Why does Facebook ads stop performing when you turn them off for a while and then turn them back on?
Had a couple winning ad campaigns and turned them off for a couple of days, then turned them back on and the cost per lead tripled.
How does one avoid this?
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The question is if your ads were winning why did you pause them 
hope you learned the lesson, never ever Pause a winning ad set in Facebook Ads at all.
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DO NOT ever turn them off, just reduce the budget to 5$ a day, they do seem to get the pixel data confused as you are bidding for traffic and I suppose supply/demand, somebody probably has your spot until you earn it back through a well performing ad.
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According to Facebook, whenever you pause and then start an ad set their algorithm fluctuates and goes crazy.
I am not sure why they have that Pause/start button at all, if they already know it brings more harm than use. so don’t use it.
Pausing an ad is not advisable at all.
Why Facebook Ads Underdeliver after restarting them?
According to a Facebook rep, Pausing an ad set and restarting it again tends to ruin Facebook’s auto-optimization algorithm.
They didn’t explain why, but apparently that’s the way their monkeys programmed it.
What To Do Instead?
A little workaround would be either using the Power Editor or Ads Manager you can duplicate your winning ad set and start a fresh new duplicate. instead of re-starting the old one, that will work quite well.
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Hey everyone, bumping this older thread because the core issue—algorithm volatility—is still incredibly relevant today.
Pausing ads can mess with performance, yeah. But honestly, that’s usually not the main issue.
What I see way more often is this:
the ads were only profitable under “perfect conditions”
So when you restart them and CPMs go up a bit or traffic shifts slightly… everything breaks.
However, there is a bigger lesson here: If a sudden spike in CPA after restarting an ad completely kills your campaign, your profitability is too dependent on cheap traffic.
You can’t control Meta’s algorithm mood swings, CPMs, or the fact that your CPA might temporarily triple. But you can control what happens after the click.
If you send traffic to a standard, leaky store, an algorithm hiccup will ruin your margins. But if you send that traffic to a dedicated eCommerce funnel with Order Bumps and One-Click Upsells, you can push your Average Order Value (AOV) high enough to absorb the shock of those rising ad costs.
I actually just wrote a full breakdown on the math behind this and where ad spend actually “leaks” post-click: Where Your First £1,000 in Ads Actually Goes (Breakdown)
Sooo…
Don’t just fight the algorithm; fix the backend funnel so you can afford the expensive clicks! 
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