Dealing with getting a Facebook Ad Account Restricted?
In the Health and Wellness niche for cosmetic beauty? Facebook is about to release A NEW BAN on Health and Wellness companies and include health and wellness as part of the special ad categories.
Read the FULL article to avoid getting your med spa, dentistry or medical practice offering cosmetic surgery banned.
And when you reach out to Meta they give you a wall of silence or misinformation.Pretty helpful isn’t it?
I’ve worked with top brands both in my private practice and when I was working at Facebook, before and after it renamed the company as Meta.
I don’t write filler or fluff but industry-backed solutions so, stay tuned to learn some secrets to avoiding the upcoming slaughter of everyone in the health and wellness niche.
What Facebook does and what Facebook says are often different leading to facebook ad account restricted issues hitting many of us running ads. When I worked at Facebook, I got a few bans but, I was able to talk to the engineers to get them reversed.
Why is Health & Wellness Being Targeted?
Meta has been caught in another CA tier scandal, and they’re looking to get ahead of the subsequent lawsuits that they know are inbound.
Last year (2024) Meta LOST a lawsuit against the State of Texas (where I’m at) for A BILLION DOLLAR PAY OUT because they kept stealing biometric data:
Meta is trying to cut down their costs by laying off people, using bots instead of humans to control whether your business can advertise and now, with literally billion of dollars in bills from MANY lawsuits, Facebook has decided to now start banning health and wellness companies.
Sounds like a lot right? Just check out SOME of the many lawsuits Facebook has faced:
Meta has come under increased scrutiny for its advertising tools, especially its tracking pixel, a piece of code that advertisers can place on their websites to track customers’ online behavior, which is then shared with Meta to make advertising campaigns more efficient.
Last year, The Federal Trade Commission brought cases against BetterHelp and GoodRx for allegedly sharing users’ sensitive data with platforms including Meta through the use of tracking pixels. In June the FTC and the Department of Health and Human Services warned telehealth providers and hospital systems about the potential dangers of using tracking pixels on their websites.
Sartorius compared the impending loss of signal for the health and wellness category to that of Apple’s iOS 14.5 update in 2021 that, at least temporarily, crushed Meta’s advertising business.
Facebook will punish you for ad policies you can’t even read on their transparency center online because the automations are programmed to flag for much smaller policy violations without notifying you.
It’s a shock seeing things like “Your account is restricted ” and the truth about Facebook restricted ads is that it is not a human making the final decision restricting your ad account.
Even as you’re reading this blog your phone already has notifications for Instagram or Facebook but I guarantee 9 out of 10 times those notifications won’t tell you that you have a restricted account or why it happened.
Feeling stuck in FB Ban prison and worried being a health and wellness business you’ll be there forever?
Well I’m about to knit you a patchwork quilt with a map out of Facebook jail.
I’ll tell you what can help – learning more about how Facebook’s bots enforce advertising restrictions, so you don’t get caught and sent to Facebook jail for breaking their rules.
Certain ad policies like Personal Attributes flag they have gutted their website of all images showing you what to beware of.
In fact, this blog has those images on my ultimate guide to personal attributes here.
Want to save time and money? Just schedule a complimentary discovery call
Up next, I’ll reveal EXACTLY what is happening with Facebook deciding to ban health and wellness businesses and what you need to do to prevent this from happening.
It can be one thing that gets you a facebook ad account restricted after it’s removed you’re good, or it could be a series of smaller actions over time Facebook’s automations have logged and determined, overall, you are deliberately choosing not to follow policy.
Other times it could be a log in issue, a bank issue, or a business model conflict if the automations flag your ads as belonging to a banned business model (like MLMs). Make sure to read my blog on removing ad account restrictions here.
Given all the lawsuits….Meta has faced legal issues with false or misleading claims in advertising, so Facebook or Meta is trying to improve transparency and reduce false advertising.
The rollout of the new Facebook event categorization timing matched with the the large rise in class action suits against CPG brands this past year.
Meta keeps getting sued for breaking wire tapping and HIPPA laws and now…
Meta is covering their own butt, by making sure you are banned faster if you send pixel data back with PHI info that Meta can get sued for sharing
This is in essence just an expansion of the Personal Attributes facebook ad policies that say you can’t target Facebook users too specifically. Now, this is being expanded to Event Manager and the Facebook pixel.
What does it mean to have a Facebook ad account restricted?
If you’re in health and wellness or cosmetic beauty, your Facebook Business Manager may be at risk too after getting a facebook ad account restricted. Or even from your pixel data.
Check your data source category in Meta Events Manager: Data Sources > Settings > Manage Data Source Categories. (Meta’s help article here for How to manage data source categories in Meta Events Manager).
I’ve seen a series of quick thoughtless actions lead to a facebook ad account restricted before. And now is the time when you have to be extra diligent.
Types of data source restrictions
- Core Setup Restrictions. Limits on the sharing custom parameters and parts of your store’s URLs after the domain.
- Partial Event Restriction. Affects specific mid- and lower-funnel events (like “Purchase”), aka you can no longer track lower-funnel conversion events. To adapt, focus on upper-funnel events like Awareness or Engagement to keep targeting and optimization effective.
- Full Event Restrictions. In some regions, Meta may fully restrict all event tracking. This means Events Manager won’t support campaign optimization in those areas. If this happens, you might need to adjust or pause campaigns as performance could decline.
How to check your core setup:
How to manage data source categories in Meta Events Manager
From Meta:
“To manage data source categories in Events Manager:
- Go to Meta Events Manager.
- Click the Data sources
icon in the left menu of the page.
- Select the name and ID of your data.
- Click the Settings tab at the top of the page.
- Scroll to the Manage data source categories section. You may not see the Manage data source categories section if your data sources are not in any of the categories. Learn about data source categories.
- Click Manage.
- Check your data sources, categories and statuses.
-
If you think your data source is categorized accurately, you can click Confirm.
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If you think your data source is not categorized accurately, click the arrow next to the Confirm button and select Request review. You’ll see a message that says that you’ve successfully requested the review.
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If you’ve already requested a review of your data source category, click View details to see more information.
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If you requested a review, you’ll be notified through email of our decision.”
OK so take a look at your Meta Events Manager, the clunky af interface we are all forced to use to create pixels and CAPI -all just to overcome Tim Cook’s hurtful move with the iOS 14 update from Apple that nearly killed FB ads- open Meta Events Manager:
Then check your settings and SCROLL DOWN to check your CORE Setup:
2025 Roll Out of New Health & Wellness FB Policies
Meta Timeline & Review Process
When Meta reviews your ad account and decides on if they are branding you with a facebook ad account restricted, they will only use the site and how the product is marketed on the site to guide their enforcement decision on these matters.
You won’t be able to submit additional documentation as the domain will be the source of Facebook’s automations decisions.
Meaning, your website will make or break your ability to avoid or prevent a Facebook ban, due to these newly expanded Personal Attributes facebook ad policies to protect PHI data per HIPPA laws.
There is a 30-day cooldown period in between review attempts and as far as timelines for enforcement are concerned, please see below.
- Jan 6th-13th: Rolling notifications – we will give advertisers (on a rolling basis) 7 days to click a “more time” button in Events Manager to get additional 30 days if they need it to address these changes.
- Jan 14th-21st : For businesses, who have NOT requested more time. The “more time” button will be gone, and the additional restrictions will be applied for advertisers who did not use this button. Advertisers will receive an email informing them restrictions are now active for their data source. For clients, who HAVE requested for more time.
- Feb 14th – 21st: The additional restrictions will start for advertisers who did use the “more time” button. Advertisers will receive an email informing them that restrictions are now active for their data source.
Things we don’t know yet
- Not all health & wellness brands are equally affected. Meta will only utilize the site and how the product is marketed on the site to decide. So the criteria is not very clear.
- Little information on how the events will be restricted from technical side. What information in tracking will be restricted and how will they be restricted technically.
Here’s an example of the type of messages Meta is sending Health and Wellness brands to prepare for the upcoming wholesale ban fest: