Paid social

Marketers report Meta bug turning off Facebook ads

Many advertisers woke up this morning and upon opening their Meta for Business accounts, found that ads were turned off late last night. Adding to injury, in many cases the ads turned off were some of the best performing assets.

Meta has not issued a statement, but if you are running Facebook Ads it would be prudent to log into your accounts and check to see if any of your ads were inadvertently turned off on or around 7 p.m. PST Tuesday.

What to do. Rok Hladnik shared on Twitter an easy way to diagnose if the ads were running and subsequently turned off. To view, simply view ads in ad manager that have been serving, then view “ad delivery.’” Within the ad delivery selector, you will be able to choose the “off”  button to showcase ads that are off.

This will show you if ads were turned off after were running earlier in the day/week. It is also possible to see changes within the campaign history.

Why we care. Advertisers need their ads to run to be successful. It appears this issue did not fire notifications and is impacting quality ads that may significantly hinder the success of a campaign. While Facebook has not provided a statement yet, this is a major problem that a diligent marketer can fix quickly.

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Contributing authors are chosen for their expertise and work under the oversight of the editorial staff. Search Engine Land is owned by Semrush. The contributor was not asked to mention Semrush; the opinions expressed are their own.

About the author

Greg Finn
Greg Finn is the Director of Marketing for Cypress North, a company that provides digital marketing and web development. He is a co-host of Marketing O'Clock and has been in the digital marketing industry for nearly 20 years. You can also find Greg on Twitter (@gregfinn) or LinkedIn.