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  • Writer's pictureCharlie Van Derven

Top 5 Reasons Why Facebook Rejected Your Ad


Facebook is a powerful force in digital advertising. Facebook’s reach, cost, and targeting abilities makes it one of the most influential online platforms in the online world. However, Facebook isn’t the Wild West. Any advertisement you’d like to share on the network goes through strict review, holding it against strict guidelines before Facebook will share it with your audience. Noticing a lot of rejections lately?

Here are some common reasons you may have been having problems getting your advertisement approved.

1. Your ad isn’t fully relevant to your product

Facebook requires every aspect of your ad to relate to what you’re selling.If you’re promoting a restaurant, don’t use imagery of gym equipment. Seems easy enough. Facebook values honesty and directness in its advertisements, it helps you seem more credible, and by extension makes Facebook seem more credible.


2. Your ad implies aspects of the user

This one may be a privacy concern — or an illusion of privacy concern. If you’re running a dating site for farmers, you aren’t allowed to have your ad say “Are you a farmer?” or “Attention Farmers.” This would be implying that the person viewing your ad is a farmer, and while that’s who you want to view your ad, Facebook doesn’t want to seem that creepy. Instead, say something along the lines of “Meet Farmers Online.” This goes for a wide variety of characteristics including: race or ethnic origin, religion or philosophical belief, age, sexual orientation or sexual life, gender identity, disability or physical/mental health, financial status or information, membership in a trade union, criminal record, or name.


3. Your ad is too wordy

Facebook likes advertisements to have little – to- no text. In the old system, advertisements would be rejected for being over 20% text. You could use a grid system to ensure you’d stay in guidelines. Now, however, the system is more murky. You aren’t likely to get out-right rejected for having an ad with a higher percentage of text relevant to images, but your cost to distribution ratio could increase drastically.


4. Your Ad Shows Before and After Photos

One of the many victims in Facebook’s war on spam is the ever classic before-and-after shot. This one’s pretty straightforward — just don’t do it. Facebook doesn’t like advertisements that promise results, and that’s what this type of ad does.


5. You were discriminatory

This one seems obvious, but it can still trip marketers up. Scrub your ad for any offensive language that targets women or minorities. Facebook doesn’t like its brand associated with that type of content, and you shouldn’t want your brand associated with it either.

Smart marketers make moves based on results and Facebook is trying to assist you in your efforts to reach the right people with the right message. While stringent standards may seem like a major inconvenience, if you just keep policy in mind and your audience a priority, you should have no trouble getting your ad approved.

The hardest part of any business is organizing time in a day appropriately. The key to growing is the ability to allocate tasks to others. Creating effective Facebook ads can be time consuming if it is done correctly. Every day you allow your presence to stay stagnant is another day a potential customer sees an ad from your competitor. If you don’t have the time to put your Facebook ad plans into action contact us we offer free Facebook assessments.

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