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1 November 2022

10 Facebook Ad Policies To Keep Your Ads Running Compliantly

Each advertising platform comes with its own set of pros and cons. However, Facebook ads have proven to be extremely useful for upcoming businesses since they let you reach exactly the customers you want to be advertising to.

The customizability of Facebook ads campaigns is one of its biggest assets as you can make sure that your money is only spent on your demographic and no one else while yielding great results for your business. 

That being said, the customizability and targeting settings of Facebook ad campaigns can be sometimes complicated for beginners; which is why some e-commerce businesses and startups may leave it to the professionals through Facebook Media Buying to scale their business.

Now if you are about to start a Facebook ads campaign and you are not sure what to look out for, here are 10 Facebook advertising policies to keep your ads running smoothly.

 

Avoiding discrimination

 

The first Facebook ads policy we are going to be looking at today is discriminatory practices.

Your Facebook ads must not discriminate in any way against any group, nor should your ads encourage discrimination or discriminatory behavior against a certain group in any shape or form. 

Now for most advertisers avoiding discrimination means just avoiding having any discriminatory content in their Facebook ads.

In reality, Facebook policies can also deem your Facebook ad campaigns discriminatory if you are using Facebook’s targeting settings to wrongfully include or exclude certain groups, based on gender, religion, or ethnicity from seeing your ads. 

Keep in mind, running your Facebook ads in certain locations such as the U.S may require you to follow the country’s non-discrimination laws as well.

 

Fact Checking & Fake News

 

Another aspect you need to consider before running your ads is how accurate is the information and facts that you are displaying in your ads.

So, you can’t be including any fake news or presenting inaccurate information as facts in your ads.

This policy became more active recently as a result of fake news causing mass hysteria and public outrage.

Well, you might be asking, how does Facebook detect fake news?

Facebook has a third-party Fact Checking program to make sure that the information displayed on their platform, even in the form of ads, is factual and grounded in reality.

Therefore, it is always good practice to fact-check any information included in your ads before running them or submitting them for review.

Also, if you include or feature in your ads any piece of information that can be considered news, make sure it is from a trusted and reliable source.

 

Personal Health and Insecurities

 

Another Facebook ad policy that you need to carefully watch out for is Personal health, meaning that your ads can’t have content that causes its viewers to develop a negative self-perception as a result of viewing this idealized image or appearance.

For example, you can’t run a Facebook ad with a Before and after image promoting weight loss or beauty products since it would cause the viewers to be more self-conscious of their appearance.

In other words, your Facebook ads shouldn’t result in your audience members feeling insecure or negative about their perceived image or appearance.

Your Facebook ads can be perfectly clean from any harmful, discriminatory content while following all of Facebook’s ads guidelines and still get rejected due to this once policy that many advertisers tend to overlook.

Therefore, many advertisers resort to Facebook advertising agencies to run their Facebook ads without a hitch especially if they are keen on getting the best results.

 

Exploiting Political and Social Issues

 

Facebook can get much stricter with their ad policies when political and social issues are involved. So, any Facebook ads about elections or social issues will require you to have authorization.

Additionally, the ad will also have to include a disclaimer mentioning the figure or entity that is funding this Facebook ad campaign.

Lastly, the requirement for an authorization to run your ads may vary slightly based on which parts of the world you want to run your ads, which you can find the details for in Facebook’s business center.

However! Facebook ads whose primary aim and purpose is to sell a product or service don’t require authorization nor do they have to include any disclaimers as long as the ads aren’t about any elections or legislations, nor do they feature any political figures or groups.

 

Misleading Claims and Promises

 

The misleading claims policy was Facebook’s way of prohibiting any scams or illegitimate businesses to run ads on their platform.

Facebook’s misleading claims policy suggests that you can’t make false promises or suggest the likelihood of unrealistic outcomes. In other words, you can’t claim false or exaggerated outcomes as a result using the product or service that you are promoting. 

For example, your Facebook ad can’t be promoting a supplement or a medicine with the suggestion or implication that it can cure cancer or any other incurable disease.

Similar to fact checking, you will need to make sure that your Facebook ad campaigns don’t include any promotional content that makes any false claims or suggests exaggerated results to their consumers before submitting them for review.

 

Provocative Content

 

As the name of this policy suggests. Your Facebook ads can’t include or feature any adult nudity or sexual activity.

Aside from what different cultures and communities deem as adult content, your ads can’t include depictions of people in overly suggestive positions or displaying overly suggestive behavior as well.

Hence, you need to ensure that your ads don’t contain any provocative content based on what the community you want to advertise to deem to be inappropriate.

Similarly, your Facebook ads can’t be implying or suggesting the ability to meet or connect with people with the aim of being sexually provocative.

So, ads promoting dating services can’t be featuring people that may be sexualized in any way. The only exceptions for nudity in Facebook ad policy can be made for ads related to health in specific and individual cases only.

 

Sensational Content

 

First and foremost, Facebook cares about its users’ experience and is always keen on their users having an overall positive and pleasant experience.

Therefore, they make sure that Facebook users won’t be exposed to any ads that might arouse strong emotions in the platform’s visitors.

Even though Some marketing tactics may rely on stirring the consumers emotions and targeting their emotional reactivity, Facebook ads policy simply doesn’t approve of these marketing methods.

So, your Facebook ads campaign can’t have any shocking or horror elements that might elicit fear, shock, or disgust in any Facebook user.

Additionally, your ads can’t include or feature any violence, nor can it highlight pain or suffering in any form as these elements may trigger many viewers’ emotions.

 

Violating Intellectual Property

 

An important policy to consider whenever you are running your ads on Facebook or even promoting any product in general, the third party infringement policy.

This policy means that you can’t use any promotional material or product, which you don’t have the rights to, in you ads since they are considered as Intellectual Property

Therefore you need to always make sure that you have the legal rights to any content or material you are using in your Facebook ad account.

Keep in mind! Your ads may be initially approved but get flagged later on as the owner of the intellectual property was made aware of  your ad and notified Facebook.

 

Landing Page Issues

 

This policy was set into place by Facebook to protect its users from any suspicious activity or behavior they may experience by clicking an ad they saw on their platform.

Facebook may stop your ads from running if they notice that they direct to a suspicious site or even show an empty landing page.

The landing page your Facebook ads are redirected to needs to be working properly, clear, safe, and in alignment with the content or material you are showing in your ad creatives.

For example, your ad can’t be showing “new smartphones at discounted prices” but your landing page shows “kids bicycles for sale“.

 

Targeting Minors

 

If your Facebook ad is promoting a product or service for Minors, then you need to be aware that the minimum age of any Facebook user is 13 years.

Therefore, you won’t be able to target individuals in a younger age group. Furthermore, you won’t be able to use many of Facebook’s audience selection tools if you plan on targeting a younger audience such as selecting your audience based on their web activity, behavior, or interests. 

Additionally, if your ads include age-sensitive content then you will have to clarify this by setting an age restriction while you are configuring your ad using the audience selection tools.

Keep in mind, even though there may be some individual cases where exceptions were made in regard to Facebook ads policy as those cases involved ads in relation to art or health, it is still required to set an age restriction for those ads.

 

Conclusion

 

There you have it, 10 Facebook ad policies that if you follow, your ads will be approved in no time and guaranteed to run smoothly.

Facebook ads are an extremely useful tool to reach your audience and scale your business. At the same time, it takes work and experience to really make the most out of your Facebook ads so it’s important to do your research and make sure that you are following all of Facebook’s community guidelines. 

What are some of the issues you met along the way while running your Facebook ads? Let us know and we will be sure to check it out and help in whatever way we can!