Having trouble figuring out Facebook ad policy? Want to get clear on what to do to make sure Facebook doesn’t shut you down?
You’re in the right place. If you’ve ever had your Facebook ad account restricted, it’s a huge blow to your source of income when ads get rejected full stop. Unlike other blogs or websites that just guess about Facebook – I’ve worked at Meta in ads and will guide you to a solution.
My last blog provided you guidance with restricted ad accounts too. Right now, I’ll help you get a better grasp on facebook ad policy and provide a few pro tips on the automations that drop the ban hammer to ensure your Facebook ads stay active.
Facebook Ad Policy Overview
Simply said, Facebook’s audience is huge, it’s global. And with the size of this audience being literally the entire Earth, Meta has engineered their automations to enforce the Facebook ad policy from broad strokes. Advertisers can get banned easily – but why can also be a mystery.
The reason why is the scale of support doesn’t match the size of the audience so Facebook employs bots to make human decisions. Keep in mind, ad policies aren’t the only thing Facebook enforces. The Community Standards govern regular use of Facebook for non-advertisers. 2.5 billion daily active users is a lot to scan for.
Given that Meta or Facebook’s bandwidth is strained, from layoffs, reduced staff, their reliance on automations has only increased over the years. How often do you daydream looking out the window, and imagine the world the eyes of a machine? Probably not that often unless you’re in the super hot field of AI right now.
If you don’t know how to think like the automations who are scanning and shutting ad agencies down left and right, you’re going to be a little lost diagnosing why your Facebook ads are rejected or Facebook Business Manager is disabled. (Also peep the Facebook Ad Policies Checklist)
If you’re like my client Jack Randall, President of Social Flight, you’re tired of beating your head against the wall trying to guess why Facebook has shut you down, and want answers faster.
“Trevor helped me successfully diagnose exactly why my ad account was disabled, and helped me frame out a plan to move forward.” 👍🏻
Click here, to schedule a discovery call.
Facebook Ad Policy: Additional policies that may apply to your ad
JRR Tolkien has the timeless line, “One ring to rule them all,” and so many ad agencies take this approach when attempting to figure out why they were banned.
Facebook’s automations that enforce Facebook ad policy are custom tailored differently per industry. Or there are subroutines for how they employ flags based on the type of business you run.
If you’re running political or real estate ads you’ll be under higher scrutiny because those belong to the special ad categories. But, that’s only an obvious one. Running weightloss ads, or how-to-start a business online ads come with their own degree of risk too.
All because of the nuances for how Meta’s automations enforce Facebook ad policy for those industries. And unfortunately for you, Facebook isn’t transparent about what this looks like in real life, beyond their hypothetical Blueprint courses. (Check out my article Facebook ad account disabled next steps).
As Liana Lang, CEO of Power Up Strategy Inc. said, “Please meet Trevor, my ‘secret weapon’ for all things Facebook compliance. I highly recommend hiring him to help you out especially if you plan to be running ads.”
Want the same white glove treatment navigating Facebook shutdowns?
Click here, to schedule a discovery call.
Facebook Ad Policy: The ad review process
When you submit an ad for review, one of the 1st steps the automations do for facebook ad policies is to examine your track record. While you may think the bots look at just your ad copy and creative, they actually look deeper.
The bots want to make sure you don’t have a history of Circumventing Systems, or countless ad rejections. The ad review could also be rephrased as an “ad account resume check.”
Navigating Facebook’s Advertising Policies as a Business is a good read too to add context and clarity.
What to do if your ad is rejected or if your business asset is restricted
The best thing you can do to not get on the bad side of facebook ad policy is to review the ad copy first. Does it sound crazy? I know you’re thinking, “Well it sounded good to me.” But don’t think like yourself, think like an old man scared of the world who mistrusts ads.
Then, check out the claims you’ve made after kicking the pain points. Are they huge promises? Have you called out a specific group of people too personally? These are the type of questions you want to start asking looking at your ads.
Don’t get ripped off! Read How to Recover Facebook Ad Accounts now
If you’ve been shutdown and wanted a path forward but Facebook stayed silent on what exactly triggered the ban you’re like one of my clients, Steve Martinez, Vice President of Apollidon Learning.
“Trevor took us through the process of getting one of our University of Texas ad accounts reinstated (within minutes). He offered some critical insights to why our Facebook Ad Account was disabled and shared options to reduce our chances of future issues.”
Want to see how I can help you? Schedule a free discovery call here. Or, if you’re in a rush, prepay for your consulting call and skip the line.
Unacceptable content
Facebook ad policy concerning unacceptable content covers these topics:
Illegal Products and Services
Misinformation
Vaccine Discouragement
Discriminatory Practices
Inflammatory Content
Militarized Social Movements and Violence-Inducing Conspiracy Networks
Now, unless you are Qanon conspiracy guy the last category will not apply to you. Don’t storm the capital k?
The most common flags you’re going to see among this list is Illegal Products and Services and Discriminatory Practices.
Discriminatory practices are anything Facebook or watch groups interpret as unfairly excluding a certain demographic from your targeting base. It was this in fact that established the special ad category back in 2019 because real estate ads wanted to target only rich people.
Given that targeting parameters for zipcode and income were taken away, what you really have to worry about here is this flag’s connection to the Personal Attribute policy. That’s when you speak too specifically about one smaller group of people.
Illegal Products and Services is such a wide berth open to any interpretation Facebook wants to have. Just check out the massive (ironically speaking) amount of info they provide:
If you are selling alcohol to minors because of bad targeting, or not age-gating Pages you’d get this flag.
Or if you have a typo and Facebook misreads ad copy and sees the word “drug” or “gun” somewhere.
Filter your ad copy through that and you’ll have a better chance avoiding the ban hammer.
(Also a good roadmap: What to Do After Violating Facebook’s Ad Policies)
Facebook Ad Policy Deceptive content
Facebook ad policy deceptive content: is the driver of probably over 80% of all flags and shutdowns on Facebook. It covers these topics:
Unacceptable Business Practices
Cheating and Deceitful Practices
Unrealistic Outcomes
Circumventing Systems
Prohibited Financial Products and Services
Spyware or Malware
Nonexistent Functionality
And out of these potential flags, the number 1 most frequently used flag is the Unacceptable Business Practices flag. Followed by Unrealistic Outcomes, then Circumventing Systems. And lastly, the Nonexistent Functionality flag.
Sure, the other flags you can get hit with too, but out of hundreds of thousands of advertisers I’ve worked with over the years, both working at Facebook and in my own practice, these are the top 4 flags I’ve seen that’s what I’ve seen for deceptive content.
For unacceptable business practices – really this flag is used a lot when your ads sound spammy. Making gigantic promises that don’t sound realistic (that piggy backs onto unrealistic outcomes flag).
Make sure your claims seem reasonable to an audience of skeptics – because that’s what the bots are.
Already completely banned?
If you are running ads and spending $100K a year or more on ads, I can help with that.
Also check out: Top Reasons Why Facebook Disables Ad Accounts
Facebook Ad Policy Dangerous content
I’ve seen more honest mistakes for this flag than many others. Facebook ad policy dangerous content covers:
You’ll see this flag for typos, wrong capitalization or punctuation and syntax errors. Yes, Facebook is a grammar nazi. The reason why is because clickbait farms use Google Translate to create entire ads rife with grammar errors.
How to avoid Facebook ad policy bans: Spell check your ad and funnel
This is the most common flag probably out of all of Facebook’s automated flags. Simply said, zoom out a bit with how graphic or specific your ad copy is about one specific group of people. Too many “you and yours.”
How to avoid Facebook ad policy bans: Use the 3rd person or 1st person point of view when writing ad copy.
Don’t want to memorize the entire catalogue of facebook ad policies but want to prevent Facebook bans? Schedule a free discovery call here.
This was only created because of the 2020 pandemic and mainly aimed at a few companies that sold hand sanitizer or face masks at like a $100 mark up. LogicPro – or a 3rd party seller – marked up their shitty $30 dollar webcams to $200 at one point.
How to avoid Facebook ad policy bans…TLDR: Don’t price gouge.
This is the same thing as Personal Attributes just specific to the weight loss industry.
How to avoid Facebook ad policy bans: Don’t use any of the banned words Facebook doesn’t allow for weight loss and Personal Attributes
Facebook Ad Policy Content-specific restrictions
If you’re running ads for an industry Facebook Ad Policy Content-specific restrictions would apply. Examples would include Alcohol, Adult Products or Services, Dating, Crypto, Prescription Drugs, or CBD.
Are you aware of the war against selling CBD in any funnel? It’s pretty rough out there. Don’t attempt to sell it on Facebook. Even some email marketing services ban you if you try to do email marketing for CBD.
There are so many different rabbit holes we could go down for selling alcohol, or dating or any kind of medical service or cosmetic surgery. These are a bit higher risk. I’ll give you some general tips but I don’t want to make this article super long. So, I’ll just give you some highlights.
How to avoid Facebook ad policy bans: Age-gate your Facebook Business Page in the settings if you are selling alcohol, to make sure minors can’t even see your Page. For dating services you have to be approved by submitting an application first.
Facebook Ad Policy Intellectual property infringement
Many ad agencies feel they can use major brand name’s logos, names, images and more on their Facebook ad. But unless you have an affiliate deal with said major brand, don’t do this.
How to avoid Facebook ad policy bans: Check your ad creative for major brand logos you may not realize are in the picture and remove them.
Social issue, electoral or political advertising
With the backlash of Cambridge Analytica‘s data scandal with Facebook, Meta is super focused on avoiding any future lawsuits. As a result, the scrutiny is on steroids when it comes to social issue ads in politics.
I usually don’t work with folks in these fields because it’s not a Facebook ad policy issue in as much as it is following election laws and local politics. The biggest risk for most advertisers, if you’re not running political ads, is getting mistaken for a social issue ad.
How to avoid Facebook ad policy bans: Look extra close at your call to action copy and make sure you don’t sound like you’re organizing a protest or a political event if you are not running social issue ads.
Facebook Ad Policy: Things You Should Know
Let me help you understand that right now, like over 90% of all decisions made for appeals and flags on Facebook are done with automations. So, feeling like it’s a personal attack when Facebook shuts you down is…incorrect.
Facebook is so automated the automations are automating the automations. Ultimately, it’s about understanding how these bots flag copy, creatives, websites and working preventatively rather than trying to recover a disabled ad account.
Another pro tip is to keep track of Facebook in the news and new ad policies that come out to stay abreast of new changes. Meta has been known to retroactively punish advertisers who have ads running that used to be compliant but aren’t with the new rules.
Facebook Ad Policies Learn More
The way I approach facebook ad policies is to look through a specific lens. You know how they have these criminal psychologists who study the brains of psychotic people to try to think like them and predict their crimes to hopefully stop them?
That’s basically the same thing as predicting how Facebook’s automations target specific ad policy violations. Everything can be represented and understood through numbers. And if you graph these numbers, patterns emerge.
Machines like people have habits and routines developed through machine learning and most ad agencies don’t grasp how this is represented in the patterns of Facebook’s automations.
If you study this you can start to get an inkling of why certain words, phrases or even perspectives are flagged more than others.
But there’s an easier way to handle this – focus on conversions but outsource your policy checks to an expert in facebook ad policies.
What if you had a guarantee that your ads were compliant before they went live on Facebook? What if you knew 100% without guessing why your ad account was disabled? What if you knew why your Facebook ads were blocked and had a path to get ads live again?
Keep reading for these answers and more:
New Solution to Facebook Ad Policy Violations
After years of working at Facebook, I understand exactly what ad copy in your funnel is triggering the automations and how to get compliant.
Get solid answers directly from the source instead guessing, googling, and playing roulette. Schedule a call with me and I can easily tell you proven reasons why the automations flag you and how to become compliant.
You’ll be swapping out walking in a minefield of ad flags, to have a sure path to having your Facebook ad accounts protected from being disabled.
My clients have included the social media marketing agencies of Tony Robbins, Harv Eker, and Dean Graziosi. I’m featured on the Queen of Facebook Mari Smith’s Marketing Essentials Course.
Save energy and money – how much is it costing you to not know why Facebook is shutting you down? Talk today.
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.
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