Troubleshooting XPO Campaigns Not Running or Low Traffic

At times, you may find that your campaigns are not delivering as per your expectation, for instance, not running at all or with little traffic or budget is being expended on very slow pace. In this article, we will go through some common reasons and how you can resolve them.

1.  Low budget

When you create a low-budget campaign, your ads might not have sufficient budget to bid for the necessary placements or appear as frequently as needed to achieve your specified KPIs. While XPO will ensure that your campaign does not exceed your spending limit.

What to do

Increase your campaign budget.

2.  Bidding issue

Although you can run ads with (a) low bid; or (b) wrong bidding strategy, it's going to be challenging to get successful bid especially if you are looking for quality inventory.

What to do

Adjust your bid value.

3.  Expired creatives

If the creative attached to the ad group within this campaign has expired, the campaign won't deliver satisfactory results. 

What to do

Check that the end date of the creative is more than or equal to the campaign’s end date, unless you want it that way.

4.  Insufficient creatives sizes

Certain ad sizes, for instance, 300x250, 728x90, 300x600, and 160x600 are common and essential for targeting mobile and desktop devices, while others like 320x50, 320x480, 320x100 and 300x50 are common ad sizes for mobile devices. These ad sizes are popular and supported by many publishers, and hence will garner the necessary traffic for your ad campaigns. If you do not provide sufficient number of these ad sizes in your campaign, it will lead to low budget and traffic.

What to do

Add or support as many of these creative sizes as possible to maximize your opportunity to gain the necessary traffic.

5.  Creative disapproved by an exchange or a native platform

Your creative may have been disapproved by an ad exchange or native platform due the respective creatives/ad guidelines by each ad exchange or native platform. Common reasons for disapproval include policy violations, low quality, copyright infringement, misleading claims, sensitive content, technical issues, and more.

What to do

Check the explanation for the disapproval or error, resolve the stated issues, and then resubmit for approval.

6.  Quality of the ad or creatives

Better ads or creatives attract and engage your audience as it creates good impression on your audience.

What to do

Focus on enhancing your ad quality to improve engagement and capture their attention.

7.  Too narrow in targeting

Settings too many targeting criteria will adversely affect your audience reach.

What to do

• Evaluate and optimize your keyword list to enhance its effectiveness.
• Estimate the size of your audience, and if it's limited, broaden it to increase reach.
• If you're focusing on a small geographic area with a low population, consider expanding your targeting to improve campaign performance.

8.  Native platforms account issues

The issues discussed under this point apply to native platforms like Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, TikTok, and Amazon.

In the situations listed below, your campaigns won’t run properly or will fail to run entirely:

i) If an ad account is suspended or has billing issues.
ii) If an ad account is not linked properly to XPO.
iii) If data is not being populated from third-party APIs.

What to do

i) For account suspension and billing issues, check the account status and review the billing tab. Both issues need to be resolved on the third-party platform where the problem arises.
ii) To resolve linking issues, carefully review the set-up of the third-party ad account and its linking to XPO.
iii) Check the data on a third-party platform and if you are certain that it’s a data issue, contact your administrator.

9.  Targeting overlaps with other campaigns or ad groups

If you have several campaigns or ad groups within your account that qualify for overlapping auctions because of similar keywords or targeting criteria, it is possible that traffic will be predominantly directed to one of your campaigns.

What to do

Check your campaign's targeting settings and adjust them to avoid overlapping with other campaigns in your account.