How to Stop Ads in Ads Manager: A Comprehensive 2024 Update

Every ad campaign has a lifespan—sometimes you let it run until the planned end date, then analyze results and move on. But sometimes, unforeseen situations arise (like a misconfiguration, an overblown budget, or poor traffic quality) that require stopping the ads sooner. This quick guide explains how to pause or halt campaigns in Ads Manager, plus key reasons why you might want to do so.

Pausing Ads: The Basics

Facebook makes it easy to pause (or unpause) a campaign, ad set, or individual ad. Here’s how:

1. Open Ads Manager, where you’ll see all campaigns you’ve created.
2. Decide which level to pause:
   • Campaigns (the highest level),
   • Ad Sets (groups of ads under a campaign), or
   • Ads (the individual creatives).
3. Find the item you want to stop. Next to its name, you’ll see a toggle (blue slider). Switch it off (to the left).
4. If the campaign/ad set/ad was active, the status will change to “Paused”. If it was in draft, it remains in draft until published.

Remember: if you pause a campaign at the campaign level, you effectively pause every ad set and ad under it. If you only pause one ad, the rest of the ad set or campaign remains running.

Top Reasons to Put Ads on Pause

Pausing (or stopping) ads can be strategic. Some of the most common scenarios include:

• Wrong budget settings. If you’ve allocated an incorrect amount—too high or too low—pausing can let you fix it. Minor changes (±20% from the original) might be safe to apply without a full reset. But if you drastically alter the budget, you might want to create a new campaign or ad set.
• Configuration errors. Maybe the audience, placements, or schedule are wrong. You can pause, correct them, and republish. If it’s a big mistake (like the wrong objective or the wrong payment method), it might be simpler to duplicate the campaign with the correct settings and discard the old one.
• Low-quality traffic. Sometimes the campaign passes moderation too quickly, and the system fails to deliver relevant audiences. Pausing might allow you to analyze performance and adjust targeting strategies.
• Short-term analysis. If you need to dig into early results (e.g., initial conversions, cost per lead) before continuing your spend, pausing can help you avoid wasting budget until you refine your approach.

However, toggling ads on and off repeatedly can confuse Facebook’s optimization. Too many starts and stops may degrade performance or reset the learning phase.

Hierarchy Reminder

In Ads Manager, items follow this structure:

• Campaign → top level, defining objective
• Ad Set → budget, audience, scheduling
• Ad → creative, messaging

Stopping anything at the higher level (e.g., entire campaign) will cascade to all sub-levels. Stopping a single ad only affects that one ad.

Where to Drive Traffic from Facebook?

Facebook remains a leading source of traffic for verticals such as:

• Beauty & Health (Nutra)
• Gambling
• eCommerce
• Betting
• Crypto

Successful affiliates share numerous case studies—for instance:

• ROI of 100% with quick-launch casino apps
• $200/day combining FB Ads and viral blog content
• $20,228 in 6 months using a single Nutra product + FB Ads
• $5,000/month from Instant Articles
• and many more success stories

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Conclusion

Knowing how to pause ads in Ads Manager gives you control over your budget, targeting, and overall campaign health. Use it wisely—fix mistakes, reassess performance, or roll out new budgets with minimal risk. But avoid constant toggling; once you find a winning formula, let the system work its optimization magic.

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