If you’ve created a Facebook ad but it’s not getting any impressions, there are a few potential reasons why:
Your targeting is too narrow
The most common reason a Facebook ad isn’t serving is that the targeting is too narrow. Facebook needs a certain audience size in order to consistently deliver impressions and clicks. If your target audience is only 100 people in a city, for example, Facebook may struggle to find enough of those people online frequently enough to spend your daily budget.
Try broadening your targeting to give Facebook a larger audience to work with. For example, target a wider geographic area, increase your age range, or expand your interests. You want your audience size to be at least in the tens of thousands for Facebook to be able to deliver consistent results.
Your bid strategy needs optimization
Facebook ads use an auction system, where your ad competes against other ads for each impression. The ad with the highest bid wins. So if your bid strategy is too low, other advertisers may be outbidding you for your target audience.
Here are some tips for optimizing your bid strategy:
- Increase your bid – Try raising your bids to see if it increases delivery. You may need to bid higher to win auctions against competing ads.
- Use automatic bidding – Let Facebook automatically bid for you to reach your daily budget and optimization goal (clicks, impressions, etc). This ensures your bids are adjusted to be competitive.
- Bid higher for more targeted users – Use detailed targeting to identify your highest potential customers, then increase bids for just that subgroup rather than bidding high for everyone.
Your ad creative needs improvement
The quality of your ad creative has a big impact on its performance. An ad with compelling visuals, strong copy and an effective call-to-action will get more engagement at a lower cost than a poor quality ad.
Try the following tips to improve your ad creative:
- Write catchy, benefit-driven copy that makes users want to click
- Use high quality, eye-catching images that stand out in the newsfeed
- Personalize the ad copy for the specific audience you are targeting
- Test different headlines, images, copy, layouts and calls-to-action
- Check that the landing page the ad links to loads quickly and is easy to navigate
You have ad placement restrictions
Facebook allows you to choose what placement types your ads can appear in, such as Facebook News Feed, Instagram Stories, Facebook Messenger etc. If you have selected very limited placements, it restricts the inventory available for your ads to be shown.
Try opening up all placement options for maximum reach. You can even target Facebook and Instagram separately to double your options. Just make sure the creative is optimized for the format – square images for Instagram feed, vertical video for Stories, etc.
Your page engagement is low
Facebook wants to show ads from pages that real users actually engage with frequently. So if your Facebook Page has very low engagement, such as few likes, comments, shares or clicks, it’s seen as less relevant by Facebook.
Try these tips to increase your Facebook Page engagement:
- Post more consistently – at least 1-2 posts per day
- Respond to all comments and messages
- Run polls and contests to generate shares and comments
- Go live or post short video content
- Engage with followers by asking questions in captions
Your page quality score is low
Facebook assigns your ad account and Facebook page a quality score based on factors like expected click-through rate and post engagement rate. A low quality score makes your ads more expensive to run.
Increase your quality score by:
- Creating more relevant, valuable ad creative
- Sending traffic to high-quality landing pages
- Including your brand name prominently in the Page name and ad copy
- Getting more positive feedback (reactions, comments, shares) on your Facebook page posts
There are campaign errors
Sometimes a technical issue with your Facebook Ads Manager account or campaign setup can prevent delivery. Check for the following:
- Payment method invalid – Your payment info needs to be valid to run ads
- Daily budget too low – Increase budget if it’s very low like $1-5
- Campaign status paused – Make sure campaign is set to Active
- Audience too small – See minimum audience size recommendations
- Incorrect targeting settings – Review age, gender, location and interests
The competition is very high in your niche
Some highly competitive industries like insurance, loans and law make it hard for small advertisers to breakthrough. Here are some strategies to compete:
- Target interests very specific to your niche
- Create testimonial ads with video/images from past customers
- Develop a direct response offer that converts lookers into buyers
- Focus on unique selling propositions rather than trying to beat others on price
- Bid higher selectively for engaged audiences that align with your ideal customer profile
Your audience is ad fatigue
Sometimes an audience can get oversaturated with ads from various advertisers. They may start tuning out ads or clicking less. You can overcome ad fatigue by:
- Refreshing your ad creative frequently with new images, videos and copy
- Giving each ad variation a short run time before rotating in new ads
- Remarketing specifically to people who have clicked your ads before
- Creating content-style native ads focused on storytelling rather than selling
- Developing high quality landing pages that provide real value to capture interest
Your audience’s buying stage doesn’t match
You may be targeting people who aren’t ready to purchase your product or in the buyer’s journey. For example, targeting cold traffic for an ecommerce purchase. Or promoting a high price service to a lower income demographic.
Tips to match your audience’s buying stage:
- Target those who have engaged with your lead gen offers
- Create different ad variations for awareness vs consideration vs conversion
- Use detailed targeting to isolate buyers who have purchased similar products recently
- Focus on your existing customers and lookalikes first before expanding to cold traffic
Your landing page doesn’t match the ad
There needs to be continuity from your ad copy and visuals to the landing page. If people feel “baited and switched” it causes poor performance.
Tips for matching ad to landing page:
- Ensure messaging is consistent from ad through to landing page
- Use the same branding, logos, color scheme on both ad and landing site
- Keep headlines and value propositions aligned
- Include imagery of people, products or offers just like the Facebook ad
- Drive traffic to a specific landing page or product page rather than homepage
You have an account warning or limitation
Check your Facebook Ads Manager account for any warnings or limitations due to policy violations. Sometimes accounts can get temporarily restricted from spending or showing ads until resolved.
Here are some common account issues to check for:
- Spending limit – Daily or lifetime spending limits in place
- Ad review pending – Some ads are still under review
- Disapproved ads – Remove any disapproved ads
- Disabled ad account – Account needs to be enabled to run ads
- Unpaid invoice – Pay any outstanding Facebook ads invoices
The campaign optimization event is incorrect
When setting up your campaign, you choose an optimization event like clicks, conversions or impressions. This tells Facebook what you value most.
If this doesn’t match your actual desired outcome, delivery may be poor. For example, optimizing for landing page views rather than purchases.
Choose the right optimization event:
- Traffic campaigns – Optimize for Impressions or Link Clicks
- Engagement campaigns – Optimize for Post Engagement or Page Likes
- Lead gen campaigns – Optimize for Conversions
- Sales campaigns – Optimize for Conversions with value assigned
There are placement or delivery exclusions
Check your campaign settings for any exclusions you may have added for placements, devices or delivery schedules. This restricts when and where your ads can be shown.
For example:
- Limiting placements only to Instagram feed
- Excluding mobile devices from targeting
- Pausing campaigns on certain weekdays or hours
- Using a low frequency cap so each user sees your ad rarely
Remove any unnecessary exclusions that are limiting your campaign reach and delivery.
Your audience membership is capped
Facebook limits how many advertisers can target very small, custom audiences. Once the audience cap is reached, new advertisers can’t target that group.
If trying to target a highly specific, small custom audience – try expanding your targeting to include more potential users. Or focus on interest targeting which doesn’t have the same limits.
Your product catalog has issues
If running product catalog sales ads, make sure your product feed is correctly configured and synced with valid products. Common product catalog problems include:
- Invalid CSV feed formatting or unmapped required fields
- Broken image links for product images
- Incorrect product ID matching between feed and site
- Inactive products or product variants in feed
- Prices in feed don’t match live site prices
Use Facebook’s Product Catalog diagnostics to identify and fix any errors.
Your pixel is not tracking events
The Facebook pixel needs to be implemented properly on your website to track events like purchases, add to carts, lead form submissions etc. If it’s misconfigured or blocked by an ad blocker, campaigns optimized for conversions will suffer.
Debug your Facebook pixel setup to ensure it can communicate conversion events back to Facebook. Slow page load speeds can also prevent pixels firing – keep your site speed optimised.
The audience doesn’t use Facebook anymore
While Facebook still has billions of users, some demographics and age groups are using it less over time. Teenagers and young millennials are moving to other platforms like Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok.
Try these tips if your target audience isn’t active on Facebook itself:
- Reallocate budget to Instagram instead as it’s part of Facebook ad ecosystem
- Target multiple platforms like YouTube and TikTok in addition to Facebook
- Focus on remarketing your existing customers rather than prospective new customers
- Expand your targeting to older age brackets who still use Facebook heavily
Your offer or message is not compelling
At the end of the day, your ad needs to resonate with the target audience and motivate them to click. If your offer, copy, creative assets or landing page are not enticing, it will affect performance.
Tips for creating compelling ads:
- Focus on how your product uniquely solves customers’ problems
- Use emotional triggers like humor or inspiration rather than plain product specs
- Leverage FOMO tactics with scarcity or urgency
- Stack on bonus offers like free shipping, extra warranty, free gift etc
- Conduct A/B split tests to let data guide your most effective message
Conclusion
Troubleshooting a Facebook ad with low or no impressions requires methodically checking through all the above potential issues with your targeting, bids, creatives, landing page and overall offer.
Focus on the highest impact areas first – ensure your targeting is broad enough for audience size, test better performing creatives, and that your landing pages deliver on what the ad promises.
Facebook ad delivery relies on both relevance (quality score) and competitiveness (your bid vs others) so optimize both areas for the best results.