebook optimize your bids.
How long can processing take?
If there are no issues, Facebook ad processing can take less than an hour to complete in most cases. Here are the typical processing timelines:
| Ad Format | Typical Processing Time |
|---|---|
| Simple text, image ad | Less than 1 hour |
| Video ad | 1 – 6 hours |
| Carousel ad | 1 – 24 hours |
| Dynamic creative | 6 – 24 hours |
| Collection ad | 24 – 48 hours |
However, if your ad has one of the issues mentioned above, processing could take longer or your ad may remain stuck in processing indefinitely until the issue is resolved.
If your Facebook ad has been stuck in processing for more than 24 hours, check for any error notifications from Facebook. If you don’t see any notifications, check for the common issues mentioned in this article.
How to troubleshoot a Facebook ad stuck in processing
Here are some steps you can take to troubleshoot and fix a Facebook ad that is stuck in processing:
- Check for error notifications – Go to the “Notifications” section in Ads Manager and see if there are any messages from Facebook related to the stuck ad.
- Verify landing page quality – Open the landing page on mobile and desktop and validate there are no issues like a 404 error. Use a tool like PageSpeed Insights to check page speed.
- Check ad assets – Open the ad preview and creative and confirm all images, videos and other files are loading properly.
- Review targeting – Do a quick check of your audience, location and age/gender targeting to make sure there are enough people available to target.
- Increase budget – Edit the campaign budget and individual ad set budgets to increase to at least $5 per day as a minimum.
- Raise bids – Increase your ad bid amounts to a minimum of $0.25 per click or action to ensure your ad can compete.
- Check for ad account restrictions – Make sure your ad account is still active and not subject to any spending restrictions due to policy violations.
- Contact Facebook support – If you still can’t get your ad to process, you can reach out to Facebook’s ad support for additional troubleshooting help.
Give your ad some time to successfully process after making fixes. If it has been in processing for more than 48 hours with no change, get in touch with Facebook’s ad support team.
Conclusion
When a Facebook ad shows a status of “Processing”, it means it has passed review and is going through the final steps needed before it can deliver impressions and results. This includes optimizing your targeting, bids and budget as well as preparing to serve your ad creative and landing page.
Ad processing usually takes less than a day, but can sometimes get held up by issues like landing page errors, invalid targeting settings or incorrectly uploaded ad assets. If your ad remains stuck in processing for more than 24 hours, troubleshoot by checking for notifications, verifying your landing page quality, increasing budget and bids, and contacting Facebook support if needed.
With some care taken to create compliant, optimized ads, you can minimize the chances of processing issues holding up the launch of your Facebook ad campaigns.
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Facebook Ads Manager is the main interface used to set up and manage Facebook advertising campaigns. It provides detailed analytics and reporting on ad performance across Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and the Facebook Audience Network. Advertisers can use Ads Manager to monitor and optimize all their ad sets, creatives and targeting in one place.
When you first access Ads Manager, you will need to select the Facebook ad account you want to work in. Most advertisers have multiple ad accounts to organize campaigns for different businesses, brands or objectives. All the campaigns and ads for that ad account will load after it’s selected.
The left side navigation bar in Ads Manager provides quick access to the different sections for managing your advertising. This includes:
- Campaigns – List of all your campaigns along with budgets and timeframes.
- Ad Sets – View ad sets within each campaign organized by objective and targeting.
- Ads – Gallery of all ad creative including images, videos and carousels.
- Audiences – Saved customer audiences that can be reused for targeting.
- Assets – Library of uploaded ad media like images, videos and templates.
The middle column in Ads Manager shows data and metrics for your advertising organized by campaign, ad set or ad level. You can apply filters to view different breakdowns and aggregates for your data.
Key metrics provided include:
- Impressions
- Reach
- Clicks
- Conversions
- CPM / CPC / CTR
- Spend
The right column provides additional options for managing, editing and optimizing your campaigns. From the columns dropdown, you can:
- Duplicate campaigns, ad sets and ads
- Edit targeting, creative, placements and schedules
- Set bid strategies
- View delivery diagnostics and alerts
- And more
Facebook Ads Manager also includes tabs for analyzing results (‘Analytics’), creating audiences (‘Audiences”) and accessing ad account settings (‘Admin’). Advanced users can also access Facebook’s Business Manager tool for managing assets, pixels and app events.
Some key tips for navigating Ads Manager:
- Use the dropdowns and filters to segment your data in different ways.
- Customize columns to focus on the metrics most important to you.
- Check the right column for additional options to edit or optimize each campaign element.
- Review the aggregated reporting at each level – campaign, ad set and ad.
- Watch for notifications and alerts Facebook provides for issues impacting delivery.
With its robust structure and extensive feature set, Ads Manager provides advertisers incredible flexibility to implement both simple and highly advanced advertising strategies across the Facebook ecosystem. Mastering the platform takes time, but the investment is well worth it in unlocking the full potential of Facebook Ads.