How Facebook Ad Budget Limits Work

Over the years, Facebook has implemented various types of limits on the Facebook Ads platform, from limiting how much can be spent on a single ad to limiting how many campaigns a Facebook account can create or manage. These limits can create a lot of confusion and frustration, but can also be very helpful and potentially protect you, your customers, and Facebook from running into any trouble.

Below, we’ll dive into some of the limits imposed by Facebook, how they work, why they exist, and how you can use them to create great marketing & ad campaigns for your e-commerce store.

» For more info on SEO optimization check out our list of best apps here

Historical Spending Limits

Historically, Facebook would set a daily spending limit on new Facebook Ad accounts. The limit would start at approximately $25 per day and increase incrementally to $50, $100, $250, and so on until the limit was completely removed.

This spending limit was implemented by Facebook in order to prevent potential fraud or exploits by new account holders. By setting a limit on daily spending, Facebook would be able to monitor activity and verify that a new account is following the required ad policies and content guidelines. Facebook would also be able to verify the payment method used by the account and ensure that the credit card used was not stolen or fraudulent. This has become all the more important with the rise of buy now pay later methods in online business.

Although some very new accounts may still experience these daily spending limits, Facebook’s Help Center and policies no longer make reference to them, leading some people to believe that the spending limits have been removed completely and that new users may be confusing these spending limits with other limits currently imposed by Facebook.

» Note: as an e-commerce merchant it's important to have the best buy now pay later app available for your store

Why Is Facebook Ads Limiting My Daily Budget to $50?

As mentioned above, when first running ads with a new Facebook ads account, you’re likely to run into daily ad spending caps. Many times, users will find there is a Facebook ads $50 limit that is enforced upon their account. Why? Well, for new accounts, Facebook sets a daily $50 cap limit for security measures. This is simply to ensure that an account’s payment method is legitimate and that nothing untoward is occurring.

When this daily $50 cap is reached all current ads are paused. Once this occurs, Facebook then sends a notification informing you that the daily spending limit has been reached and won’t resume any further ads until the following day.

Even with that knowledge, many people are still wondering how to increase their daily spending limit on Facebook.

Is It Possible to Change and Increase It and, If Yes, How?

At this stage, for newly created Facebook ad accounts, there is no way to increase daily ad spend limits. And, as frustrating as a pause on an ad campaign can be, know that this isn’t permanent. As Facebook reviews your ad account, daily ad spend limits will incrementally increase and ultimately be completely lifted. This means that, over time, you will be able to manually set daily ad spend limits and dictate exactly how much money you’d like to allocate towards an ad campaign.

Once the Facebook ads $50 limit has been lifted, manually increasing your daily ad spend limit is fairly simple. To do so, you’ll need to alter a few settings. Here’s how:

1. Head to “Payment settings” found within the ad account settings.
2. Within the “Account spending limit”, click the 3-dot icon.
3. Click the “Change” button.
4. Next, enter the amount you’d like to set your spending limit at.
5. And lastly, click “Done” to confirm.

If you don’t see your ads appear straight away don’t panic, the changes you’ve just made may take up to 15 minutes to update.

Facebook Ads Billing Thresholds

The billing threshold is a type of limit that determines when Facebook will charge you for the ads which have been run using a Facebook Ads account. Once an account reaches the billing threshold, Facebook will pause all active ads until payment has been made. Once payment is made, the active ads will continue to run immediately.

New Facebook ad account typically have an automatic billing threshold which is set by Facebook. Similar to the historic daily spending limits, the billing threshold will be increased incrementally as successful payments are made and the account is noted as trustworthy by Facebook.

This limit is another anti-fraud measure implemented by Facebook and is a way for you to build up a payment history and build trust with Facebook.

Facebook Ad Account Spending Limits

Unlike the historical daily spending limits and billing thresholds, the Facebook Ad Account Spending Limit is a limit that is controlled by the Admin or user of the Facebook account. This limit can be set to any amount. Once spending reaches the set limit, all active ads will be paused and you will not be able to spend further until the limit is increased or removed.

By default, new accounts do not have a spending limit set, but this lifetime spending limit can be changed and set at any time and is effective immediately. The limit will begin to track all expenditure from the moment that the limit is set, but will not track any ad spend prior to the time that the limit is set.

The Facebook Ad Account Spending Limit is a helpful tool to manage your ad spend across all campaigns and ad sets to ensure that you do not go over your budget. If you have a monthly ad spend budget, you can reset the limit at the start of each month to ensure that you stay within your monthly budget.

» Best apps to help with accounting & taxes

Facebook Ads Daily Budget Limits

Facebook allows for daily budgets to be set on ad sets, ensuring that your monthly budget is spread evenly throughout the month. These budget limits can be manually set when an ad set is created.

This budget is not a hard limit, meaning that there is some flexibility in the limit. For example, you may set your daily budget to $100, but notice that your daily expenditure ranges from $75 to $125. This is because Facebook tries to show your ads on the days and times where they will perform best, meaning that there will be some daily fluctuations in expenditure, but your monthly average will still be $100 per day.

Facebook Campaign Spending Limits

A campaign spending limit is an adjustable limit that can help you to control how much is spent by a single ad campaign. This limit will ensure that ads within a campaign stop running when the limit is reached to prevent over-spending and it can be adjusted or removed at any time. With multiple ads and ad sets within a campaign, it can be tricky to manually track expenditure across the entire campaign, making Campaign Spending Limits a great cost-controlling tool that can be used to your advantage.

Facebook Campaign, Ad Set, and Ad Limits

Facebook has recently implemented limits to the number of campaigns, ad sets, and ads that can be created or managed using a single ad account. Once an ad account reaches these given limits, no further campaigns, ad sets, or ads will be allowed to be created using the ad account. These limits are lifetime limits that apply to active and inactive campaigns, ad sets, and ads.

Once the limit is reached for campaigns, ad sets, or ads, some items will have to be deleted rather than deactivated in order for the account to be able to create campaigns, ad sets, and ads again.

These limits have been implemented in order to assist Facebook with the machine learning process. Facebook has noted that when an account creates too many ads, these ads very rarely exit the learning phase, meaning that the ads never become fully optimized. By limiting the number of ads an account can create, these ads will be able to perform better.