Top 5 Reasons Why Facebook Ads Get Rejected

If you're an advertiser running Facebook ads and your Facebook ads get rejected sometimes it feels like trying to find out how the Egyptian pyramids are built. Facebook aka Meta doesn't reply when you ask for help.

Or you try to contact Facebook and their chat support tells you absolutely nothing other than, "You're not following Facebook ad policies, so your ad was rejected."

But why? Which part of your Facebook ad got rejected? Was it the ad copy? The ad creative? The headline? Which ad policy did you break? And more importantly, How do you get compliant with Facebook ad policies when Facebook won't even tell you why your ad was rejected?!!

Sound familiar?

I've spent years working at Facebook in ads, tech and project management and I'm happy to help clarify why Facebook ads get rejected.

Reason #1 Why Your Facebook Ad Gets Rejected: Banned Words

So you're here, you were googling "Why does my Facebook ad get rejected?" and you've read a bunch of hypothetical answers and random guesses on Quora or Reddit or old Facebook Help Center answers that are clearly outdated.

Often advertisers get flagged for creating content that uses specific idioms, or phrases that to us normal humans, sound fine. But to the machines that do 99% of the reviewing, they take those phrases literally. For my essential guide to Facebook ad policies click here.

If you create an ad that says a phrase you'd use with a buddy at the bar in normal conversation but it could be interpreted differently, it's possible Facebook's automations are taking it the wrong way.

All you are doing is trying to run an ad for your client, right? But if your ad has things like, "This year we're going to kill it in sales so join now!"

It's very possible all the machine picks up is the word, "kill" which I'd suggest not using.

The Reality of Banned Facebook Words

Facebook has their own kill list so-to-speak. There are hundreds of words that will automatically trigger Facebook's automations to reject an ad. I know them, but most advertisers do not.

The machines don't really get human context, or understand commonly used phrases. And sure, you can study the Facebook Ad Policies all day - you'll never get this master list of banned words.

To be honest, Facebook themselves don't quite understand how their automations affect the business world because so few of the engineers creating these automations have ever run Facebook ads to get at least double ROI. Are your Facebook ads blocked? Click here for expert guidance.

You try to get help from Facebook Ad Support and they didn't work with the engineers that created these automations. They have never run ads that have made them money to pay rent, bills or put food on the table for their kids.

But you do. And it sucks to try to navigate this minefield of banned words when the only people you can reach out to have no comprehension of how ad copy gets flagged. And they can't tell you which words are banned.

I've seen this happen a lot: advertisers are creating an ad that looks fine to them, and their team. And then suddenly, their Facebook ad gets rejected, sometimes their Facebook ad account restricted and revenue stops coming in.

Part of what makes this challenging is the fact that the flag you receive often doesn't match the ad policy you actually broke. For the most common Facebook ad policies explainedclick here.

For instance, if you sound too much like you are pyramid scheme, and use a banned word, that banned word will get you on the radar. Sometimes it won't shut down your ad. Your Facebook ad will still be live. But you are on a watch list.

So, perhaps you mess up and break another ad policy that isn't a big one. But, because you are on the watch list already (the machines are watching) now, something that you'd normally get the pass on, will shut you down.

Yet now, having gotten the flag for another ad policy - which isn't the real reason you are shut down - you create a new ad.

In the new ad you duplicate the old ad and everything is almost the same. You are trying to address the ad policy Facebook told you about. But that isn't even the real reason you got shut down.

Now in the new ad, you think you're doing better because you corrected the ad policy Facebook told you that you were breaking. At least you did your best to follow the ad policies.

Except - you still have one of those banned words in your ad copy. Or maybe, you've even used more banned words since the first ad. These banned words will continue to get you shut down, so avoid using them.

Reason #2 Why Your Facebook Ad Gets Rejected: Prohibited Content

I can tell you there are certain things you should just avoid using Facebook to advertise. One of those is CBD. Selling any kind of illegal drug on Facebook is prohibited - so we have this grey area as marijuana becomes legalized on many states across America. That means it should be ok to run ads for it right? Wrong.



The chart above shows Facebook's automation sequence for reviewing ads. Here's the reality:

You will rarely get a human looking at your ads.

At least not one that has any decision making abilities.

If you're running CBD ads most likely you'll get shut down eventually for selling weed. That's the reality of it.

I have had tons of people reach out to me trying to get advice on how to sell CBD on Facebook. My reply? Don't.

The same thing goes for trying to sell guns. Or even educational training videos about guns.
For an in depth look at the top reasons why Facebook disables ad accounts click here.

The Real Reason CBD - like Ads Get Rejected

You're probably reading this saying, "Hey man, I don't even sell CBD, why is this relevant?"

It's important to understand how the system works so that any time you are running an ad you feel is on-the-line for ad policies you get how risky this is at tanking your entire business.

Let's say you run an ad in Denver, Colorado. Probably the most marijuana-friendly state on Earth.

You've made sure your location targeting is within a 50-mile radius of Denver so that everyone seeing the ad is seeing it in a state where marijuana is legal. (Yes I know CBD isn't the same as weed but as far as the automations are concerned it is).

But now, a teenager sees the ad, comments on it, and tags a friend of theirs who lives in a state where even CBD isn't completely legal.

Now, Facebook has to deal with the legal ramifications (and possibly judicial action against them by a redneck judge) because they let you run this ad, tagging or shared with Facebook users living in states (or countries) where it isn't legal.

As a result - the automations will always cause you trouble if you try to sell CBD on Facebook. Same thing for guns. It seems obvious but I see many advertisers get Facebook ads rejected because their ad copy or creative contains pictures or descriptions of prohibited content. So just don't do it.

I bring this up for everyone to keep in mind because even if you are not selling CBD or guns - there is a litany of prohibited items. Let's say you work with women's lingerie and have ads selling garments on Facebook.

Facebook's rules against sexually suggestive content will then flag and take this down. Even if you are targeting Facebook users 18 and up - a child could still see your ad.

Here's a pro-tip: age-gate your Facebook Page if you are selling adult products. This could be for bars, lingerie, warehouse machinery kids shouldn't operate. The list goes on.

Age-gating your Facebook Business Page will at least help prevent these accidental ad policy violations.

Reason #3 Why Your Facebook Ad Gets Rejected: Personal Attributes

Most advertisers feel like they have to target their audience with super personal call-outs. But that is a great way to get on Facebook's radar!

Facebook's goal is to beat out all their competitors whether that's Google, Amazon or TikTok. If they feel that advertisers are making Facebook users feel unwelcome on the platform, that means Facebook's competition may get the juice.

Facebook describes in detail what those personal attributes are, in this article. But Facebook won't tell you their entire reasoning behind this policy.

So how are you expected to understand how this policy is even applied?!

First of all, you have to stay updated on all the attributes Facebook tracks. This has changed over the years. Many advertisers, creating Facebook ads by habit, who have been marketing for years don't even know what's changed! Some people don't even know that the Facebook audience insight tool no longer exists.

Here are the new updated attributes that Facebook aka Meta, wants you to be super careful when targeting:

• Race
• Ethnicity
• Color
• National origin
• Religion
• Age
• Sex
• Sexual orientation
• Gender identity
• Family status
• Disability
• Medical or genetic condition
• Physical or mental health (including medical conditions)
• Vulnerable financial status
• Voting status
• Membership in a trade union
• Criminal record
• Name

Trust me there's more.

This is only the surface level of what Facebook doesn't want you to make Facebook users feel insecure about. Because let's face it, if you are kicking a pain point about someone's criminal record, because you are a defense attorney running ads - and they feel singled out?

If you're looking for the scoop on the top reasons that Facebook ads get rejected click here.

Perhaps now, these Facebook users will leave the platform to go to Twitter or TikTok. I know enough advertisers who, after getting their Facebook ads rejected again and again, have decided to go for greener pastures.

You know how much money Facebook loses when someone leaves Facebook for TikTok? It's a lot. So it's a big mistake to ignore following the personal attributes policy:



But what exactly does that mean?

It means you can't kick a pain point too hard in your ad copy. Whether your audience is teachers, or accountants, or soccer moms, or students or people trying to lose weight you really want to do some role playing here.

Put yourself in their shoes and then read your own ad copy. Ask yourself, "Would I feel called out, if I was my target audience reading this?"

Remember, you are not always your target audience. A common mistake many marketers make is feeling like we are too clever for our own good. "Oh yeah, this ad sounds clutch. It's so well written!"

The John Malkovich Approach to Facebook

Well if that isn't the pot calling the kettle black. Even if your ad is beautifully written and sounds great to you, please realize you are within the Facebook Ecosystem.

[Welcome to the Jungle]

Except there is no fun and games here Axl Rose. You have to put yourself in the hypersensitive head of Facebook's automations and be a bit more strategic. Like that movie Being John Malkovich, if you want to understand how these automations flag your ads, you gave to get inside their head. You have to think like them.

Do you have a friend that tends to get offended at the drop of the hat? Ask them to roleplay as your target audience and ask them if your ad copy offends them.

The thing is, Facebook is doing the same thing. Facebook is pretending to be your target audience and getting offended on behalf of them to avoid losing Facebook users to their competitors.

Reason #4 Why Your Facebook Ad Gets Rejected:  You Misinterpreted Ads

If you don't know why your ad was rejected YOU'LL BE REJECTED AGAIN.

One of the most common mistakes advertisers make is to immediately appeal a rejected Facebook ad. But if you've just appealed an ad and you have no idea why it was flagged - then Facebook is going to feel like you are literally asking them to break their own ad policies, allowing an non compliant ad to go live on their platform. 

Common Mistakes In FB Ad Appeals:

If FB reactivates your ad that was rejected, and you have the same flags still in your ad the automations will continue to scan your ads and flag you.

Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow but next week or next month, when they automations rescan your ads and see the same flags that got your ad rejected before, now you're in even bigger trouble with Facebook

These machines are looking to create a profile of ad accounts based on past behavior and the ratio of rejected versus approved ads.

Super important to note: Facebook often makes mistakes because they use so many outsourced workers and well, machines also have bugs in them so frequently Facebook accidentally allows ads that are in clear violation of their ad policies to come BACK on the platform.

In your mind, you are doing the happy dance because you appealed a rejected ad and now that it's live you think everything is going to be ok, or that Facebook made a mistake the first time it was shut down. Wrong. 

False perceptions can be a bitch. Trust me this is not the way you want to think about it. It's false logic. The idea that just because you appealed an ad that Facebook rejected and got it approved means that it was Facebook's mistake is often unrealistic.

It totally leaves out the very real possibility that Facebook made a mistake reactivating the rejected Facebook ad. We can't deny: Facebook has a very imperfect system for flagging Facebook ads, and disabling ad accounts.

[Read What to Do If Your Facebook Ad Account Disabled 2022 for more deets].

The illusion believed by many advertisers that "Oh well, if my ad was approved after it was rejected that must mean that Facebook made a mistake when it was first flagged," assumes that the automations are perfect for the most part and normally always work correctly.

This is far from the truth. The idea that automations regulating billions of Facebook ads A DAY can have a uniform system for always making the same type of decisions with every advertiser's ads is not just hopeful thinking - it's dangerous to think this way.

You can lose all your advertising assets in a blink if you don't take it seriously that 99% of the time, you are probably doing something to trigger the automations to flag you.

The problem is, it's very hard to comprehend when you see a competitor running ads that previously got you shut down. You assume, "Well now, if they can do it, so can I!!"

But what is happening here is that sometimes there is a holding pattern where old ads, that are not compliant, are not reviewed by the automations if the advertiser hasn't made any changes to the ads in a long ass time.

Also - just like automations make mistakes when they flag ads that are compliant (which happens less often than you think), they also make mistakes just not catching all the flags in every single ad that's running live.

Remember we are not talking about thousands of ads a day, or millions but billions Facebook ads that all have to be scanned. You really think a machine can do this without errors?

We come again to mindset being a big problem for most advertisers when dealing with Facebook ads that get rejected, and the false assumptions that Facebook is just making an mistake.

9 out 10 times it is the advertiser making the mistake, and then just getting lucky that on a 2nd scan, after appealing, Facebook didn't catch the flags again.

This is a common mistake in Facebook ad appeals: "Oh now that my Facebook ad is approved, that must mean it's smooth sailing for me because Facebook realized their mistake and reactivated my ad."

When what actually happened was, we are short staffed at Facebook. Not enough human reviewers are actually looking at the ads so machines often make the decision when you appeal an ad. And they don't see everything.

I am a Facebook ad policy specialist and have worked with 100s of ad agencies over the years helping them get compliant so I speak not from a Google search, or guess but statistically speaking based on actual ad agencies who have Facebook ads rejected that I've helped.

Most ad agencies misinterpreted their ads, didn't catch what caused Facebook to flag them the first time they were shut down and are literally walking between landmines with a noncompliant ad Facebook accidentally reactivated because the machines made a mistake.

So this whole mindset that Facebook made a mistake when initially flagging you should change. Temper your expectations. Realize it could be a mistake both times. When you are shut down and when you get reactivated.

Statistically speaking, from the last 5 years I've been helping folks understand why they got flagged and how to get compliant it is 1% of the time that Facebook's first shut down was a mistake.

Glitches happen more often when, let's say you corrected an ad you did understand why it was flagged, and it goes live again but you're using the same creative and/or almost the same ad copy and now the fully compliant ad gets caught in that terrible loop getting flagged again.

This time not because you were not compliant, but because of the nature of machine-learning-automations seeking to re-establish the same pattern of flagging - and you haven't changed enough about the ad to make the machines see it differently.

You may think about every other factor, but mindset isn't just for self-help. How you frame how you're looking at this situation will determine your ability to escape the automation flagging loop. You have to think like a bot.

Reason #5 Why Your Facebook Ad Gets Rejected:  Ad Looks Spammy AF

This is one of the most common reasons I've seen Facebook advertisers get their Facebook ads rejected. It just looks spammy.

You can do a lot of things to fuck up your ad not looking realistic. Again it comes down to how you think about the process and looking at it through Facebook's eyes.

We'll get to that in a second but first let's talk about spam.

Spam is defined as irrelevant or unsolicited messages sent to a large number of Internet users, for illegitimate advertising.

There are a lot of reasons why your Facebook ad will be marked as spam - and this flag externally show up in red letters in your Ads Manager as "Misleading Business Practices."

If you have a landing page that is nearly blank, without being built out with text and images but has like, just a sentence or two - that will look spammy to Facebook.

Want to make sure your landing page doesn't get flagged by Facebook? Click here.

If you don't have a freaking Privacy Policy visibly linked to your lander, that alone can shut down your Facebook ads.
Not having a privacy policy is considered spammy.

USING ALL CAPS A SHIT TON INSIDE YOUR AD COPY ABOVE THE CREATIVE is definitely spammy.

Making crazy claims of getting rich overnight is going to be looked at as spammy.

Having a low quality landing page will be flagged as spammy - and this is where Facebook kind of acts like a passive aggressive roommate without healthy communication skills.

Because instead of simply telling you that your landing page looks spammy, Facebook will just raise the CPAs and CPCs making it harder to get your Facebook ad in front of more eyes. Suppressing the reach.

I've worked with a lot of ecommerce guys and man, they often will screenshot an image from Instagram of someone using their product or make a low quality GIF of a person using their product and then put it on their Shopify sales page and run ads to it.

But like, the GIF or image is grainy af, and low quality. This unleashes a whole bunch of hell from Facebook's automations because they won't tell you that your ad looks spammy they'll just suppress the reach, or put your ad account on a watch list.

What does that mean? Well, going forward, now you're on the radar. Now, those flags that used to be only on-the-line for getting flagged, will get you shut down.

Look I could go into a million other triggers for why your ad is flagged as spammy but the point is to get your head right. Get your head in the game. Realize that Facebook doesn't want spammy ads on the platform and take a hard look at your funnels.

• Nearly blank landing page

• No privacy policy linked on the landing page

• Using too many ALL CAP WORDS in your ad copy

• Making get rich quick claims 

• Low quality landing page with bad graphics

I could go on - there are a ton of reasons why your ad is marked as spam - and there are multiple versions and types of spam Facebook can and will mark you as.

The important thing here is to not just appeal your ad right away - because then you'll get hit with the circumventing systems flag, as Facebook's bots will assume you are trying to game the system and sneak a noncompliant ad through.

Because Facebook knows their automations don't catch everything.

So there you have it. The Top 5 Reasons Facebook Ads Get Rejected.

To be honest, there are a lot more than 5 reasons why Facebook ads get rejected - but I hope you've found this list useful.

If you want to stop guessing on why your Facebook ads get rejected, and get a definite answer on how to get compliant with ad policies - you're in luck. Just keep reading below:

New Solution to Facebook Ads Getting Rejected

After years of working at Facebook, I understand exactly what ad copy in your funnel is triggering the automations and how to get compliant. I'm a Facebook ad policy specialist and can audit your funnel, and share what to say that Facebook wants to see instead - but just isn't telling you.

Want to book a call to talk to Facebook and get results? 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 having a sure path to having your Facebook ad accounts protected from being disabled.

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Save energy and money - how much is it costing you to not know why Facebook is shutting you down?



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