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Facebook ad account banned for 423rd time! (wha…wait…huh?)
Please will somebody explain to me what you guys are doing to get your Facebook ad accounts banned so often?
I see endless posts here on r/ppc with people discussing this issue, which is apparently widespread and a widely accepted risk associated with advertising on Facebook.
As an agency, we have managed many FB ad accounts, in all kinds of industries (including notoriously tricky ones). We have never had an account banned. I also have several industry colleagues who I know have never had a ban.
Are we just lucky, or is there a specific path that leads to a ban? Is it more likely to happen to lower budget advertisers? Or perhaps in certain industries?
EDIT –
Updated to remove implication that those who had received bans were shady, this was not the purpose of my post.
I’d genuinely like to try and figure out why so many accounts get banned, whilst as far as I can tell, agencies are immune
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2 Replies
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I’ve been banned after 5 years. I wasn’t doing something shady, but selling romantic novels. The site was ok.
The reason I believe I was banned (when I go here Business Quality Facebook) was because of a couple suggestive / sexual images in the ads (years back / never deleted them) and personal attributes (altough my competition is using them).
Also, I was banned for “discriminatory practice” – 4000+ policy violations. I never hads ads disabled for “discriminatory practice”, so I can only believe that retargeting a very small group of people (the ones who went to cart and never ordered) was considered such violation or changing age targeting on ad_sets. I never runned housing / jobs ads.
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LMAO, I had your view until about 45 days ago, so I’ll swallow the treble hook. I’ll give you the long rant version too, as I always figured theres gotta be some “total effing shady factor” that people don’t share
Background:
– Legit “legal” products–no banned stuff, no gray area stuff
– Based out of U.S.
– Registered biz, paying taxes all 100% legit accounts with Tax ID
– Not drop shipping or promising the world and not delivering (hell most customers loved us)
– 1 man full stack from product to advertising
– recycled about 100 ads that had lots of social proof (hundreds to thousands of 100% legit likes and shares) –no joining groups and getting buddies to fluff the nuts.
– ~ 500K in ad spend on FB over a 12 month period and woke up to banned ad account at the end of March.
So I get the ban notice (big red banner at top) and click on whatever it was and it said something to effect of “capitalizing on pandemic”. We sell NOTHING geared towards covid or pandemic…it’s gotta be AI misunderstanding. I appeal and they apologize for misunderstanding, they are reinstating.
3 days later,… still banned ..go through same routine and they come back 24 hours later and tell me, sorry not getting reinstated end of story, don’t appeal.
Long story longer.. lmao
Because I was spending a decent amount, I had access to vip concierge. One of them told me “oh you can’t use scarcity in an ad”. I asked if they could mention which ad that applied to and she said “in the terms and conditions of an offer you have ‘for limited time, while supplies last”!? Bear in mind…this is in the fine print shit that NOBODY reads. We’ve had to shut down offers prior because we’ve run out of product and got blasted by users for “not telling them supplies are limited–again this was fine print shit..not the headliner or follow on.
While the concierge didn’t mention this, I did tons of reading and figured out that some of the words I used in copy were “against TOS” Phrases like “Has it been awhile since you enjoyed…x” ..(benign stuff, like golfing or going for a walk …not like “had sex”. …but they take addressing their users with “You and Your” very serious, because it implies to users that FB is in their shit (know their every move…again, I’m talking stuff like reading or like the show Friends, not drug use, sex, alcohol, vape, etc. I’m not going to say the product or niche because it is so competitive, but 100% non-gray area.
In hindsight, I completely “get it” and take ownership, but it’s a bit frustrating that Ive had 8 conversations over 6 months with a FB rep that never mentioned anything I was doing would get me “banned”. Literally had discussion 2 days before being banned.
I really can’t believe the ads I was running would be grounds for banning, so I’ll say another “potential” factor is that I don’t use FB, but had to have a FB profile to get an ad account. So it’s my real name, but no friends and no using that account. (my wife is an assistant states attorney, so we choose to keep our shit private to protect our kids.) I also use a VPN fairly often because I would work out of coffee shops a few hours a day. Could this be it? Who knows…but all info on the account, banks, etc are 100% mine and legit.
My theory (or is it pipe dream) is that they don’t spell out the reason, as to put it on the advertiser to decide if they are going to invest time educating themselves, to determine where they were wrong and how they will stay on top of it in the future. Eg is the advertiser serious about maintaining integrity on their platform or not?
So I’ve appealed again, pointing out where I was wrong, how I will avoid in future and also offered to provide all personal and business documents if it has any bearing.
The other avenue is to spin new accounts, ids, banks, etc and go the shady route. Total pain in the ass, I’ll hire attorney if i cant get to the bottom before going that route. They are getting a lot smarter there….waste of time, last resort IMO.
Cheers.
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