Why is My TikTok Ad Not Spending?

You’ve filmed a killer TikTok, crafted compelling ad copy, and launched your new campaign with high hopes, only to check back an hour later and see that dreaded statistic: $0.00 spent. It's a frustratingly common problem, but the good news is that the fix is almost always a simple settings adjustment. This tutorial will walk you through the most frequent reasons why your TikTok ads aren't spending and provide clear, step-by-step instructions to get them running.

Is Your Ad Still In Review?

Before you dive into complex troubleshooting, check the most common reason for a lack of spending: the ad review process. Every single ad submitted to TikTok is manually and automatically reviewed to ensure it meets their advertising policies. This is a non-negotiable step that applies to everyone.

Typically, this review takes anywhere from a few minutes to 24 hours. However, during busy periods or if your ad triggers a more detailed check, it can occasionally take longer. The key here is patience. Editing your ad or ad group while it's in review will push it back to the end of the queue, resetting the waiting period.

How to Check Your Ad Status:

Navigate to the "Campaigns" tab in your TikTok Ads Manager.
Click on the campaign and then the ad group containing your ad.
Find the "Status" column for your ad.

In Review: This is normal. Your ad is in the queue waiting for approval. Give it time.
Active/Delivering: Your ad has been approved. If it's still not spending, the issue lies elsewhere.
Not Delivering/Disapproved: Your ad violates one of TikTok's policies. TikTok will usually provide a reason, such as copyright issues, prohibited content, or even low-quality video resolution.

If your ad is disapproved, carefully read the reason provided, fix the issue in your creative or copy, and resubmit it for another review.

Your Budget and Bidding Strategy Needs a Rethink

Once your ad is approved, the next place to look is at your budget and bid strategy. This is where most spending issues occur. The TikTok algorithm needs a clear and competitive financial signal to enter your ad into the auction against thousands of other advertisers.

Your Budget is Too Low

TikTok has minimum budget requirements to ensure campaigns have enough runway to gather data and optimize. If your budget is below these thresholds, your ad simply won't run.

Campaign Level: Minimum budget of $50/day.
Ad Group Level: Minimum budget of $20/day.

Even if you meet the minimum, setting your budget too low on a competitive ad set can still prevent it from spending. A $20/day budget might struggle to find traction when competing for a high-value audience. The algorithm may determine it doesn't have enough spending room to learn and achieve results effectively.

The Fix: Double-check that your campaign and ad group budgets meet the minimum requirements. If they do, but you're still getting zero impressions, consider increasing your ad group budget by 20-30% to give it a more competitive edge in the auction.

Your Bid is Not Competitive Enough

Your bid strategy tells TikTok how much you're willing to pay for a specific action (like a click, conversion, or impression). If your manual bid is too low, you will consistently lose auctions to advertisers willing to pay more for the same audience.

Let's look at the main bid strategies:

Lowest Cost: This is a hands-off approach. You set a budget, and TikTok automatically bids to get you the most results possible within that budget. It's the recommended starting point for most new campaigns as it eliminates the guesswork.
Cost Cap/Bid Cap: These are manual strategies where you set a maximum amount you're willing to pay per result. If you set a Cost Cap for conversions at $1.00, but the average market rate for that audience is $5.00, your ad will never be shown because your bid is too low to win an auction.

The Fix: If you're using a manual bid strategy like Cost Cap or Bid Cap, try increasing your bid incrementally until you start seeing delivery. A better approach for troubleshooting is to switch to the "Lowest Cost" bidding strategy. This allows TikTok's algorithm to learn what the true market cost is and start delivering your ads.

Check Your Ad Schedule

This sounds simple, but it trips up even experienced advertisers. Make sure you haven't accidentally set your campaign start date in the future or an end date that has already passed. Checking the specific times is also crucial - setting a start time of 8:00 PM instead of 8:00 AM means you'll be waiting all day for delivery to start.

The Fix: Go to your Ad Group settings and review the "Schedule" section. Confirm the start date and time are set correctly and extend the end date if needed.

Your Audience Targeting Might Be Too Restrictive

TikTok needs a large enough pool of users to deliver your ad effectively. If your targeting is too narrow, the algorithm will struggle to find enough people who meet your exact criteria, leading to little or no spending.

The Audience Size is Too Small

This often happens when advertisers layer too many targeting parameters. For example, targeting users who are 25-27 years old, live in a specific zip code, and are interested in rock climbing, knitting, and vintage cars. The potential audience size shrinks with every condition you add.

In the "Audience" section of your ad group settings, TikTok provides a handy "Audience Availability" meter. If it indicates your audience setting is "Too Narrow," that’s a red flag.

The Fix: Broaden your targeting. Start by removing the least important targeting layers. Instead of five very specific interests, try one or two broader ones. Expand your age range or target a larger geographical area. Your goal is to get the meter into the "Balanced" or "Fairly Broad" range, which gives the algorithm enough freedom to find the best-performing users.

Your Ad Creative or Account May Have Issues

If your budget and targeting look good, the problem might be with the ad itself or your account status.

Creative Saturation or Disapproval

If your campaign was spending and then suddenly stopped, you might be experiencing "creative fatigue." This means your target audience has seen your ad so many times it's no longer engaging, causing TikTok to stop showing it. The solution is simply to upload fresh creative a new video so you can get another shot.

Alternatively, your ad could have been retroactively disapproved after an initial approval. This can happen if machine learning or user reports flag it for a policy violation that was initially missed.

The Fix: Check your ad status in the Ads Manager again to confirm it hasn't been disapproved. If creative fatigue is the likely issue as it was running already, duplicate the ad group and test a completely new ad creative. Staying on top of TikTok trends and using a native, lo-fi video style will make your brand feel right at home here.

Billing or Account-Level Problems

Often overlooked, a simple payment failure will halt all ad spend across your account. This could be due to an expired credit card, insufficient funds, or a transaction flagged by your bank.

In rarer cases, your entire ad account might be suspended or placed under a secondary review for security or major policy reasons, which freezes all activity.

The Fix: In your TikTok Ads Manager, navigate to the "Payment" section of your profile to ensure your billing information is up-to-date and your account has funds available. Check for any account-level error notifications as well. If your entire account has an issue, you'll need to contact TikTok support for further clarification.

A Quick Troubleshooting Checklist for Ads Not Spending

If your TikTok ad feels stuck, run through this list to spot the problem a bit faster:

Ad Status: Is your ad approved and showing "Active"?
Budget: Is your ad group budget set to at least $20/day?
Bid Strategy: Are you on "Lowest Cost," or is your manual bid high enough to be competitive?
Audience Size: Is TikTok's meter showing your audience size as "Balanced"?
Ad Schedule: Are your start and end dates correct?
Payment Details: Is your card on file valid, funded, and up to date?
Creative Freshness: Could your ad creative for an already running campaign be stale?

By checking these seven points, you'll solve over 95% of all ad delivery problems.

Final Thoughts

Seeing your TikTok ad spend stuck at zero is puzzling, but it’s almost always solvable by systematically checking for the common culprits. The issue typically boils down to your ad review status, an uncompetitive budget or bid, overly narrow targeting, or a payment or policy issue. Simply move step-by-step through our checklist above, and you'll uncover the cause and get your campaign back on track.

Once your campaigns are spending, tying your TikTok performance back to real business goals can become tough if your other data sources don't talk to each other. We find a lot of organizations often face challenges connecting their numbers from several TikTok advertising campaigns to broader goals such as return customer retention, full-cycle sales conversion, and multi-channel marketing attribution. With Graphed, we made a simple-to-use platform with first-day users or large marketing orgs alike in mind: Connect all your data sources and create custom and templatized real-time monitoring dashboards to view KPIs just in a few clicks — seeing not just the results from an individual campaign but all of real-time insights impacting your business.