Why Your Facebook Ads Aren't Working

62% of ad spend goes to creative that never stops the scroll. The failure mode for most Facebook ad campaigns isn't the targeting, the budget, or the bidding strategy. It's the first 2 seconds. Your buyer is mid-scroll, in passive mode, and your ad has one job: interrupt that pattern enough to earn a pause.

Most ads don't earn the pause. They get skipped before the offer is ever seen.

Why this happens

Facebook's algorithm optimizes for engagement, but engagement starts with a stop. If your creative doesn't generate a thumb-stop in the first 2 seconds, the algorithm sees low engagement, reduces distribution, and raises your CPM. The campaign underperforms, you increase the budget, and the underlying problem - a hook that doesn't land - gets more expensive, not better.

The root cause is that most founders write ads that describe their product rather than naming their buyer's specific pain. A product description tells you what something does. A pain-first hook tells your buyer that you understand what they're experiencing right now. The latter stops the scroll. The former doesn't.

Research on scroll behavior shows the average Facebook user makes a stop-or-skip decision in 1.7 seconds. That decision is almost entirely driven by the first line of copy or the first frame of video - not the logo, not the brand colors, not the offer.

What to check first

Four diagnostic questions before changing anything:

Is your thumb-stop rate above 25%? Thumb-stop rate (the percentage of people who stop scrolling when they reach your ad) below 25% means the creative isn't earning attention at the hook level. This is the first metric to fix before anything else. If the ad isn't stopping the scroll, nothing downstream matters.
If people stop and click but don't convert, is the landing page the problem? High click-through rate with low landing page conversion is a message-match failure. The ad implied something - a specific outcome, a specific offer - that the landing page didn't deliver on. The buyer clicked expecting X and landed in Y. Fix the landing page before revisiting the ad.
Is your audience definition based on intent signals or just demographics? Targeting "35-55 year olds interested in business" is a demographic. Targeting people who have engaged with competitors, visited comparison pages, or follow specific industry accounts is closer to intent. Broad demographic targeting puts your ad in front of people who might theoretically have your problem. Intent-signal targeting puts it in front of people currently experiencing it.
Are you testing different creative or just changing the budget? Increasing budget on a creative that isn't working scales the loss. Creative iteration - specifically, testing different hooks - is the variable that changes performance. Budget adjusts reach. Creative determines whether that reach converts to attention.

How to fix it

Diagnose by funnel metric, then fix the specific layer that's failing.

Impression to thumb-stop: A creative problem. The hook - the first line or first frame - isn't creating pattern interruption. Rewrite the opening to name a specific pain, a specific number, or a specific person. "Finance directors using spreadsheets for reporting" is more specific than "businesses that need better reporting." Specific creative stops specific buyers.

Thumb-stop to click: A body copy or offer problem. The hook landed but the rest of the creative didn't sustain the attention or make the next step obvious. Check whether your value proposition is clear within 5 seconds of someone stopping. If it requires reading three paragraphs to understand, the creative is doing too much work.

Click to landing page conversion: A message-match problem. Print the ad and the landing page hero side by side. The headline, the implied promise, and the CTA should feel like the same conversation. If they don't, close the gap before increasing spend.

Landing page conversion to retention: A product problem. If buyers convert but churn fast, the creative attracted the wrong buyer or oversold the product. That's a targeting and positioning problem that runs deeper than the ad itself.

Fix one layer at a time. Changing the audience, the creative, the landing page, and the offer simultaneously makes it impossible to know what actually moved performance.

Remove the guesswork

Testing creative through live spend means paying for every failed hypothesis. RightAd tests your ad creative, copy, and targeting against simulated audiences before you commit media budget. It returns a hook strength score, click intent prediction, audience-creative fit rating, and creative fatigue prediction - so you know which creative is worth spending on before the spend happens.

Test your creative before you spend