What approved (limited) means
The status sits between approved and disapproved. The ad has passed review, it is live, and it will spend money — but review has attached a condition, so it does not serve in every place or to every person you targeted. The interface shows the ad as running, which is exactly why the status gets missed.
Limitations come from a handful of causes. The subject falls into a restricted category, such as alcohol, gambling, financial services or healthcare, permitted in some countries and not in others. The advertiser has not completed a certification or verification the category requires. The ad uses a trademarked term that only certain advertisers may use. Or the ad targets a segment the policy protects, so it is withheld from some users.
Why approved (limited) matters
It produces a problem that looks exactly like a bidding problem. Volume comes in below expectation, cost per acquisition looks high, and the obvious response is to raise bids or budgets — none of which helps, because the ad is not competing in the auctions you think it is.
It also skews what you learn. If a restriction removes a country or a demographic from delivery, the conversion data coming back describes the remaining slice only. Decisions made on that data then get applied to a market the campaign was never fully shown to.
Where it goes wrong
The main mistake is filtering the ads view for disapprovals and ignoring everything else. Limited ads pass that filter untouched, month after month. The second is assuming the limitation is uniform: a campaign running in several countries can be limited in one and unrestricted in the others, and the single status label does not say which.
A third is treating it as permanent. Many limitations exist only because paperwork is outstanding. Completing the certification a category requires often clears the status without changing a word of the ad.
How to act on it
Hover the status, or open the policy manager, and read what the limitation actually restricts — the geography, the audience, or the surface. That one line tells you whether you have a compliance task, a targeting decision, or nothing worth acting on.
If certification is available for your sector, apply for it; that is the clean fix. If the restriction covers a country you genuinely need, either bring the ad and landing page into line with what that market permits, or accept the channel is closed there and move the budget. Check delivery by location afterwards, because a status can change without an announcement. Where several ads in one account carry limits, treat it as a restricted content question about the business category rather than a set of separate ad faults, and handle it as part of wider account policy compliance work.