Ads Not Spending? Here's What Worked for Me Yesterday

Just wanted to share a quick issue I encountered yesterday in case it helps anyone facing the same.
I launched a few Facebook ad sets using previously working creatives and settings, but the ads were stuck in “Active” status with zero spend for several hours. Normally, I’d expect some impressions within 30–60 minutes, especially with my usual budget and audience setup.
After waiting almost 6–8 hours and seeing no changes (despite everything looking fine on the surface), I tried the following:
-I duplicated the ad set
-Published it as a new campaign
-Let it go through review again
After that, the new version started getting spend and impressions within 30 minutes.
Seems like sometimes ads get stuck due to invisible review bugs or backend delivery issues — reposting forces a fresh review and often clears the problem.
If your ads are stuck and not spending after a few hours (and everything looks fine), try duplicating and publishing them again instead of just waiting or tweaking minor settings.
Hope this helps someone running into the same issue. Feel free to add your own workarounds if you've experienced this before!

Appreciate you posting this! I’ve run into the same issue a few times. Ads stuck in “Active” but with zero spend for hours. At first, I kept tweaking targeting or budgets, thinking it was my setup. But like you said, it usually ends up being some backend delivery bug. Duplicating the ad set and publishing it as new almost always kicks things into gear for me too, usually within 15–30 minutes.

Thanks for sharing, very useful information

Thanks for sharing this! I’ve run into the same issue a couple of times — everything looks good but no spend at all.

Thanks for sharing this — really helpful!
We’ve noticed the same lately: ad sets just sit there in “Active” with no spend, even when everything looks fine. Duplicating and re-publishing seems to trigger a fresh review that actually works.Also found that tweaking just the campaign name or minor creative element before re-uploading sometimes helps speed things up.It’s good to see others confirming this — Meta’s backend definitely acts weird sometimes