Why are my Facebook Ads Being Rejected?

After pouring your precious time into a Facebook ad campaign, the last thing you want to see is “your Facebook ad has been rejected”! It’s a frustrating problem that nearly all of us face, and in this article, we’ll give you the insights as to why this happens, how to fix it instantly, and some pro-tips to avoid this in the future (so make sure you read until the end). But let’s start with the short answer to “Why are my facebook ads being rejected?”

Facebook’s automated systems likely rejected your ad because they detected an area of your ad in which it breaks the advertising policy. This often times happens if you use curse words, point to someone else’s website, or promote violence or nudity.

However there’s so much to discuss on this topic, and we’ll do so in the following order!

Outline:

Our experience with Facebook advertising and rejected Facebook ads

So in case you’re new to our blog, Turbo is a Facebook marketing app that helps you increase the performance of your Facebook ads! We work with thousands of advertisers and serve small businesses all over the world.

That said, we have a lot of ad accounts connected to our tools and we see thousands of ads being rejected each and every month.

So, the reason I tell you this is because we’ve seen it all. And this article was written with all of our experience in mind!

How does Facebook disapprove ads?

So you’ve finally finished fiddling around to build your campaign, and a few minutes later, BOOM!

You get this notification about your ad being rejected!

Not fun.

Facebook ad rejection is quite a common problem though so don’t worry. Fixing it is simple, however, it starts with understanding how Facebook disapproves ads.

Facebook disapproves (and approves) ads by their automated scanning technology. Every time you create an ad, it runs through their automation technology to scan for specific keywords and imagery that is included in your ad, and on the website, your ad points to.

They detail what they “scan” for in their advertising policies here, but lets understand why you specifically got disapproved in the next section.

Identifying WHY your Facebook ads got disapproved

Understanding why your Facebook ad got disapproved is the most frustrating part. But hopefully, these tips will help.

If you’re a new advertiser to Facebook, your ad is probably being rejected due to a mistake on your end. You should consider reading the rest of this article, and then reviewing Facebook ad policies to ensure you’re following their rules.

If you are an experienced advertiser on Facebook, and you haven’t had this issue before, your ad was probably rejected by mistake and you should scroll to the end of this article for the “instant” fix.

The top reasons your Facebook ads are being rejected

The top reasons we personally see Facebook ads get rejected are the following.

Important note: most of the accounts we work on are in the e-commerce industry, and these items will vary per industry!

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1) Using Facebooks brand in your ads.

Often times marketers will get their ads rejected for using Facebooks brand or trademarks in their ads, without following the guideline.

For example, we once tried to run a promo that said “facebook exclusive sale”, and it was rejected because the “f” in the text was lowercase, and this is against their “brand reference” section of the ad policies.

2) Promoting products that are considered “prohibited”

If you are promoting a product that Facebook considers prohibited, you will likely experience ad rejections.

For example, one of our customers promotes hunting gear & knives, and their ad used the words “knives” in the ad.

It was rejected.

But we reposition the ad to focus on promoting a piece of content, “7 tools for your next hunting trip”, which got approved and lead to email signups and helped achieve the companies goal.

If something similar happens to you, make sure you aren’t using the direct keywords facebook scans for, and read the relevant section of the prohibited content section of the ad policies

3) Get rich quick and Fitness / Weight-related content (before & after)

Another common type of ad we see often rejected is “before and after” style content.

Facebook doesn’t like when you promote topics that emphasize drastic results like losing a lot of weight, or gaining a lot of income, etc.

You can read more about this topic here if it’s relevant to your business.

You will see this photo that shows examples of how you can and can not promote this type of content.

Understanding the Facebook advertising policy

Nobody likes reading lengthy legal docs or policy statements, I get it.

But it’s important to understand the Facebook advertising policy, so you can save time and avoid future challenges.

When you go read the policy pages, you’ll notice two things.

The main page, as shown above, has a nice little navigation menu so you can jump to specific sections of the page.

The second thing, as shown above, that you should recognize, is that in the “prohibited content” section they give you examples of how to promote content if it falls under their “prohibited” category.

Here’s the example I used in that image, “Adult products or services”

I’d suggest you read through the section of your industry carefully, so you understand what they look for to avoid future issues.

Getting your Facebook ads approved, the slow way

If we’re being honest, the Facebook help center and community forums aren’t the most helpful.

Their recommendation for getting your ads re-approved is to “review the ad policy” and or submit a ticket to this forum.

You are certainly welcome to do both of those, and I recommend you do as a “back-up” fix, but this seems to be the slowest way to get a solution.

And we care about speed and our precious time. After all, this is the turbo blog 😉

Getting your Facebook ads approved, the nearly instant way

A faster way to get your Facebook ads approved is to request a live chat session with their support.

You may not know about this, but Facebook does offer live chat support to their advertisers.

They keep this hidden and difficult to find, but here’s the direct link!

They are open standard US business hours and they will be able to help you get your ads re-approved, as long as you aren’t breaking their ad policies.

Enjoy!

ps. if you like little-known marketing secrets, subscribe to our newsletter. We share all of our best stuff there 🙂

Conclusion

Facebook ad rejections are quite an annoying obstacle most of us face. And since they use an automated detection system, this often times is inaccurate and causing some ads to be rejected, when they shouldn’t be.

By following the steps laid out in this article, you should be able to get your ads approved and running smoothly!

Let me know in the comments below if you still need help.

Happy advertising!

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