How to Keep Your Facebook Ads From Getting Disapproved
Lots of advertisers deal with Facebook turning down their ads on a regular basis. This isn’t unusual. The Facebook review process is meant to keep ads off their network that go against their advertiser policies. But you CAN keep your Facebook ads from getting disapproved. Here’s how.
Getting Your Facebook Ads Approved
Unless you are in an industry that Facebook bans (like illegal products and services) you should be able to get your ads approved on a regular basis. Most of the time it takes a knowledge of Facebook advertising policies, a little bit of creativity, and some common sense.
Get Familiar with Facebook Advertising Policies
Before I go into any other tips or tricks, the first thing that I want you to do is go to the Facebook advertising policies page and read through the entire thing.
It takes about 45 minutes to get through the document. A lot of it is common sense and things you already know. But like any other platform, Facebook has it’s own set of quirks and rules that are particular to Facebook.
When you know the rules, you have the power to craft content and ads that will get approved by Facebook.
It’s Not a Person Reviewing Your Ads, It’s Facebook’s Algorithm
It’s also important to remember that your ads are most likely NOT being reviewed by a human being. Facebook runs millions of ads every month and there is no way for humans to review all of them. Instead, the first review is almost always done by an algorithm.
That means that something in your ad or landing page, triggered the algorithm to disapprove you.
If you think your ad complies to the Facebook advertising policies, then you can resubmit your ad for human review and it will often get approved and start running.
But if your ad doesn’t comply and you resubmit it, then a human will look at it and deny it again. If you do this on a regular basis or if you are promoting something that Facebook outright prohibits then you can get your Facebook advertising account shut down.
That’s why it’s so important to understand and create ads that are within Facebook’s advertising guidelines.
Prohibited Content for Facebook Ads May Surprise You
There are a lot of types of content that Facebook prohibits in ads on their platform – and since they own the platform they get to make the rules.
Facebook prohibits advertising many things you might expect:
- Illegal products
- Tobacco
- Drugs
- Unsafe supplements
- Weapons
- Adult products and services
- Sale of human body parts (gross I know, but it’s in the policies)
But sometimes their rules are surprising. One of the things that often catches people off guard is Facebook’s personal attributes rule.
What this rule means is that you can’t specify something about the people you are advertising too. It comes across as creepy. For example:
You can’t say: “Are you a man over age 65?”
You CAN say: “XYZ product is specifically designed for men over age 65”
This is a small difference, but it’s important for Facebook ads. You absolutely cannot ask or call out a personal attribute like age, gender, race, or medical condition in a Facebook ad.
Generally speaking if you avoid anything that starts with “Are you?” your ads are much more likely to get approved.
There are more things in this section that can cause ads to get disapproved – things like misleading or false content, and controversial content. I encourage you to go through the entire ad policy yourself so you know all the ins and outs.
Your Landing Page Must Be Working and Have No Exit Pop Ups
Facebook doesn’t just look at your ads, they also look CLOSELY at your landing pages.
Your landing page must be functional and it can’t have exit popups.
I know that exit pops can be very effective at converting people to your offer, but Facebook doesn’t like them so you want to keep them off of the landers that you use in Facebook advertising.
Facebook Cares About Grammar, Profanity and Disrupting Ads
Facebook doesn’t like profanity in the ads it displays on it’s network. This includes profanity that is masked by symbols.
It also doesn’t like excessive punctuation. It doesn’t like three or more of any punctuation in a row. So, don’t use three exclamation marks or question marks at the end of a sentence.
Another thing that Facebook really doesn’t like are video ads that are disruptive. This includes people waiving their hands and other “look at me” types of ads.
This rule is one of the reasons that we frequently see ads being rejected for. Keep your punctuation and grammar correct in your ads and you won’t have a problem with it.
Before and After Photos
This is one that takes people off guard. Facebook has VERY specific guidelines for images in the personal health industry.
The basic rules here are that you can’t use before and after images or images that are zoomed into a single body part.
If you work with a cosmetic dentists office, you can show the whole face from the neck up, but not just the smile.
No Payday Loans, Multilevel Marketing, or Penny Auctions
There are other industries where it’s simply not possible to advertise on Facebook.
These include:
- Payday loans
- Multilevel marketing
- Penny auctions
It’s nearly impossible to get ads approved on Facebook in these industries, so it’s better to focus your attention on something else.
NOTE: You can often advertise multi-level marketing PRODUCTS, but not the business opportunity.
Facebook Advertising Categories You Have to Jump Through Hoops For
In addition to prohibited content, Facebook has a lot of categories that fall into restricted content. If you are in one of these categories you want to CAREFULLY read the rules and make sure you are following them exactly.
These are areas you can potentially run ads for, but you need to know the rules and follow them and sometimes need to get special approval from Facebook.
Restricted content areas include:
- Alcohol
- Dating
- Real Money Gambling
- State Lotteries
- Promotion of Over-the-Counter Drugs
- Subscription Services
- Financial and Insurance Products and Services
- Branded Content
- Ads About Social Issues, Elections or Politics
- Disclaimers for Ads About Social Issues, Elections or Politics
- Cryptocurrency Products and Services
- Drug and Alcohol Addiction Treatment
- Cosmetic Procedures and Weight Loss
One thing I do want to note here that gets a lot of people in trouble with Facebook is the subscription services rules.
If you don’t disclose that you are running a subscription service or make it hard for people to cancel – they can’t cancel by emailing or calling – and you run ads to a subscription service you are likely to get your entire ad account disabled.
Subscription services are a great way to do business, but you MUST follow the rules that Facebook lays out if you want to advertise them on Facebook.
Keep Your Text In Ad Images Under 20%
A few years ago Facebook wouldn’t run ads that had more than 20% of the image as text. They’ve relaxed those rules a bit, but they still will greatly reduce your reach on an ad with too much text.
Generally speaking, it’s WAY better just to follow the rules and not have more than 20% of your image be text.
Pro Tip: The BEST way to include text in your ads is to include a very short sentence that highlights just ONE of the benefits for the products or services you are selling.
Follow the Lead Ads Rules
This is one of those areas where you MUST read the rules before you run lead ads. There are a BUNCH of things you cannot ask for with lead ads and that’s OK.
You can set your own questions in lead ads and they are a very powerful way to advertise on Facebook. Just make sure you are following the rules about what kind of information you can collect.
Using the Facebook Brand
Facebook is obviously very sensitive to their brand being used in advertising. You CAN do this if you are advertising a Facebook page or Instagram account, but it needs to be limited.
Often ads like this will get disapproved by the algorithm and then will be approved on submission to a manual reviewer.
How to Get Your Facebook Ads Approved – Video Training
I go over the entire approval process in this video as well as show you some tips and tricks for getting Facebook ads approved.
The Bottom Line on Stopping Facebook Ads Disapprovals
If you want your Facebook ads to be approved and you want to keep your account in good standing, then it’s important to follow the Facebook advertising policies.
By following the policies you will have far fewer problems with your ad account and you will be able to run ads without having to stress.
If you are following the policies and your ad gets disapproved, then it’s a good idea to submit it for manual review because the algorithms will sometimes kick an ad out without real cause.
