Social media is still the most effective digital marketing channel, and Facebook stands out as the most cost-effective of all social channels. That’s why it is important for marketers and advertisers to know the ins and outs of Facebook advertising. Not just to make sure your ads make it through the approval process, but also to make sure you don’t spend a lot of time and energy on promotions that don’t get results.
It’s easy to think that if you avoid using NSFW content, you’re all good. If only it was that simple. In reality, Facebook advertising policies are much more far-reaching. Yes, they cover obviously inappropriate content and images, but they also cover the use of brand assets, how your ads target users, and how to use the data you gather with your ads.
Facebook Advertising Costs
Everything from your bidding plan to your audience to the ranking Facebook gives you will have an effect on how much your Facebook ad costs. How much you spend on Facebook is up to you and how you set your budget.
Facebook works like an auction, which means you determine how much you’re willing to pay by bidding on actions such as click, views, and conversions. Other factors that can affect how much your Facebook add costs include:
- Time of day, day of the year, and time of the year
- Your bidding strategy
- Relevance score
- Audience targeting
How to Stay on the Right Side of the Facebook Ad Guidelines
Before your ads are seen by Facebook users, they are reviewed by Facebook’s review team against the Facebook ad guidelines. The team evaluates everything including overall content, images, text, positioning, targeting, and more. If everything passes muster, you’ll be notified that your ad has been approved. This process is usually completed within 24 hours.
But what if it doesn’t get approved? There could be any number of reasons why, so let’s go through all the Facebook ad guidelines so that if this happens to you, you can check them off.
Prohibited and Restricted Content
- Violates Facebook’s Community Standards
- Promotes illegal services or products
- Discriminates based on ethnicity, race, color, origin, age, sex, religion, gender identity, sexual orientation, genetic or medical condition, disability, or family status
- Promotes the use or sale of tobacco, drugs, weapons, ammo, explosives, unsafe supplements, surveillance equipment, spyware/malware, counterfeit documents, payday loans, or adult services/products
- Includes depictions of suggestive activities, explicit behavior, or nudity
- Infringes on third-party rights
- Could be considered disrespectful, sensational, shocking, excessively violent, or controversial
- Asserts or implies personal attributes
- Contains deceptive, false, or misleading claims
- Links to a landing page that is non-functional
- Includes bad grammar, poor punctuation, or profanity
- Promotes counterfeit documents, multilevel marketing schemes, penny auctions, or unrealistic before-and-after images
In addition, there are stringent Facebook content guidelines around the promotion of content related to dating, alcohol, gambling, supplements, online pharmacies, financial services, subscription services, student loans, and branded content. There are many reasons for these restrictions, and they are quite detailed. Read more about the restricted and prohibited content here.
Ad-specific Creative, Positioning, and Targeting Restrictions
Once you’ve nailed down your content and know that it follows the Facebook content guidelines, there are also Facebook creative guidelines for ads and how they are targeted and positioned.
Facebook video ad guidelines – Video ads with mature content can only be targeted to users 18 and older. Excessive alcohol and drug use, violence, profanity, and adult content is forbidden. In addition, the video ads cannot be overly disruptive.
Targeting in ads – The Facebook targeting guidelines state that the drilled-down audience options cannot be used to harass or discriminate against users, or provoke or disparage them. All custom audience targeting is required to be in compliance with Facebook’s terms of use.
Ad positioning – Ad content such as graphics, images, text, etc. must be directly related to the service or product being offered. It must also accurately and clearly represent your product or company, and it should match your ad’s landing page. In addition, your landing page must be functional as long as the ad is live.
Facebook image guidelines – Ads with images must adhere to Facebook’s 20/80 rule, which means that text overlay takes up no more than 20% of an ad’s image. If the ad does not meet this standard, Facebook may limit how many users see the ad.
Lead ads – When creating a lead generation form, there are some restrictions about what you can ask, or rather, what you can’t ask. Account numbers, financial details, criminal history, health or insurance information, government-issued ID numbers, political affiliation, ethnicity, race, sexual orientation, religion, union membership or usernames/passwords are among questions which are off limits.
There are also restrictions on what you can do with the data you collect from Facebook ads. The information cannot be used for outside advertising initiatives such as retargeting, uploaded on any ad exchange, ad network, or data broker, or given to anyone not acting on your or your company’s behalf. In addition, you can’t state outright, or in any way imply, that Facebook endorsed your advertisement, product, or service in any way whatsoever.
Steps to Take if Your Content Is Disapproved
If your ad is disapproved, the best course of action is to edit it. If your ad is disapproved, you should get an email explaining why your ad wasn’t approved. It will state how your ad violated Facebook ad guidelines. You can then use this information to revise your ad and resubmit it.
If you think your ad is compliant with Facebook ad guidelines, you can appeal by filling out the form “Appeal a Disapproved Ad.” Once you’ve created a few Facebook ads you’ll get a feel for what will and what won’t pass review.
If you want to make sure your Facebook ads pass muster, contact Marketing Maven today.