AdSitter

Why did my Apple Adsstop showing?

In our experience, most often Apple couldn’t charge your card. After a declined charge, Apple may pause your ads and tries the same card again within 24 hours. If billing is fine, check for a used-up budget, a pause, a bid too low to win, an ad on hold, your settings, low search volume, or an app not available in that country.

Last updated Part of the AdSitter guides

Where do I look first?

Start with the status of each campaign. In Apple Ads, the Campaigns dashboard shows every campaign with its status, and the Ad Groups and All Keywords dashboards do the same for ad groups and keywords. A campaign holds your budget. An ad group sits inside it and holds your keywords. New to the words? The glossary explains them.

The causes below are ordered by how often we have seen each one stop ads. That order is AdSitter’s own observation, not Apple’s. On the Apple Ads account we have watched longest, card payment problems were the most common reason ads went quiet.

AdSitter's rule of thumb

If every campaign stopped at the same moment, check billing first. One setting rarely stops everything at once, but a declined card does. If only one campaign or one keyword went quiet, skip ahead to budgets, pauses and bids.

Did Apple decline my card?

This is the most common stop we have seen. If a charge to your payment method is declined for any reason, Apple may pause your ads. It tries the same payment method again within 24 hours. Until the payment goes through, your ads won’t run.

How to tell

  • Your campaign or account shows On Hold. A declined card, a missing payment method and a chargeback are among the reasons for that status.
  • Your card is prepaid, a gift card or an ATM card. Those aren’t accepted, and a campaign won’t run until the account has a valid payment method.
  • You pay with a debit card. Its daily spending limit must be able to cover your campaign charges.

How to fix

  1. In Apple Ads, click your account name at the top right of the page.
  2. Click Settings.
  3. Go to the Billing tab, then click Payment Method.
  4. Click Replace next to your card, enter the new one, and click Save.

Apple charges a replacement card within 24 hours of adding it. It can’t run a charge on request, so there is nothing to speed up. Once the charge goes through, your ads can show again. You can have only one active payment method at a time.

Visa, Mastercard (including Apple Card) and American Express are accepted. Prepaid cards, gift cards, ATM cards, PayPal and Venmo aren’t. How often you’re charged, and how to plan for it, is in how much to spend on Apple Ads.

AdSitter's rule of thumb

Pay with a credit card if you can. A debit card with a low daily limit can easily cause a surprise decline. And tell your bank to expect charges from Apple, so it doesn’t flag them.

Did my campaign run out of budget?

Each campaign has a daily budget. It works as the average you want to spend per day over a month, so a busy day can go over. The month is capped at the daily budget times 30.4, the average number of days in a month.

How to tell

  • The campaign has spent close to 30.4 times its daily budget this month. It won’t spend more than that in the month.
  • You lowered the daily budget today, below what the campaign had already spent today. The campaign stops showing until the next day.
  • The campaign uses a lifetime budget instead of a daily one, and it has spent it. That campaign shows as On Hold. Apple also paused every campaign that used a lifetime budget in June 2026, so an old campaign like that may simply be paused.

How to fix

Wait for the next day or the next month, or raise the budget. A budget change usually takes effect the same day. Raise it only if you are happy to spend more. Running out is the budget doing its job.

Example, with made-up round numbers

A campaign has a $10 daily budget, so it can spend up to $304 in a month. By noon it has spent $6. You lower the budget to $5. Since $5 is less than the $6 already spent, the campaign stops until tomorrow.

AdSitter's rule of thumb

A campaign that goes quiet late in the day, or late in the month, has usually run out of money, not out of people searching. Don’t read an end of month drop as your keywords getting worse.

Is something paused?

Pauses happen at three levels. You can pause a campaign, an ad group or a keyword, and any one of them stops those ads (campaigns, ad groups, keywords). If every ad group in a campaign is paused, the campaigndoesn’t run either.

How to tell

  • Check the status on the Campaigns, Ad Groups and All Keywords dashboards. A keyword’s status is Active or Paused.
  • Ask anyone else who can sign in to your Apple Ads account, and check any tool you connected to it.

How to fix

Select the campaign or ad group on its dashboard and choose Activate from the Actions menu (campaigns, ad groups). Pausing works the other way too. After you pause a campaign, some ads may keep running for a few hours.

A removed campaign is different. Removing it stops its ads for good, and it can’t be restored. You would build a new one. How campaigns fit together is in Apple Ads campaigns for beginners.

Is my bid too low to win?

Your bid is the most you will pay for one tap on your ad. Every search runs an auction. Whether your ad shows depends on how relevant it is, your bid compared with other advertisers’ bids, and how often people search for apps like yours.

How to tell

  • The campaign is running and has budget left, but gets few or no impressions (times your ad was shown).
  • Your impression share is low. That is how often your ad showed for a search, out of all the searches for it. It appears in the Impression Share reports and bid recommendations.
  • You set a CPA cap, the most you want to pay per download, and it is very low or below your bid. That can cost you impressions.

How to fix

Raise your bid gradually while you measure results, using the bid recommendations as a guide. Check your App Store title, description and keywords too. Apple uses them to judge how relevant your app is to a search. Setting bids by hand versus automatic bidding is covered in manual bids or Maximize Conversions.

AdSitter's rule of thumb

Rule out billing, budgets and pauses before you touch a bid. A bid that was winning yesterday doesn’t usually stop winning overnight. Raising bids won’t bring back ads that Apple has put on hold, and it costs you more once they return.

Is my ad or app on hold?

On Hold means Apple has stopped a campaign or account for a reason other than your own pause. The reasons include a campaign end date in the past, a lifetime budget that has run out, no valid payment method, a declined card, a chargeback, and breaking the Apple Ads policies or terms.

How to tell

  • The status says On Hold. The first sections of this page cover the billing and budget reasons.
  • Your app can’t be promoted at all. That can happen if it breaks the Apple Ads policies or the App Store guidelines, or if the ad placement you picked doesn’t support your app.
  • An ad built from a custom product page (an extra version of your App Store page) is on hold. That happens if the page has been turned off in App Store Connect, or its images don’t suit the ad group’s country or device.

How to fix

Fix the cause Apple names, then check the ad. When a custom product page is turned back on or its images are updated, the ad stays paused until you activate it again. For a policy problem, read the Apple Ads policies and fix your app or listing before you try again.

Are my country, device or schedule settings stopping it?

A few settings can stop ads, or shrink them so much that they look stopped.

How to tell

  • Dates. A campaign only runs between its start and end dates. By default it starts today and has no end date. If every ad group in a campaign has an end date, the campaign stops when the last one passes.
  • Times of day. Ad groups can be set to show ads only on certain days or at certain hours. Outside those times, they don’t show.
  • Device. You can show ads only on iPhone or only on iPad.
  • Audience. Changing who can see your ad narrows the audience and cuts impressions. If you set audience rules and fewer than 5,000 people match, the ad group goes on hold until the audience grows.

How to fix

Open the ad group settings and check the dates, the schedule, the devices and the audience. Keeping the default audience setting reaches the most people. Age and gender settings also hide your ads from everyone who has Personalized Ads turned off.

AdSitter's rule of thumb

Leave age and gender alone. They cut your reach, and AdSitter never uses them.

Are too few people searching?

Ads only show when someone searches. For search results campaigns, one of the things that decides whether your ads get seen is how often people on the App Store search for apps like yours. A niche app, or a list of very specific keywords, may simply get few searches.

How to tell

AdSitter's rule of thumb

Low search volume looks like impressions that were always low, not ones that suddenly hit zero. If your impression share is high but impressions are still low, you are already winning most of the few searches there are, and a higher bid won’t find more.

How to fix

Add more relevant keywords, including your app’s name and words that describe what it does. Turn on Search Match, which matches your ad to searches for you. Run your ad in every country where your app is available.

Is my app unavailable in that country?

To run ads in a country, your app must be available to buy or download on the App Store there, andApple Ads must be available there too.

How to tell

  • You removed the app from that country in App Store Connect, or it was never released there.
  • When you edit the campaign’s countries, one shows a yellow triangle. That marks a country where your app has become ineligible, and the campaign stops running in it.
  • Your app is brand new. It can take up to 24 hours before it appears when you create a campaign.

How to fix

Make the app available in that country in App Store Connect, or remove the country from the campaign so the budget goes where the app can be downloaded.

What do the Apple Ads status codes mean?

Tools that read your account through the Apple Ads API see a display status for each campaign: Running, Paused, On Hold, Limited (running, but at reduced capacity), Processing or Deleted. When a campaign isn’t running, Apple adds one or more reason codes explaining why. These are the common ones.

Apple’s own descriptions from its API documentation, in plain words. There are more codes than these.
Reason codeWhat it meansSee
ORG_PAYMENT_TYPE_DECLINEDYour payment method was declined.Declined card
AD_ACCOUNT_PAYMENT_ISSUESYour ad account has a payment problem that isn't fixed yet.Declined card
ORG_NO_PAYMENT_METHOD_ON_FILEThere is no payment method on the account.Declined card
MONTHLY_BUDGET_EXHAUSTEDThe campaign spent its whole monthly budget.Budget
LIFETIME_BUDGET_EXHAUSTEDThe campaign spent its whole lifetime budget.Budget
PAUSED_BY_USERSomeone paused the campaign.Paused
AD_GROUPS_NOT_RUNNINGEvery ad group in the campaign is paused or not running.Paused
PAUSED_BY_SYSTEMApple paused the campaign itself.On hold
APP_NOT_ELIGIBLEYour app can't run ads.On hold
SCHEDULE_PENDINGThe campaign's start date hasn't come yet.Settings
SCHEDULE_EXPIREDThe campaign's end date has passed.Settings
APP_NOT_PUBLISHED_YETYour app isn't on the App Store yet.App not available
COUNTRIES_OR_REGIONS_NOT_ELIGIBLEThe countries you chose can't run this kind of campaign.App not available

How AdSitter catches this

AdSitter checks every hour whether Apple is showing your ads, because a stop that nobody notices for days costs you days of downloads. This is part of AdSitter. Here is what it does once you connect Apple Ads.

  • Every hour, it reads your account’s status and each campaign’s status and reason codes from Apple Ads.
  • If Apple names a payment problem, it emails you, says the charge to your card failed, and gives the steps to replace it. If no reason is given but your account is on hold and your ads went quiet in hours they usually run, it tells you it is probably a card problem, and says it is a guess.
  • If you turned on texts and confirmed your number, it also sends you an iMessage.
  • If the card problem is still there a day later, it sends one reminder. When your ads show again, it tells you.
  • On your Overview page, a banner shows while the ads are stopped, with a button that opens Apple Ads. For stops that aren’t about payment, the banner gives the reason in plain words.
  • When it judges your keywords, it doesn’t mistake days your ads were stopped for a keyword losing auctions, so it won’t raise a bid to chase a drop caused by a stop.

It can’t fix a card for you. Only you can change the payment method in Apple Ads.

Questions

How soon do my ads come back after I fix my card?

Apple charges a new card within 24 hours of adding it. Once the charge goes through, your ads can show again. The charge can’t be run sooner on request.

What does On Hold mean in Apple Ads?

Apple has stopped the campaign or account. Reasons include a declined card, no valid payment method, a chargeback, a lifetime budget used up, an end date in the past, or a policy problem.

I paused my campaign. Why did it still spend?

After you pause a campaign, some ads may keep running for a few hours.

Can I use a prepaid card for Apple Ads?

No. Prepaid cards, gift cards, ATM cards, PayPal and Venmo aren’t accepted, and a campaign won’t run without a valid payment method.

Will raising my bid bring my ads back?

Only if a low bid was the cause. Apple suggests raising bids gradually when a bid isn’t competitive. If the campaign is paused, on hold or out of budget, AdSitter’s rule of thumb is to fix that first, because a higher bid won’t change it.

Sources

Facts about how Apple Ads works come from Apple’s own pages, listed below. We read them on . Apple changes them, so check the page itself before a big decision. Anything marked as AdSitter’s rule of thumb is our own judgment, not Apple’s.

Rather not do this by hand?AdSitter can run it for you.

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