Prohibited Content in Facebook Ads That You Need to Know

If you are into Amazon, eCommerce in general and digital marketing, you would have, most probably, taken advantage of different internet marketing strategies to expand your reach and thus, elevate your business to greater heights.

You might have created a website, blogs, vlogs, did email marketing, cold calling, keyword research, SEO, everything, with the intent to serve your advertising campaigns and get it to reach a wider audience. And, the force that runs the show in online advertising is social media.

Social media has dominated the world and is even taking over the lives of many. You can ask anyone and the majority, if not all, would say they have social media accounts. As everyone’s attention is glued to their social media lives, marketers and eCommerce entrepreneurs found this as a vital tool to serve their advertising campaigns – a great opportunity to reach their target audience, and in a wider scale.

While there are many social media platforms out there, you don’t have to be on all of them to do your advertising. But, there is one platform that you must be on – Facebook. With a user base of 2.4 billion and around 1.5 billion daily active users, you can be certain that a portion of that is your potential target audience. An access to full data analytics can help you determine your target audience and niche.

Amazon sellers are also using this platform to grow their business further. And, often it’s great success if you just know how to make Facebook ads work to your advantage. This is exactly what Thomas Pruchinski, our guest in our latest podcast, was stressing when he shared the main mistakes Amazon sellers make with Facebook ads.

Now, before you rush to create your ad campaigns in Facebook, you have to know which ones are not acceptable so you wouldn’t waste your time and your money in making or having these ad content created.  Here are some of the prohibited content per Facebook’s policy: 

Facebook developed guidelines for the community of users that outline what type of content is permitted and isn’t permitted in this platform. You have to understand that the values being upheld by Facebook are Authenticity, Safety, Privacy, Dignity

Adult content would mean those that are sexually suggestive. It could be nudity, images that focus on body parts (abs, buttocks or chest), images that display excessive visible skin or cleavage, dating ads that focus on the model that is in a sexually suggestive pose.

Also prohibited are ads that promote sexual pleasure or sexual enhancement except for those that promote family planning and contraception. The target audience for this should be people age 18 years old or older.

This could be a very broad topic but you already know what illegal means. Illegal here would mean something that is not permitted by law, inappropriate, unsafe, mislead and put pressure on the targeted group.

Strongly prohibited are ads that intentionally discriminate against a group based on race, color, nationality, religion, age, sexual orientation, family background, medical or genetic condition. You have to be compliant with applicable laws that prohibit discrimination

Anything that promotes the sale of tobacco or tobacco-related products – cigarettes, cigars, pipes, vapes and electronic cigarettes is prohibited. Facebook would rather want anti-smoking campaigns, counseling services for smoking addiction, rehabilitation programs or facilities.

Ads that used copyrighted content without permission from the original creator will not be approved. This is a matter taken very seriously by Facebook that they even set up their Intellectual Property Help Center to which you can report to if you feel that a content may infringe upon your rights.

Images that depict or provoke violence that may scare readers or viewers are not allowed by Facebook. Examples would be a gory scene from an actual event, say, a car crash or a shooting incident that can spark outrage or fear.

Because of the spread of false news with the intent to mislead the public into believing something as true, third party fact checkers are being tapped. Facebook has made a commitment to fight the spread of false news. If your news or ads are debunked by the third party fact checkers, then don’t expect any approval from Facebook.

You should use correct grammar in the text that you use for your ad. Profane language, even if you use symbols to make the word partially obscure so as not to appear profane, will still be blocked.

Intentionally or unintentionally done, if a link is leading to a non-functional landing page, you might not get any approval from Facebook. By non-functional, we mean sites under construction, pages that do not match the product being promoted in the ad, pages that automatically download files to a person’s computer, pages with a low web of trust rating and those that direct people to a closed Facebook group, to name some.

There are a lot more prohibited content in Facebook ads that we can add to the list. You just have to check the Facebook Ad policy since updates are being introduced every now and then to ensure security, correctness and authenticity of data being shared in its platform.

But even if the policy has become more stringent, it is still a powerful tool that you need to get your advertising campaign to reach a wider audience. It could be the kind of marketing strategy that will be worth your while investing in.