Facebook Contest Rules. Should You Comply? (Updated January 2022, includes the latest on AI and Facebook and Google ad automations)
Pretty much every week a client asks me about Facebook contest rules, usually because they've seen a competitor gaining likes and shares with a non-permitted promotion. It's frustrating for businesses that stick to the rules.
In the past, you'd probably get away with this. Now though, the latest tech means the risk is much higher when it comes to being caught for breaching these platform rules. More on this below, in the Janaury 2022 update.
5 Facebook rules that are often broken by businesses running Facebook contests:
1.??????You cannot ask people to share a post to enter
2.??????You cannot ask people to tag a friend to enter
3.??????You cannot ask people to like a page to enter (but liking a post is ok)
4.??????You must provide an explicit complete release of Facebook
5.??????You must provide an explicit statement of the contest rules.?
Comments from social media experts
To run a Facebook contest, you can either run a compliant on-page contest or use a compliant app.
I surveyed fellow Social Media Marketing Professionals at the Social Media Marketing Society and on Reddit’s Socialmedia subred. Here are some comments from experts:
1.??????You cannot require people to like your page in order to enter, nor can you require them to share the post. You could, however, say, "like this post and comment to enter, and share (optional.)"
2.??????You can still not ask anyone to "share" and "tag" to participate in a contest.
3.??????That being said, you can always use a sentence like "feel free to share" after you have made clear what the contest rules really are, but I really don′t like using the word "share" at all. It′s spammy, and I also think Facebook still punishes you with a slightly lower reach when you beg for shares https://www.facebook.com/page_guidelines.php
4.??????So, you could also invite people to show this to one of your friends and have them join us on our page, or something like that. I think the most important thing to keep in mind is this: Facebook wants these contests and all activity around contests to be PUBLICLY visible. That is the only reason why you may not tag friends or share this on a person's timeline to enter. So, if you were to ask people to share this on their business page, that would be perfectly okay, since business pages are public.
July 2015 Update
As of July 27, 2015, these types of contests are no longer acceptable under Facebook's new contest guidelines:
Types of Facebook contests which are still permitted include
Like a post to enter
Post on a Page to enter
Like as a voting mechanism
Comment on a post to enter
When running a Facebook contest, you must always
From Facebook
Promotions
If you use Facebook to communicate or administer a promotion (ex: a contest or sweepstakes), you are responsible for the lawful operation of that promotion, including:
a.??The official rules;
b.??Offer terms and eligibility requirements (ex: age and residency restrictions); and
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c.??Compliance with applicable rules and regulations governing the promotion and all prizes offered (ex: registration and obtaining necessary regulatory approvals)
Promotions on Facebook must include the following:
a.??A complete release of Facebook by each entrant or participant.
b.??Acknowledgement that the promotion is in no way sponsored, endorsed or administered by, or associated with, Facebook.
Promotions may be administered on Pages or within apps on Facebook. Personal Timelines and friend connections must not be used to administer promotions (ex: “share on your Timeline to enter” or “share on your friend's Timeline to get additional entries”, and "tag your friends in this post to enter" are not permitted).
We will not assist you in the administration of your promotion, and you agree that if you use our service to administer your promotion, you do so at your own risk.
Commentary
When you specify Shares as an entry criterion, besides the issue of Facebook's platform rules, some people's privacy settings mean that you won’t be able to see all the shares so some valid entries will be disqualified. You will be able see the total number of shares in your contest, but not all of them will be visible to the page meaning that you won’t know if some contest entrants have shared or not. This can lead to disgruntled contestants which is contrary to the purpose of a contest.
You often see businesses running contests that breach the Facebook platform rules and apparently getting away with it. I recently surveyed a professional social media marketing group and received a number of reports of business Facebook pages being permanently shut down and fans lost for breaches of platform rules.
To run a Facebook contest, you can either run a compliant on-page contest or use a compliant app which is our preferred approach.?
January 2022 Update - AI and Machine Learning
Facebook and Google are increasingly using AI and machine learning to create, manage and optimize ads on their platforms.
They also use this tech to scan your ads and your website landing pages, to assess quality and compliance.
This means that you're more likely to be caught if you breach platform rules like the ones discussed in this article.
Example -
We've seen this happen. A business ran an on-page contest via a Facebook page post and asked people to tag a friend to enter. This post was then used as an ad - a boost. With no warning, the ads admin of that page had their Facebook ads access revoked, account cancelled!
There's been significant political and community push-back against Facebook and Google over the last year or two. The platforms are reacting to try and stay in line with current community standards and expectations.
The new tech has made it easier for them to monitor what's going on.
DOWNSIDE TO AUTOMATION
One downside is that the robots / AI often get it wrong and users then have to appeal the ad disapprovals and account bans.
UPSIDE
There is an upside too. The tech is making the ad platforms more accessible to more businesses.
The ad platforms, especially Google Ads, have become very complex, too complex for many small businesses to be able to run campaigns themselves. Many people run Facebook ads but from what we see, many don't get the results they want as they don't have the detailed knowledge required.
One aim with AI and machine learning is to simplify the ad campaign creation, management and optimization processes, with the tech doing the hard work. These ad managment automations have improved significantly over the last year or so, and we expect this improvement to continue, at a rapid pace.
The tech still has trouble making differentiating certain kinds of ads. This throws up problems in the so-called "your money or your life" industries, ie anything to do with health, wellbeing, money, real estate and employment. Google and Facebook are very sensitive about these "special categories." Examples we see are the inability ofr the tech to differentiate between real estate for sale ads vs ads for real estate agent coaching, and job ads vs ads for helping people do better in job interviews. But we expect this to improve.
Not long ago, Google's automated ad optimizations seldom delivered better results than manual management, but now we're seeing automated campaigns achieve much improved click through rates.