Why Microsoft Ads Is Not Spending Your Budget

When Microsoft Ads is not spending your budget, the cause usually shows up somewhere in the account, from a payment hold or a paused campaign to bids, targeting or keywords that leave the ads too few auctions to enter. Finding that signal before changing any settings is the first job in any programme of Microsoft Advertising for UK businesses, because changes made without a diagnosis tend to hide the original fault.

The checks below follow the order that rules causes out fastest. They start with the delivery status Microsoft reports for each campaign and end with a routine to repeat whenever spend drops.

Start With the Delivery Status in the Campaigns Table

The quickest way to find out why a campaign is not spending is to read its delivery status, because Microsoft Advertising reports most delivery problems there. Microsoft’s help page on delivery status in Microsoft Advertising explains that selecting a campaign’s status in the Delivery column opens diagnostic details with the issue and the actions available to fix it.

Microsoft uses two kinds of status, which its definition of status types sets out. The entity status shows whether a campaign, ad group, ad or keyword is set to Enabled or Paused, while the delivery status shows whether it is able to serve.

Some accounts now see one of seven summary statuses at campaign level, which are Active, Limited Reach, Processing, Blocked, Paused, Ended and Out of Budget. When several issues apply, the Delivery column shows the highest priority one, so fixing it can reveal the next issue underneath. Microsoft notes that not every account has this view yet. The more detailed statuses below still appear at ad group, ad and keyword level.

Statuses at ad group, ad and keyword level matter as much as the campaign status. A campaign can show as eligible while the keywords in one ad group are held back, so sort the Delivery column in the Keywords and Ads tables as well as the Campaigns table.

Check the Account for Billing and Payment Holds

A billing problem stops every campaign in the account at once, so it is the next thing to rule out when spend falls to nothing. Microsoft’s guide to account errors in Microsoft Advertising lists the errors that stop ads. They appear in the Errors column of the Accounts summary page under Tools.

Several of these errors can be fixed without contacting Microsoft. The account errors page lists these among the ones you can put right yourself.

• A hold on a postpay threshold account, where charges were declined and a different card or payment method is needed
• A prepay account with a zero balance, which needs funds adding before ads can run
• No payment method on file, which keeps the account pending until one is added
• A new customer account that has not finished setup, including creating a campaign and adding a payment method

A hold on a monthly invoice account is different, because an overdue balance has to be paid through Microsoft Advertising support. An inactive account or a system issue also needs support to resolve.

The Microsoft Advertising page on account holds lists four triggers, which are excessive chargebacks, a declined card, overdue invoice payments and suspicious changes, with the last bringing a temporary hold of up to 30 days. A card can be declined because it has been blocked, has reached its credit limit or has expired, so check those details before anything else.

Permissions decide who can clear a hold. Super Admins can remove one, while Standard Users can only do so when another payment method is available to choose.

Look for Paused, Expired or Overwritten Settings

Ads only run when the campaign, ad group, ad and keyword are all enabled, so a single paused level can stop spend without any obvious warning. Microsoft’s explanation of ad group statuses notes that pausing an ad group also pauses every ad and keyword inside it. An ad group whose end date has passed shows as Ad group expired until the date is changed.

Microsoft’s page on pausing and enabling campaigns lists the reasons a campaign or account can be paused automatically. They include a campaign that has run out of budget, a Google Ads import that overwrote the campaign status, editorial rejections and an unpaid balance.

Scheduled Google Ads imports deserve a closer look if the account was built that way. Microsoft’s guide to setting campaign budgets and bids explains that automated imports keep running at the frequency you set and can reactivate campaigns and reset settings, including the budget, to match Google Ads. The Change history tab shows recent changes and their sources, which makes it the place to check when a budget or status keeps reverting.

Accounts copied across from Google Ads often carry settings that suit Google better than Microsoft. Our guide to how Microsoft Ads and Google Ads compare for B2B sets out where the two platforms differ.

Confirm Ads and Keywords Have Passed Editorial Review

New ads and keywords cannot spend anything until they pass Microsoft’s editorial review. An ad that fails it stops serving until the problem is fixed. According to Microsoft’s overview of the editorial review, every ad component goes through the check, including ad text, assets, keywords and ad extensions. Most reviews are completed within 48 hours.

Review carries on after an ad goes live. Microsoft runs ongoing checks, so ads and keywords that have run before can still be disapproved. Ads also need to be written in the same language as the ad group language and market setting to pass.

An Approved Limited status is easy to mistake for a pass. Microsoft’s page on what Approved Limited status means explains that the ad or keyword is approved in at least one targeted location but pending or disapproved in another, which cuts delivery where it is not approved.

Disapprovals on assets in responsive search ads and Performance Max asset groups appear in the Policy status column of the asset details rather than the Delivery column. Check both views, because an ad with most of its assets disapproved can have very limited reach.

Check Whether Bids Are Too Low to Win Auctions

Bids that are too low leave a campaign eligible but rarely shown, which looks like underspend rather than an error. When Microsoft cannot pin down a reason, its page on ads that are not showing points to a brand new keyword, a low quality score or a bid that is too low. The same page warns that a higher bid alone does not guarantee delivery, because an ad with a high quality score can beat an ad with a higher bid.

The Below first page bid status is the clearest sign of a bid problem. It means the keyword bid is too low for its ads to reach the first page of results. Microsoft lets you raise selected keywords to the estimated first page bid from the Edit menu in the Keywords table.

The Microsoft help page on finding your ad recommends the Ad Preview and Diagnostics Tool under Tools, which shows a Bid too low reason when a higher bid would let the ad show and suggests a bid to test. It also says that keywords with a quality score below 6 may have limited eligibility. High bids set against a small daily budget also lead to limited delivery.

Quality score sits at keyword level in the Keywords table, alongside the delivery status. Our guide to auditing and optimising Microsoft Ads campaigns looks at keyword quality and bidding in more detail.

Give Automated Bid Strategies Time to Learn

An automated bid strategy that has just been switched on can spend slowly while it learns. Microsoft shows this in the Delivery column as Bid strategy is learning. Microsoft’s guide to bid strategies in Microsoft Advertising says the platform usually needs about two weeks to learn a campaign and warns that changing budgets or conversion goals during that time may restart the learning period.

Two further statuses point to bid strategy settings. One says the campaign is limited by its automated bidding target. Microsoft recommends raising a Target CPA or lowering a Target ROAS so the strategy can enter more auctions. The other, Performance limited by budget, means the budget rather than the strategy is holding delivery back.

Conversion tracking affects automated bidding as well. Strategies built around conversions depend on that data. Microsoft lists a Not enough conversion data status where volume is too low for the strategy to work well, with advice to verify conversion tracking first. Since August 2025, new Target CPA and Target ROAS goals have been set inside Microsoft’s conversion strategies rather than as separate strategies of their own.

Widen Targeting and Audience Settings That Are Too Narrow

Targeting that is too tight limits the number of searches a campaign can enter, so spend stays low even when every status looks healthy. Microsoft’s page on ad language and location targeting explains that both the ad language and the location target must match before an ad can show.

The advanced location option changes who qualifies. Showing ads only to people in the targeted location leaves out people elsewhere who are searching for that location or reading about it, which the alternative option includes. UK postcode targeting only recognises the first part of a postcode, so entering the full postcode turns the target into a radius.

Audience settings can narrow delivery further. Microsoft’s guide to the targeting setting for audience associations explains that Target and bid serves ads only to people in the associated audiences, while Bid only lets the ads reach all users. An ad group set to Target and bid with a small remarketing list has very few people it is allowed to reach.

Microsoft flags an ad group whose targeting is too restrictive with a Targeting too narrow status and recommends widening it until it has enough potential impressions to serve. LinkedIn profile targeting can narrow B2B campaigns quickly. Our piece on LinkedIn profile targeting in Microsoft Ads looks at that option in more detail.

Replace Keywords With Low Search Volume

A keyword with almost no searches cannot spend money, however well the rest of the campaign is set up. Microsoft describes Low search volume as a keyword with very little or no search history on the Microsoft Advertising Network, which stays inactive until searches increase and is checked again each week.

Microsoft gives two options for these keywords. Waiting suits a new brand, term or product that people have only just started to search for, while removing the keyword and finding alternatives suits most other cases.

Keyword planner is the place to find those alternatives. Microsoft’s guide to keyword planner statistics and traffic estimates explains that it shows average monthly searches for each keyword based on the location and network targeting selected, which confirms real demand before a keyword goes live.

Keyword entry mistakes cause similar problems. Microsoft’s checklist for checking whether ads are live notes that keywords separated by commas are read as one long keyword, which is unlikely to match many searches. A Negative keyword conflict status shows where a negative keyword is blocking one of your own keywords.

Review Daily Budgets, Shared Budgets and Pacing

Budget settings explain many cases where spend looks too low on a given day, because Microsoft treats a daily budget as a target rather than a fixed amount. Microsoft’s guide to budget options in Microsoft Advertising explains that it converts a daily budget into a monthly limit of the daily budget multiplied by 30.4, so actual spend on any one day can be higher or lower than the figure set.

The same page says budget changes generally take effect within an hour or so and that reaching the daily budget pauses every ad group in the campaign until the next day. A campaign that runs out early each day can look as though it has stopped spending, when it has spent everything it was allowed.

Microsoft’s page on Eligible (limited) and out of budget statuses explains that Eligible (limited) means the campaign ran out of budget at least once in the past seven days or is expected to soon. Campaign out of budget means no ads are running until the budget resets. Both statuses point to a budget that is too small for the demand.

Shared budgets add another layer of complexity. With a shared budget across multiple campaigns, Microsoft moves spend between the campaigns that use it, so one campaign can use most of the budget and leave another with little. When the shared budget runs out for the day its status shows as Budget paused. Performance Max campaigns cannot use a shared budget at all.

Target ROAS cannot be combined with a shared budget except through a portfolio bid strategy, according to Microsoft’s bid strategy guidance. Our overview of Microsoft Performance Max campaigns for B2B covers how that campaign type handles its own budget.

Work Through the Checks in a Fixed Order

A fixed order of checks finds the cause faster than changing settings at random, because problems at account level stop everything below them. Billing and account errors come first, followed by paused or expired items, editorial review, bids, targeting, keyword volume and budget settings.

Make one change at a time and give it long enough to show in the data. Several changes made together make it impossible to tell which one restored spend. Budget or goal changes can also restart the learning period for an automated bid strategy.

Keep a note of each status and the date it appeared, because it shortens any conversation with Microsoft Advertising support or with whoever manages the account next. A short log of the changes made since spend dropped also makes it easier to judge which fix restored delivery.