Allow your campaign to run for at least 48 hours for accurate metrics on the AdRoll dashboard. If it still doesn’t serve ads, assess and troubleshoot it.
Where to find account messages
Located on the bottom of the left navigation menu of your AdRoll dashboard, the Notifications bell icon is where you will find all your account messages, including any issues affecting your campaign.
You can also open AI-Powered Insights on the campaign dashboard,
or select AI Assistant in the left-hand navigation panel to check a specific campaign’s setup in the Campaign dashboard.
or select Ask in the campaign header on the Campaign Settings page to check a specific campaign’s setup without leaving the page.
Troubleshooting checklist
Events that could contribute to the reason for your campaign not serving can be categorized as follows. You can cross-verify your campaign with each of these points.
Before you open each setting individually: in the campaign builder, every collapsed card displays its current value on the right — for example Automatic, Including United States, or Including 2 categories, 1 keyword. Scanning those summaries is the fastest way to spot a setting that is narrower than you intended.
Dashboard settings
- Date range — Make sure the date range on the dashboard is set to the current date.
- Metric columns — Metric sets are specific to the campaign objective. If a metric you expect is missing, confirm you are viewing the metric set for that objective, e.g., a Build Awareness campaign reports on impressions and reach rather than conversions.
- Grouping — If the campaign is not in the list at all, check whether Group By: Objective is applied and the campaign’s objective is included in the visible groups.
Schedule
- Campaign schedule — Confirm the start date has passed and the end date has not. Campaigns use UTC and may take up to 48 hours to review before going live.
- Day parting — Under Schedule > Advanced Options, check whether delivery is restricted to specific days and hours. A campaign limited to a narrow window will look like it is not serving when you check outside that window.
- Custom ad group schedule — If Use custom ad group schedule is selected on an ad group, that ad group ignores the campaign schedule. Check its dates separately.
Targeting
Targeting is set per ad group, under Ad Groups > Targeting. A campaign can be live while a single over-restricted ad group serves nothing.
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Audience — If the target audience is too narrow, you may choose to assign more audience segments or allow some time for the AdRoll pixel to collect enough users.
The Estimations panel beside your targeting shows Potential Audience Size as you build. If it reads Estimation not available, there is not yet enough targeting detail to reach anyone.
- Locations — If Manual is selected, confirm the locations you entered are set to Include rather than Exclude, and that they are broad enough to reach your audience. Setting Locations to Automatic lets AdRoll target the best locations for you.
- Contextual Categories & Keywords — If Specific content is selected, ads only run on content matching the categories and keywords you added, which may be too restrictive. Switch to All content to widen delivery. Also check Brand safety and suitability > Exclude Keywords, as a broad exclusion list can suppress most available inventory.
- Environments — If Manual is selected, confirm you have not narrowed delivery to environments with little inventory. Automatic is recommended.
Bid settings
- Optimization Goal and Bid Strategy — Each objective sets these for you, and the recommended values are labeled Recommended. If you replaced an automatic bid strategy with a manual bid that is too low to win auctions, the campaign may not serve.
- Frequency capping and exclusions — Under Bid Settings and Advanced Options > Advanced Options, check whether a tight frequency cap or an exclusion is limiting delivery.
Ads
- No ads added — Confirm each ad group has creative in its Ads section. Add it using Choose, Create, Upload, or Request Free Ads.
- Ads rejected in review — If your ad banners are not in line with the policies we have in place, or if the ad banners included in a campaign fail the review, no impressions will be served. You will receive an email at your registered email address along with a notification on the AdRoll dashboard for ad rejection.
- After you fix a rejected ad — Once the recommended changes have been implemented on the ad banner, please reach out to our Customer Support team and they’ll assist you by looking into the possibility of getting the ad banner approved.
Build Awareness troubleshooting
Even if you have low site traffic, you can still run a Build Awareness campaign to bring in new users, using either Lookalike or Third Party Audience targeting.
- For Web Build Awareness campaigns to ramp up, allow the pixel to collect a minimum of 100 users from the site.
- For Lookalike, we would at least require enough information about the high-intent users visiting the website so that we can bring in similar potential users to the site.
- If you selected Third Party Audience, delivery does not depend on your pixel volume. Check instead that the interests, demographics, or life events you selected are broad enough.
Drive Engagement and Maximize Conversions troubleshooting
Both of these objectives retarget people who already know you, so their reach is capped by the size of your existing audiences. If your target audience is too narrow, please know that there won’t be many or any impressions served. Here are some tips that can be implemented from your end to increase the campaign reach:
- Target more audience segments. Under Ad Groups > Targeting > Audience, select Choose to add existing audiences, or Create to build a new one without leaving the campaign.
- Increase the targeted audience segment duration, so that a user is cookied for a longer period of time.
- Create a CRM Audience. If you already have the potential list of users to target, you can upload the .CSV files (list of email addresses) to the dashboard, then edit the desired campaign and add the list under Ad Groups > Targeting > Audience.
- Launch a Build Awareness campaign, which will increase your site traffic and simultaneously support your retargeting campaigns.
If you still face any issues, please contact our Customer Support team, and they can help you troubleshoot the issue further.