Facebook ads not showing? Here’s how to get your Facebook ads to show, and get more impressions and clicks

Facebook ads not showing? Here’s how to get your Facebook ads to show, and get more impressions and clicks

I never thought creating Facebook ads would be so much work. I mean, I’ve run Facebook ads before for some of my websites, and didn’t experience too many issues with them.

 

So I chimed up all loudly and boldly and whiningly in my most recent Social Media meeting at church, hoping to get a chance to create some eye-catching ads for the place of worship, and therefore, draw more souls.

By the by, please LIKE my church’s Facebook page for me. Just because. Thanks!

What Facebook told me about getting my ads to show up with more impressions

So I created a set of ads like these shown in this article, got them approved by the church’s higher-up and by Facebook’s review team of interns who approves 90% of my ads pretty quickly.

I’ve only seen them disapprove a few in my online marketing lifetime, one asking “Single Christian woman?” in the title, and another I’d run on my personal site, which may have been something about making money online.

Anyway, I watched as Facebook started giving nearly 40K impressions to my first set of ads, and a few clicks came in — I don’t know if folks who hit the “like” button are counted as a click or not, does anyone know? Right now I’m running both CPM and CPC ads, preferring CPM for more and faster impressions, which is usually my experience.

Why did Facebook stop showing my ads? They said my bids were too low…but they were wrong…partially…

All of a sudden, after about one hour of showing impressions, Facebook stopped showing my ads.

I know this because I saw that the ads for the “today” drop-down choice climbed to over 38,000 and then abruptly stopped.

I thought maybe they didn’t like the wording in our ads: Click “LIKE” to get a FREE DVD series.

After all, there’s all this controversy online about the “Get FB Ads Free” scam going on — so I thought maybe Facebook was clamping down on that “free” wording.

So I went and changed free to GIVEAWAY instead, by creating a whole new set of ads like my email string with Facebook employees below suggests.

They approved the new set of “giveaway” ads, but still didn’t give me any impressions.

All this time, I was emailing them back and forth.

Here’s my string of emails with Facebook:

Thanks for checking in with us. Our system selects the best ad to run based on its bid and historical performance. If users don’t respond well to an ad, our system will determine that the ad is less likely to perform well in the future, and will display the ad less often as a result. The suggested bid range, as you will notice with your ad may also increase significantly.

Based on what I see in your account, I suggest that you try creating a new ad and starting off fresh. A new ad will have no performance history to affect how it displays, and the suggested bid range you’ll see will only be based on the other ads you’re competing against and the audience you’re targeting.

Visit the following link and use our Top 10 Ad Creative tips when creating your fresh ads:

http://ads.ak.facebook.com/ads/FacebookAds/Top10_AdCreativeTips_10.7.pdf

If you have any further questions or need further optimization ideas, please let me know.

Thanks,

Online Sales Operations
Facebook

So that was the usually automated spiel, and next came a weird reply from Facebook about their approval process and submitting during normal business hours:

Hi Paula,

Thanks for your reply. I’ve reviewed your account, and it appears that your ads in the campaign, “New New Ads” have been approved. Please note that both new and edited ads don’t go live immediately, as they are subject to our official review process. For the quickest review times, we recommend submitting your ads during US or European business hours, Monday through Friday.

You can access and manage your Facebook Ads at any time when you’re signed in to your Facebook account. Click on the Ad Manager or “Ads and Pages” link. You can also visit:

http://www.facebook.com/ads/manage/

Please let me know if you have any further questions.

Thanks for contacting Facebook,

Online Sales Operations
Facebook

So I told Facebook…

Yes, I see they were created and then approved hours ago — and they were submitted during US business hours today.

It is now 4:21 p.m. and they still have zero impressions, even though my CPM bids are within Facebook’s recommended bid range.

Why are there no impressions?

FB is usually much faster than this, therefore I am wondering if something else is going on.

Thanks much,
Paula

And then…after waiting another night for my Facebook ads to show up…

Hi – It is now a day later, March 10, 2011 — and my ads still are showing no impressions, although they’ve been approved.

Please let me know why this is happening, since my Facebook ads generally always show plenty of impressions and don’t abruptly stop like they did Tuesday.

Like I reiterated below and in an additional email to support, I’ve created new ones that were approved, so I would like the impressions to start.

If there has been a change in policy, please inform us.

Thank you so much,
Paula

Facebook blamed my bid range being too low, and told me to bid at or above the high range…

So Facebook next sent me an email saying my bids were too low.

Admittedly, since this is the Facebook account of my church, I was being frugal — much more frugal than I’d be with my personal business account where I can expense the ad charges against my revenue — wanting to be a good steward and all.

Here’s their email to me:

Hi Paula,

Thanks for your reply.I’ve reviewed your account, and noticed that your ads are currently bidding below the suggested bid range. For example your ad ” Love, Sex & Relationships LIKE dvd giveaway Christian music likers” has aCPM bid of $0.40 while your suggested range is $0.62 – 0.99.

We highly recommend that you choose a bid at the high end or above, because when your bid is below the suggested range, it’s unlikely that your ad will be shown on the site. The suggested bid range you see when creating your ads is based on the range of bids that are currently winning the ad auction for the users you’ve chosen to target. This bid range will fluctuate over time as the pool of competing ads changes.

If you still feel there is an issue, you can try creating a new ad and starting off fresh by visiting:

http://www.facebook.com/ads/create.php

A new ad will have no performance history to affect how it displays, and the suggested bid range you’ll see will only be based on the other ads you’re competing against and the audience you’re targeting. Additionally, we recommend making sure your ad is targeted to the most relevant audience, and using informative ad text with an eye-catching image.

My reply to Facebook people:

Okay, I’ve raised my bids on my ad campaigns — some of them above the highest suggested bid range, and still no impressions.

I’ve never seen Facebook ads do this before, and I’ve run a good amount of campaigns.

Did something change?

Additionally, I just set up a brand new ad campaign called “New THE WORD Church ad Like Free DVDs to friends of fans” and the CPM bid is $1.33, above the 66 cents to $1.09 suggested just now.

Can you ensure that this account is in good standing and free and clear to have ad impressions begin showing?

Thanks,
Paula

Finally! It was my spending limit was reached in Facebook that caused my ads to stop!

The FB peeps finally discovered there was a spend cap of $140 set up in the account that was stopping the ads from running, because that amount had been exhausted already.

Since I never use spending caps in my regular personal business Facebook accounts, I didn’t even think to check the spending limit.

But bless God I finally got this email from Facebook:

Hi Paula,

Thanks for following up on this. I’m so sorry that I didn’t catch this earlier.

The reason your ads are no longer running is that your account spend cap of $140 has been reached. You can view your account spend cap by visiting your Billing Manager at http://www.facebook.com/ads/manage/billing.php.

When you reach your account spend cap, your ads will stop running to prevent further charges but will remain in active status. The account spend cap does not affect the delivery of your ads in any way. It simply exists to cutoff your advertising spend once you’ve reached a specific amount. There’s also no minimum or maximum amount attached to your account spend cap which allows you more room to move within your advertising budget needs.

If you would like to restart or reset your account spend cap in order to run your ads again in the future, you can do so by following the instructions below:

1. Visit your Billing Manager at:

http://www.facebook.com/ads/manage/billing.php

2. Click “edit” next to your current account spend cap amount.
3. Enter your preferred account spend amount.
4. Click “Save.”

Please note that you may experience a short delay before your new account spend cap takes effect.

If you choose to change or reset your spend cap, you’ll have the option to include the past spend amounts on your account within the new desired amount. For example, if you spend $100 and then decide to limit your account to $1000 without resetting past spend, your account will stop spending when you hit $1000. If you do reset your past spend in the spend cap fields, your account may spend $1100 ($100 + $1000).

My Facebook ads are running again, and I’ve learned a lot

Even though it was a frustrating experience trying to figure out why my Facebook ads stopped running, at least I’ve learned a lot about creating Facebook ads and keeping the campaigns running, and I’m still learning.

The impressions are over 53,000 as of this writing, after going live less than an hour ago.

The clicks are coming thru and the likes are increasing — and I’m keeping an eye on that increasing Facebook Fan page number, and am praying it’s worth it, and that it increases exponentially without much spending.

Do “Like” clicks on your ads count as clicks? Yes, says Facebook, so to RSVPs…

I had one last question for the Facebook people:

Yes, last question, I promise:

When people click “like” on the ad without clicking thru to the actual ad, does their “like” click count as a click that is factored into my FB ads?

Or are the clicks counted only for those people who actually click through to the ad?

Thanks!
Paula

Hi Paula,

Feel free to ask as many questions as you want! I’m happy to help.

Positive engagement actions are counted as clicks on your ad.This occurs when users “Like” your advertised Page, or RSVP “yes” or “maybe” to an Event, through your ad.