When you get a Facebook Ad Account Restriction, the money stops, the clients scream, and Facebook stays quiet. What can you do? No worries! I’ve worked at Facebook and will help with steps towards resolving a Facebook Ad Account Restriction within this article:
Table of Contents
ToggleYour future is in danger unless you read this important notice
When you get a Facebook Ad Account Restriction, it’s important to not make it worse. Your future advertising on Facebook is in danger if you don’t know why you were banned, or what part of your funnel triggered Facebook’s bots to give you a Facebook Ad Account Restriction.
The challenge is reading between the lines when you get a Facebook ad policy violation because the reasons often seem obscure. Which ad policy did you violate? Below I’ll explain the most common ad policy violations.
Facebook Ad Account Restriction: Facebook Jail
A ton of your Facebook ads have just been rejected! What do you do? Sweating, worried, you look at your account quality score but see more mean red little letters telling you that you’re in Facebook jail with a Facebook Ad Account Restriction:
What does this even mean? Maybe it has some answers?! Except this metric won’t actually tell you which ad policy violations weigh more heavily than others when getting a Facebook Ad Account Restriction.
Was there just one ad policy violation that was the straw that broke the camel’s back? Or was it a sum total of all of them adding up?
It was a landing page issue, no wait perhaps it was controversial content (what the fuck is that?), or wait..those damn social issue flags! A Facebook Ad Account Restriction can stop your whole funnel.
Want to make sure your landing page doesn’t get flagged by Facebook? Click here.
I’ve spent years working at Facebook (even before the special ad category was invented) and today I’ll be blogging about Five Reasons Why You’re in Facebook Jail and what to do about it.
But FIRST you need to know how Facebook thinks. If you don’t know how Facebook sees your ad, that is one of the reasons you’re in Facebook jail.
Why trust me over all the other blogs online? I’ve worked at Facebook in ads, and tech, and with the engineers at Meta. When one word can get you banned, you can’t afford to guess when it comes to getting a Facebook Ad Account Restriction.
Just like my client, Amazon Reality Show star Juanita Ingram of The Expats International Ingrams you’ll discover there are micro flags in ad copy and landing pages that have to be removed first before attempting to appeal or relaunch a brand with Facebook.
Want the same white glove treatment navigating Facebook shutdowns and solving a Facebook Ad Account Restriction?
Click here, to schedule a discovery call to avoid getting a Facebook Ad Account Restriction.
Facebook Ad Account Restriction: Advertising restrictions for policy violations
When you create ads but don’t understand how the platform sees those same ads you’ll end up in Facebook jail. How can you not? It’s like never running track but entering the Hunger Games.
BUT – after you familiarize yourself with how facebook sees Facebook ads, and what they want to see, you won’t put your Business Manager in as much risk when it comes to avoiding a Facebook Ad Account Restriction.
So how does Facebook see ads?
Direct from the source, let’s start with Facebook’s positive user experience blurb:
The average advertiser will not be able to read between the lines here and grok how Facebook’s philosophy described above applies to your funnel and your ads. I’ll help explain. For my essential guide to Facebook ad policies click here.
“We want to help ensure that the ads don’t detract from the overall experience across our technologies.”
Marketers reading that often fail to connect the real meaning behind it to shape how they run ads and as a result, come off more click bait-y than intended, and end up in Facebook jail dealing with a Facebook Ad Account Restriction.
Perhaps your ad accounts in your Facebook Business Manager get disabled so now you try your personal ad account. Everything goes fine for a while then that gets disabled too. Now your profile get restricted from advertising as well.
WTF??
Reread that line above again. “We want to help ensure that the ads don’t detract from the overall experience.”
What is Facebook referring to with the overall experience?
Meta or Facebook is referring to the everyday journey of the average consumer, logging onto Facebook to check their notifications.
Catching up on relatives that live in another city, seeing the Facebook Business Pages they liked, scrolling the feed for updates from their friends and websites that post news updates – this is the overall experience.
In the middle are the sponsored posts many Facebook users barely notice or distinguish from the non-ad posts.
Now let’s step into the shoes of Facebook’s policies and review the bots that ban ya.
Facebook Ad Account Restriction: Advertising restrictions for unusual activity
The “Unusual Activity” flag is confusing for a lot of advertisers and business owners because it’s vague and doesn’t tell you why you’re being banned. Typically this is seen in new accounts Facebook is trying to suss out, and wants your ID or it’s because you’ve logged in while traveling. So don’t log into Facebook ad tools while traveling. That’s one way you can avoid this flag.
A message to all the ad agencies spending $100K a year and up on Facebook ads:
We all know the Facebook ban bots are vicious but there IS a way to work with them and never get shut down. I know, because I’ve helped countless 7 and 8 figure ad agencies recover from Facebook bans or avoid them all together. But to do so, you have to get familiar with how Facebook automations decide to flag Facebook ads. Also, if you want a faster route to getting ads live, click here.
Facebook Ad Account Restriction: Policy Philosophy
Let’s dive deeper into the philosophy behind how the automations flag your ads.
Facebook Ad Policy Progressive? Automations Are 1950s
If you want a persona, let’s look at Ward, from the hit series Leave It to Beaver.
Believe it or not, the way Facebook’s automations see Facebook posts very much align with 1950s conformism. And when they scan the Newsfeed for the Facebook ads that are running, if there is shocking content it will be removed.
For an in depth look at the top reasons why Facebook disables ad accounts click here.
Can you imagine, Ward – the father figure in Leaves It to Beaver seeing an ad on Facebook that appeared too spammy or too sexual? An even sterner expression would be on his face. He’d be outraged to see this:
Admittedly the post above is pretty dated as you can see from the older build of Facebook’s platform but perhaps that fits this analogy of a 50s sitcom dad looking at your Facebook ad with scrutiny.
If your ad is too negative or too sexual it is going to get flagged and shut down, often without a specific explanation as to why. Because we are dealing with a very conservative Facebook 1950s sitcom dad automation.
So, don’t risk your revenue with guesses. If you want an escape plan from Facebook Jail, I’m like Michael Scofield with the blueprints for a way out.
Just like my client Darryl CEO of King Memory found out, and shared on LinkedIn there are specific ways to work with Facebook policies without losing conversions or getting stuck in Facebook jail:
Trevor W. Goodchild verifiably reveals what key metrics matter when staying out of Facebook jail. This means better more profitable decisions when ad buying and running campaigns. Schedule your discovery call now
Facebook Ad Account Restriction: Your advertising access is restricted – what does it mean?
I’ll get to the Facebook ad policies you get flagged for most often soon enough. But it’s important not to skip this part because once you get how Facebook perceives ads this will help you reframe your ad copy and creative to be more compliant.
No, that doesn’t mean you can’t kick pain points or be negative sometimes to inspire FOMO, or the need for a solution to a problem, but it does mean considering Facebook ad policies first and then conversion elements for high converting Facebook ads.
So, one last time, let’s go back to Facebook’s ad policy philosophy of wanting to:
“…ensure that the ads don’t detract from the overall experience.”
If your ads are making Facebook users feel bad and they shoot a peace sign to the big FB, think about how many ads an average person sees in a day they won’t be seeing now. Are your Facebook ads blocked? Click here for expert guidance.
TLDR: If your Facebook ads are perceived as too sexual, too spammy, too clickbait-y, too misleading, too negative and Facebook users decide to get off Facebook, that’s a truckload of money you just took from Facebook.
Facebook will 😡 your ad now and remove it because you just lost them thousands of dollars because every single ad that Facebook user saw was paying Facebook money.
The kicker is Facebook has already told you this but, they have disguised these intentions behind generic wording to appear more consumer friendly (following their own policies of not being too shocking or negative). Full circle.
Now, let’s check out another Facebook ad policy violation that can put you in Facebook jail.
Facebook Ad Account Restriction: Why does Facebook say my advertising access is restricted?
Is your patience running thin from random Facebook bans? You’re not alone! The lack of transparency is what makes this frustrating. But, with the big tech lay offs, Facebook is relying on automations now more than ever. So you’ll need to get familiar with what type of content Meta flags.
Facebook Ad Account Restriction: How do I unrestrict my Facebook ads?
In Facebook jail because of a flag that Facebook won’t tell you about? 10 million to one I can fix it. Facebook’s official explanation for a flag is essentially, “I pity the fool who thinks they can sneak around my policies.”
Ok ok, so the automations aren’t exactly as cool as Mr. T from the A-Team. But essentially that’s the external PR line that Facebook gives when you get ad policy flags. But is this really what it means? Let’s look at 3 realistic scenarios for Facebook ad policy flags:
• Requesting people to DM you on an ad
• Trying to run an ad again that was just rejected
• Creating a new ad or ad account after shut downs
If you are requesting folks to DM you on a Facebook (or especially an Instagram) ad Facebook will assume you are trying to get around paying for clicks and flag you for circumventing the system.
Facebook Ad Account Restriction: How to appeal advertising restrictions
You just got a Facebook ad rejected? Oh shit! Let’s just try to run it again! That kind of thinking is why you’re getting banned.
Sorry not sorry for being so in your face about it but I’ve seen this thousands of times from the thousands of ad agencies I’ve worked with over the years helping them get compliant. It’s the same story every time:
“We got our ad rejected from Facebook, didn’t know why, so we tried to run it again!”
This is one of the biggest triggers for Circumventing Systems flag!!
The logic is (and we are talking machine-logic) that Facebook assumes you are trying to get around their automations by sheer number of ads submitted even if these ads have flags you’d been previously shut down for.
Don’t get me wrong, it is a tactic that can work. Do I advise it? Hell no. Because eventually, when a new ad policy is distributed across the platform Facebook’s bots will rescan existing ads and shut you down.
Even if the ads you were running were compliant at the time they went live.
Big agencies, who run 100s of ads in an ad set will often try to just overwhelm the automations by submitting so many ads that a few slip through that are not compliant. Or a bunch slips through depending on the bandwidth of Facebook’s servers.
Even if you are a smaller SMB, Facebook will assume that by resubmitting the same ad with the same flags again, that you are trying this tactic and that’s when you get hit with the Circumventing Systems flag.
The fix? Just don’t resubmit a rejected Facebook ad before finding out WHY it was rejected FIRST. And I can help with that. Want a free discovery call to see if I can help get your Facebook ads live again? Schedule your call here.
Learn More
You’re saying, “I’ll just create it all again from scratch!” and it sounds easy right? Wrong. Facebook has extra safeguards in place now if you want to relaunch and it’s impossible to do without expert guidance most of the time.
Clickbait flags are connected (but aren’t the same thing) as Unrealistic Claims. Circumventing Systems are connected to Unrealistic Claims (but aren’t the same) in both being header flags sometimes for unrelated ad policy violations.
MLM flags usually have to do with, although not exclusively, money. Talking about how much money you can make people online is a dangerous topic to approach given these MLM flags.
Do you want to spend 200 hours researching all the ways your ads could get flagged or would you rather just have instant answers within 60 minutes for exactly why your Facebook ads are getting flagged?
I’ve worked with celebrities, influencers, written for and consulted major social media publications and can help prevent you from getting the ban hammer. Keep reading for more info:
Facebook Ad Account Restriction: Solution
I’ve worked at Facebook in ads, tech and project management, and my zone of genius is helping ad agencies get Facebook ads live again and preventing future shut downs.
A full customer life cycle and cost are critical to getting true profit from your marketing, and Facebook bans are costly.
I’ll review your funnel and FULL cost of Facebook jail, letting you see the EXACT cause of FB bans and how to fix them to IMPROVE your immediate ad & marketing results and get ads live again.
Are you going to trust random articles online or someone like me, who has worked at Meta?
I’m trusted by high level brands that take accuracy and results seriously:
I can show you how to resolve FB bans even if Facebook won’t, and solve issues like advertising access permanently restricted.
Schedule a call with me and learn how to stop the domino effect when Facebook starts banning your entire funnel after a simple ad rejection.
Don’t take my word for it, let my clients tell you what it was like working with me.
My clients have included the social media marketing agencies of Tony Robbins, Harv Eker, and Dean Graziosi. How much is it costing you to not know why Facebook is shutting you down? Talk today.
I’m featured on the Queen of Facebook Mari Smith’s Marketing Essentials Course.
If you want to skip the line before this offer ends, immediately secure an expert-level Facebook consulting call from someone at Facebook. Book a call with me now!
If you’re ok with waiting a bit longer, and entering the waitlist to see if you’re eligible – Schedule a call or contact me via email.
Free eBook: Top 5 Reasons Agencies Fail at Facebook