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Video transcript: Welcome back to my apartment. We're in lockdown phase two. Like and subscribe if you’re sick and tired of lockdown. Getting an ad disproved by Facebook is an ecommerce badge of honor. It happens to everyone and especially to beginners who may not have fully absorbed Facebook's ad policies.
But lately, Facebook has been banning more ad accounts than usual.
After reading your cries for help in the comments, I knew I had to get to the bottom of this. And I did. I talked to a roster of Facebook ads experts and also got some intel from real-life dropshippers. Now, I'm confident that I can explain to you what's going on.
I'm going to let you know what the most common reasons that your ad account might be suspended or banned are. I'll tell you how to get your ads back up and running again, even if you have been suspended or banned. I'll tell you what you can do now to prevent Facebook from flagging your account, and I'll also explain why Facebook has been disabling more ad accounts than before.
If updates like these are helpful to you and help you keep growing your ecommerce business, then make sure you subscribe and turn on the notification bell. You wanna get videos like these as soon as they come out, not after Facebook might have banned your ad account.
Alright, enough intro. Let’s jump into it.
Okay, so Facebook has been on a rampage lately. And it might seem as if your ads are getting banned or flagged out of the blue. However, there's an explanation for what's going on. If Facebook has recently stopped running your ads, it's likely due to one of three issues.
1. Facebook Doesn’t Believe You’re Human
The first issue: Facebook doesn't believe you are a human being. Here's what I mean. Over the last few years, Facebook has been subject to a wave of criticism for allowing bots on the platform. Bot advertising refers to companies and individuals using bots on Facebook to push out false information for their own gain.
To counter this criticism, Facebook has doubled down its efforts to prevent bots from even being active on the platform to begin with. That means that if your account shows something that Facebook considers suspicious activity, Facebook is going to stop running your ads and want to verify that you are human.
Now, you won’t experience this issue that much if you've been active on the platform, posting, and uploading profile pictures before you started running ads. That’s because all of that previous activity has created a track record through which Facebook knows and believes you to be a human being.
But if you never had a Facebook account before you started advertising or if you created a new Facebook account for the purposes of advertising, Facebook is going to get a little suspicious.
You might be a bot.
Now, I get the reasons why you or a beginner ecommerce entrepreneur might want to start a new Facebook profile for the purpose of advertising. You don't wanna mix your personal account with your business account. That makes sense to you and me.
But remember, Facebook is super nervous about bots. That's why when an account appears from thin air and includes no information, Facebook has to do its due diligence and make sure you're not a bot. So if Facebook suspends your ads because it thinks you're a bot and it's requiring personal information, what should you do?
Listen, if you wanna advertise on Facebook, you have to play by Facebook's rules.
This means in this case, you do need to show Facebook that you're a human being. Facebook will ask you to prove this by uploading a certain kind of ID. The kind of ID that Facebook asks for will depend on whether you're running your ads from your personal account or a business manager.
This actually happened to me. So I can show you exactly what I mean here. I was running ads through Facebook Business Manager and I saw a notification that Facebook had stopped running my ads. I pressed “confirm account” but nothing happened.
So I reached out to Facebook's business support and they sent me a link directly to a support chat. I filled out my name, phone number, email, and account ID. After that, I attached the Facebook page of the business I was running ads for. I put “account disabled” as the subject line, I briefly described what happened, and then I clicked “start chat.”
Within just a few minutes, a support team member named Anna reached out to me, so it was quite fast. Anna told me that Facebook had blocked my account due to unusual activity and asked me for a screenshot of an invoice just to prove that I had been paying for the Facebook ads I was running.
So I grabbed a screenshot of my credit card statement showing that it was I, Jessica, who was paying for ads and Jessica was the account owner of this Facebook business. Anna also asked me for a screenshot of my credit card. Again, here, I imagine she was looking to make sure that my name was on the actual card that I was using to process these payments.
I can understand if you would be nervous about sending a screenshot of your credit card to Facebook.
However, I did this to prove to Facebook that I was the one paying for these ads, and nothing has happened to my credit card. Anna told me I'd have to wait for a response, and she couldn't give me an estimate of how many days that was.
However, fortunately, it was probably within 48 hours that I heard back from Anna and everything got resolved. Hopefully, my experience has shown you that it's okay if your ads get disabled. You just have to go through a few more steps to get them back and running again.
And the good news is tons of people will quit instead of going through these steps. Remember, ecommerce is all about having grit and perseverance. When you come through a blocker like this, keep going through it. There is another side, and that's where you're successful. That was super motivational.
If you wanna start advertising on Facebook but you don't want to send any screenshots of your credit card, you can definitely do some things to prevent this issue from happening in the first place.
First, create your ads from a personal Facebook account that you've been active on for years. I'm talking about an account where you’ve uploaded a profile picture, you’ve made some posts, you've joined some groups. That kind of an account shows to Facebook that you are an active human behaving organically on the platform.
So when you start running ads from that account, Facebook will trust that you're not a bot.
By the way, if what I’m saying is a little over your head and maybe you've never even set up a Facebook ad account to begin with, do not worry. We've got a new dropshipping course called Dropshipping 101. This course is entirely free. To access it head over to learn.oberlo.com.
In Dropshipping 101, I take you step by step through the entire process of finding products to sell, setting up a store, and running your first Facebook ad campaign. Check it out if you're ready to get started. Or keep watching if you're a little bit more advanced.
Now, if you really, really, really don't want to use your personal account to run ads, you can set up a new Facebook account for that purpose. But do the same stuff with that account as you would from a personal account. In other words, upload a profile picture, post a few times, join some groups, interact, things like that. Send Facebook the same message that you are a human being.
No matter whether you choose to advertise from your personal account or a new business account, the important thing is that you set up two-factor authentication. This is another way that Facebook can prove to itself that you are human and not a bot.
Two-factor authentication is an extra layer of security and it basically means that to log in, we need to show two pieces of evidence that you are the person you claim to be.
With Facebook, two-factor authentication means you need to use a username and password plus your phone number to get in. As you can imagine, this would be really hard for bots to do, which is why Facebook loves seeing two-factor authentication when it's looking for clues that you're human.
2. Facebook Doesn’t Like Your Product
Maybe Facebook has full confidence that you're a human being, but it still disabled your ad. Why is that? Well, it could be the second issue on our list, and that is that Facebook just doesn't like your product.
No, no, no. Don't take this personally, it's not that Facebook doesn't like your product, it's just that they may not allow advertisements for your product or your kind of advertisement for that product on the platform.
There’s a long list of product categories that Facebook doesn't allow people to advertise. That list includes supplements, surveillance equipment, health products, and more.
Now, if Facebook even thinks, even suspects that your products are in one of those categories, it will stop your ads from running. What do you do then?
Well, if Facebook rejects your ads, you can appeal the decision within Facebook Business Manager.
Within a few short sentences, you can plead your case to Facebook as to why Facebook should let you continue running your ads. However, before you click submit, there are some steps you can take to give your appeal a better chance of getting your ads back online and running. Before you submit your appeal, read Facebook's terms and conditions and advertising policies. You heard me right, you've got to read them.
Facebook is so strict when it comes to complying with these policies. You have to take them seriously if you want to advertise on this platform long-term, and if you don't and you repeatedly try to run ads that violate these policies, Facebook will disable your account.
It literally pays to play by the rules.
Now, if you're having trouble figuring out why your product or ad doesn't comply with Facebook's policies, then read them a little bit more carefully or consider joining a Facebook group. You can also always chat with Oberlo’s support advisors. They are pros at helping merchants through this. Reach out to them at any time by emailing them at hello@oberlo.com.
Once you read those policies, it's important that you actually change your ad so it complies with the policies. In other words, if you're advertising a product Facebook doesn't allow, choose a different product to advertise. Or if you're advertising a product and making health claims, stop making health claims and talk about something else related to that product. The point is when Facebook reads your appeal, they want to see that you've taken some corrective action to why they banned your ad in the first place.
Finally, one last tip, and this one comes from pro dropshippers is to take the Facebook blueprint course. This is Facebook's own course for running ads, and it's helpful, but that's not why I'm recommending you take it. When you take Facebook's ad course, the fact that you've taken that course shows up on your account, and that's proof positive to Facebook that you're taking their rules seriously and you want to be an ethical player on their platform.
How To Write an Effective Appeal To Facebook
Once you've gone through these steps, you've put yourself in a great position to finally write your appeal. You only have a limited space to do so, so I recommend this three-step process to write an effective appeal.
First, apologize. Say that you're sorry for breaking Facebook's ad policies and that you don't intend for it to happen again. Second, identify which policy your ad violated. This shows to Facebook that you've read their terms and conditions and that you understand what behaviors aren't allowed again in the future. Finally, explain to Facebook the changes that you made to your ads to comply with their policies.
Don't wanna take an entire course and write an appeal to run ads on Facebook? I don't blame you. Luckily, if there's a really simple thing you can do to prevent any of this from happening.
Read the terms and conditions. Understand Facebook's advertising policies.
If it's locked down where you are, you might have time on your hands to actually sit down with a cup of coffee and go through this. I know that doesn't sound fun, but it's a lot more fun than trying to appeal an ad that Facebook has banned weeks or months down the line.
3. US Presidential Elections 2020
Alright, now, let's say you were behaving like a good old fashioned human being and you read the terms and conditions before running your Facebook ads. But your ads still got banned. Why is that?
Facebook has been stricter about enforcing their policies over the past couple of years. However, dropshippers told us that this year, in particular, they are facing a lot more obstacles to getting their ads up and running.
Why? Well, because of the real presidential election on November 4 and all of the flurry that led after them in the weeks prior. Facebook has kind of a bad reputation when it comes to politics. In the past, it's been a scapegoat for lots of claims that the platform promoted misinformation.
These allegations have prompted Facebook to really get strict with its advertising policies in the past couple of months. And we heard that dropshippers and entrepreneurs of all types were feeling the effects of this.
Essentially, they were caught in a crossfire.
Facebook was trying to clamp down on misleading information, and as a result, ads that maybe didn't seem so straightforward got shut down. The good news is by the time you see this, this issue is likely getting better already. With the elections behind us, Facebook doesn't need to be as strict as it may have been in, say, September and October.
But that doesn't mean Facebook is going to be totally chill about whatever you decide to advertise. Make sure you still follow these tips to make sure that when you launch your ads, those ads that you spend all that time getting perfect, they actually run.
Behave like a human on Facebook, run ads from your personal Facebook account, take the Facebook blueprint course, enable two-factor authentication.
We’ve given you loads of tips to set you up for success. Until next time, happy hustling.