Why Do Your Facebook Ads Get "Flagged"? Avoid These 6 Mistakes Now!

Vũ Khôi

Author at Wotech Electronics Blog

Facebook has gradually become an indispensable part of our lives — more than 57% of Vietnam's population uses Facebook, opening a wide road for business advertising. Running Facebook ads is one of the mandatory components of a business's digital marketing activity, with significantly measurable results. Yet many Facebook ad campaigns have been rejected by this "kingpin". Below are 6 reasons Facebook "flags" your ads.

What Benefits Does Running Facebook Ads Bring to Your Business Strategy?

We all know that running Facebook ads holds a significant position in a business's marketing activities thanks to Facebook's broad reach, fast customer access, and countless other easily seen advantages. Those significant benefits are:

• Targeting the right customers: Whichever customer group you want to reach — male or female, of any age, living in any region, with any interests — you have full control over the target customers you want to advertise to. The Facebook ads customization section will help you define your audience easily.

• Increased sales revenue thanks to access to thousands of new customers: With billions of users on Facebook, running ads makes it easier for you to reach many new customers and grow your pool of potential customers.

• Reduced costs: Correctly identifying the audience you want to market your products or services to saves you a fair amount of advertising spend, limiting exposure to customer groups with no need for the products or services you offer.

• Diverse ad formats: Many formats for promoting products and services help you choose the ad type that fits your marketing campaign.

• Control over the daily spend on Facebook ads, or the total budget for your Facebook ad campaign: This avoids overshooting the budget you set.

• Ads display immediately after setup: This helps you reach customers more quickly — a great fit for seasonal products and services.

‍

Why Does Facebook "Say No" to Your Facebook Ad Campaigns?

We all know Facebook is the "gold mine" for businesses — running Facebook ads is in full swing, as a mandatory part of any marketing campaign. However, Facebook is not lenient; it has its own rules, and not every post can run ads. Let's go through the situations where the social media "kingpin" has to turn you down.

‍

Facebook Ad Content Exceeds the Text Overlay Rules

This case is one of the leading reasons Facebook does not approve a business's ads. Facebook has strict rules on the proportion of text in ad images and will not be happy with images containing more than 20% text. So should you put text in your Facebook ad images? You can — but make sure it does not take up more than 20% of the image.

In the past, your ad would definitely not be approved if the text overlay exceeded 20%. Currently, it may be approved (grudgingly), but your reach will be significantly reduced.

The four tiers, ranked in order, of reach (or approval) based on the text-to-image ratio in an ad:

• Text-to-image ratio: very low — Your ad will run normally.

• Text-to-image ratio: low — Your ad's reach may be slightly lower.

• Text-to-image ratio: medium — Your ad's reach may be much lower.

• Text-to-image ratio: high — Your ad may not run at all.

If you want your ad to get the "green light", it is better to stay below medium. You can reduce the font size or even tighten the letter spacing to comply with that golden ratio. But then ask yourself: do you really want to cram tiny letters into your ad? Instead, just write a better Facebook ad headline.

‍

‍

Facebook Ads Targeting Age-Restricted Topics

One of the important principles when running Facebook ads is not to touch the "restricted zones". Be careful when choosing targeting content when creating ads. Basically, if you are "sneakily" trying to target young people with certain ads, you are playing a risky game.

For example: ads related to alcohol — a fairly sensitive product — carry constraints such as: alcohol ads must comply with all applicable local laws, rules, guidelines, licenses, and mandatory approvals, satisfying age requirements and current laws.

Running Facebook ads targeting underage users can be a fast ticket to getting your ads (and possibly your fanpage) banned. Specifically: teen weight-loss products, goods or services related to alcohol, gambling, and dating services.

‍

Facebook Ad Posts Touching on Prohibited Topics

There are contents that Facebook strictly prohibits in Facebook ads — touch them even accidentally and you will be banned immediately. Some of the topics prohibited under "Facebook's Advertising Guidelines for Prohibited Content" are listed below:

• Weapons, ammunition, and explosives

• Counterfeit documents

• Spyware or malware, including surveillance equipment (such as spy cameras and GPS trackers)

• Adult services

• Pharmaceuticals (both legal and banned substances)

• Unsafe supplements (as determined by Facebook)

• Tobacco products

• Adult products for sexual enhancement, or otherwise

• Cash loan services

• Penny auctions

• Controversial content that exploits political or social issues for commercial purposes

• Multi-level marketing businesses

• Prohibited financial products or services (such as products related to cryptocurrency)

• Ads that discriminate against people based on any personal attribute

• Infringement of third-party copyrights

• Violence and shocking imagery (such as corpses)

• Profane or vulgar language

Once again, this is a fairly simple rule for running Facebook ads. If your campaign is pushing content prohibited by Facebook, you should probably advertise somewhere else. And remember, things are changing all the time. The list of content Facebook "flags" keeps growing. A few weeks ago, Facebook decided to ban all ads related to cryptocurrency and ICOs.

‍

‍

Using an Inaccurate Destination URL When Running Facebook Ads

Facebook is not stupid — their teams research every day to produce algorithms that optimize the user experience. They do not like businesses trying to game the system. If you take users to a landing page completely different from what was advertised, your Facebook ad post will be rejected. Your landing page must match the ad copy and image. Besides making sure the landing page URL matches the advertised content, you should also check that the landing page works, because it would be terrible for your business purpose if users cannot load the page and have a bad experience with the ad you ran on Facebook.

‍

Hinting at Your Target Audience's Characteristics

If you suggest characteristics or identities of the people reading your ads, you risk rejection. A small rule of thumb: avoid using the word "you" in Facebook ads. Basically, Facebook does not want users to feel disrespected when viewing ads. If you imply something about users with a specific action, you may be "mocking" them, and your ad could be rejected. In short, you should not imply any personal attribute your customers may have.

Stay away from anything "suggestive" in your Facebook ads, including:

• Age

• Criminal record

• Physical or mental disability and/or medical condition (including mental health)

• Financial status

• Name

• Race and/or ethnic origin

• Religion or belief

• Gender identity/preference, and gender identity

We call this the "Don't Be An Offensive Jerk" rule in advertising. Using "bad" grammar when running Facebook ads

‍

Using "Bad" Grammar When Running Facebook Ads

Believe it or not, Facebook really does care about the grammar of your posts! They will never approve ads with too many grammatical or spelling errors. A typical example: using "caps lock" for the entire ad creates an ugly appearance on Facebook and naturally will not be approved. So you can be sure your ad will be rejected if your copy contains too much capitalization.

Make sure your Facebook ad post is meaningful and concise, and avoid grammatical errors. Steer clear of anything too cutesy or too sophisticated, and avoid using too many smiley-face emojis or the like. They can be the cause of rejection. Beyond that, they also make your brand image look unprofessional and unpolished.

Those are the most common reasons Facebook usually "closes the door" when businesses run Facebook ads. Take note and avoid these silly mistakes!

Related Articles