It seems that the ads limit set in the block configuration includes inactive ads. This poses a problem if I have 10 ads and want to display 4 of them on a page, I might less than 4 if any number of the first 4 items found by the query are inactive. From what I can tell, the function simpleads_load_ads doesn't include whether the ad is active or not. This is why it returns inactive ads and you end up with less items than expected.
Closed: won't fix
1.8
Code