This is How Ad Agencies Avoid Facebook Jail: Ad Policies Checklist
Trevor W Goodchild
?? Brand Strategist | Facebook Ad Policy Specialist | Speaker | Thought Leader
You can now get banned for the smallest thing on Facebook if you don’t know the Facebook ad policies. Want to shortcut to escaping Facebook jail? Keep reading…
Having a disabled Facebook ad account is a real bummer but you’re in the right place. I’ve worked at Facebook and today I’ll share a Facebook Ad Policy Checklist with you to prevent Facebook blocks and ad account restrictions.?
(Further reading on restricted ad accounts here: Facebook Account Restricted from Advertising? Don’t Panic!)
Just like I provided solutions for Boomerang, a marketing research firm, you’ll learn how to avoid the land mines that shut down millions of businesses a year on Facebook.
Click?here for a free discovery call.
Table of Contents
Facebook Ad Review Process
Facebook’s ad review process takes up to 24 hours, and is 100% automated. So you’ll want to check your ads for facebook policy flags before submitting them for review. Facebook changes often, as Jon Loomer mentions about the new Conversion API so you’ll want to stay up-to-date with new Facebook policy changes before submitting your ads for review.
Breaking Down the Facebook Ad Review Processnbsp;
Your ads are the face of your business online. Social media ads are the top source of new brand discovery for internet users aged 16-24 (DataReportal, 2023 ). When your ads first go for review, Meta’s automations review your ad account history, your Business Manager history and the industry you’re in. After a quick check, you’ll get an answer on whether it’s approved or not. And just because your ad is approved doesn’t mean you are compliant – often smaller flags can slip through if you don’t have a complete audit of your funnel first for Facebook policy compliance.
Facebook’s Advertising Policies
Every year Facebook creates new Facebook ad policies that reflect changes to privacy, advertising, and PR that affects Meta’s stockholders. They may not always make sense from a conversion standpoint – but from a PR brand development level they do.
Restricted Ad Content
Certain types of content can get you banned in only a few seconds. Facebook won’t let you run ads from prohibited categories: forbidden substances, violence, weapons, hate speech etc. For you, if one of your words sounds similar to restricted ad content.
Facebook Ad Policies: Background
So why not just throw it against the wall and see if your ads stick??
Why Should You Bother Learning About Facebook Ads Policies?
It sounds like a pain in the ass to learn about Facebook ad policies but unless you want to run a black hat agency that is always pumping and dumping rented ad accounts, learning Facebook ad policy helps you establish longevity.
You can’t build the pixel retargeting data if you are hopping from one ad account to the next. Learning Facebook ad policies helps you with building audiences for your brand to retarget later.?
Understanding Facebook’s Advertising Standards
Facebook ad policies were created by the Facebook ad policy department but enforced by the engineering department I worked with at Facebook.
That means that on the surface, Facebook ad policies seem simple, but how they are enforced can get complicated unless you speak bot-language. As automations enforce the ad policies your ads have to follow.
Facebook Ads Policies You Need to Know
Facebook ad policy automations enforce these ad policies the most: Misleading Business Practices Personal Attributes Spam Each Facebook ad policy affects different industries differently.
Additional policies that may apply to your ad
Depending on which type of business you have additional Facebook ad policies may apply. If you’re selling CBD, or gambling online or in person, there are more Facebook ad policies specific to your niche you’ll want to be familiar with.
Complying with Facebook’s Ad Policy
To ensure you you don’t get stuck in Facebook jail you’ll want to review your ads both for conversion, and for Facebook ad policy compliance.
How to Ensure Your Ads Comply with Facebook’s Policy
Look at your ads through the eyes of the machines that flag them, and predict where and how the Facebook automations will flag you, and make sure you have compliant ad copy.
Stuck trying to figure Facebook ad policies out?
I worked with the engineers that created these automations at Facebook.
If you’ve been shutdown a lot but never got answers, 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. We have a better understand of how the algorithm works and know exactly what to do and say if our account gets disabled again.”
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.
The Facebook Ad Policies Checklist
Step 1: Review Your Facebook Ad Policies History
What happens when you apply for a loan? The lender checks your credit history – and Facebook’s automations do this in a similar fashion. When you submit your ads for review, an automation checks to see what your ad account history is with Facebook.
How many ads have you had rejected in the past few months?
The machines will tally up your rejected ads and compare those to the number of approved ads – it all happens in a few seconds, completely automatic. And, let’s face it, that’s a simple math equation. The number of ads approved versus ads rejected.
Remember: 95% of the review process is done by machines so it comes down to a simple tally.
If you have more rejected ads than approved ads within a certain time span like 30 to 60 or 90 days, the machines will conclude you are a bad actor. And then disable your Facebook ad account.
[Read: Your Access Can’t Be Reinstated here ]
Of course, there is an easy way to weigh the scales in your favor: Run ads that follow Facebook ad policies.
And make sure your motivation here isn’t profit but simply running ads you know will be approved, to help improve your ad account health.
If you need some tips on running ads on FB as a business, read How to Navigate Facebook’s Advertising Policies as a Business.
I guarantee it will save you more time to make a decision and take action on improving your ad account health before running conversion campaigns where everything is on the line.?
Step 2: Look Up Facebook Ad Policies for Your Niche
Facebook may be many things, but few will actually say “Facebook is fair.” And the reason why this is a popular sentiment is because of how confusing Facebook ad policies are.
They’re confusing af because different industries play by different rules. Facebook ad policies vary a lot depending on what your business is.
For instance, if you run employment ads, political ads, or real estate ads you’re in what’s called the special ad category for social issues .
When Facebook was sued in 2019 for having targeting parameters for income and zipcode (mainly in real estate ads) the backlash was taking away these targeting options and creating special ad categories.
There are specific ad policies that apply only to special ad category ads, so you’ll want to be familiar, even if on a surface level, with those facebook ad policies.
Gambling ads don’t allow you to provide users with the ability to bet using real money on an app for example.
Here’s a quick overview of the facebook ad policies: You can see we covered the special ad categories, but, let’s say you’re in the “how to start a business” niche.
One thing you’ll want to be aware of is the Misleading Business Practices ad policy.
This is a policy to help prevent pyramid schemes from creating Facebook ads. Do you actually run an MLM?
A multilevel marketing company isn’t allowed to advertise on Facebook. So, knowing that going forward will better prepare you. I hope the main idea is clear here: get familiar with the facebook ad policies that relate to your business?specifically.
Even if you’re not an MLM, be aware of?how your ads sound. Don’t sound like an MLM. That means making realistic claims for the results you promise in the ad copy.
Be aware of what those ad policies are before you press publish on any new ads. Or you can just hire me to review your ads and save time looking at 1000s of facebook ad policies.
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Facebook Ad Policies Analysis
Next up, get ready to analyze your ads for flags.
Step 3: Analyze Your Rejected Facebook Ads
Facebook ads have multiple parts:
To avoid getting your Facebook ad account disabled, you’ll want to ensure you don’t have too many rejected ads. And make sure you don’t have the?same ad policy strikes on multiple ads.
You’ll should analyze each part of your ad and look for potential Facebook ad policy violations.
Facebook Ad Policies: Ad Copy
For the ad copy – which is the 1st thing you see on a Facebook ad – you want to be extra careful you accurately represent your company, product, service, or brand being advertised. So, no outlandish promises of big results with little effort.
Facebook Ad Policies: Headline
It’s often said that you need to spend a lot more time split-testing headlines than the content on your lander because the headline is what grabs your audience’s attention. In the same vein, you also want to keep in mind any ad copy in your headline that sounds spammy. Don’t talk about that “one weird trick.”?
Facebook Ad Policies: Display URL
A lot of my clients that come to me with disabled Facebook ad accounts or rejected Facebook ads have been hit by the automations because of issues with their display URLs.
What is the display URL? It’s what you want your audience to see but it has to match your actual landing page’s URL.
If you have a messy URL with a lot of numbers that’s super long, sure, you can put the root domain instead of the add-on domain there.
BUT don’t put your bridge page there instead of the actual sales page URL if the website address is different. That will getcha flagged.
Too many flags can lead to ad account shutdowns or rejected Facebook ads that hurt your ad account score.
That was the case for my client Jack Randall.
Jack is a social media marketer that kept getting shut down by Facebook until we worked together.
“Trevor helped me successfully diagnose exactly why my ad account was disabled, and helped me frame out a plan to move forward.”
In a rush? Skip the line with prepaid funnel audits with?VIP Access .
Step 4: Check Your Website for Facebook Ad Policies Violations
You’d be surprised how many advertisers tell me, “I didn’t know Facebook scanned my website as well as my Facebook ad.”
Welp! But they?do!
Got a ton of ads running to a non-compliant site? I’m gonna have to quote Kermit on you.
A common flaw I’ve seen in advertisers who get the Facebook ban hammer is not making sure every link on their website works.
If you have any 404 pages, Facebook automations will find them and flag you for a nonfunctioning landing page.
Also for the love of God, get a dang privacy policy! This is a must for any website that you run Facebook ads to. And for some special ad categories like political ads, it is a legal requirement.
A common flag I see a lot is Personal Attributes – this happens when you target the pain points of a specific group of people too specifically.
Be aware of that and look at your website to make sure you aren’t being too negative.
Look over your website and make sure there isn’t any content on it that violates Facebook ad policies. Don’t skip this step on the checklist!
Also check out: Top Reasons Why Facebook Disables Ad Accounts
Step 5. Get Your Funnel Facebook Compliant
(Before Running New Ads or Appealing)
WHEW! You’ve come so far. You’ve reviewed your Facebook ad policies history, looked up facebook ad policies for your niche, analyzed your rejected Facebook ads, and checked your website for Facebook ad policies violations.
The best strategy for keeping Facebook ads active is always going to be a preventative one.
You can’t undo a certain level of banning – that’s why this Facebook ad policies checklist is focused on discovering potential flags and current or past facebook policy flags.
Your?last step is to put all that knowledge you’ve gained in the previous steps to work. Now that you’ve identified Facebook ad policies you may have violated, you’ll want to get your Facebook funnel compliant.
Take a moment to review your Facebook ads and compare them to the Facebook ad policies online.
Your marketing plan should include compliance?before conversions. Because it’s a balance between those 2.
Conclusion
A preventative Facebook ad policy approach will SAVE YOU SO MUCH MONEY AND HEADACHES! Is it easier to pay child support for 18 years or pull out? Do the math folks.
Here is a TLDR for Facebook ad policies to check your funnel for:
There you have it! I hope you’ve found the Facebook ad policies checklist helpful.
If you use this Checklist before running new ads you’ll increase your rate of approved Facebook ads and prevent disabled Facebook ad accounts from ever gracing your screen.
Thanks for reading!
Still here?
What if you had a guarantee that your ads were compliant?before they went live on Facebook?
Facebook Jail Solution
Ad agencies: Tired of Facebook bans cutting into your revenue and tired of getting the silent treatment from Facebook when your ad or ad account is banned?
I’m a Facebook ad policy specialist who worked deep at Facebook and I’m trusted by high level brands that take accuracy and results seriously:
After years of working at Facebook, I can show you how to resolve FB bans even if Facebook ad support is useless to resolve ad account restrictions.
Stop losing money from Facebook bans and schedule your call with me now . Don’t take my word for it, let my clients tell you what it was like working with me:
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