Transcript: 

I'm Halley from EmberTribe, I'm going to help you decode and fix your Facebook ad disapprovals, also known as rejections, so super exciting stuff. As a growth specialist, I definitely have to do this more frequently than most people, but it is definitely something that is fixable. So the first thing I want you to think about is when it comes to the Facebook ad review process, what happens is that you might create an ad and you publish it and then you see it's in review, on the backend, a robot, basically, or a human will review it and say, "Yup, that's good." Or "No, that's rejected because that's not compliant with our policies." But if they say no, it's not the end of the world, because there are quite a few ways to be compliant and also to get your ads approved, even if they've been rejected.

Now, the reason why I say this is because Facebook does not have a hundred percent accuracy when it comes to flagging the correct ads. So sometimes you might have an ad that's compliant but it gets flagged incorrectly, and you can appeal that decision and get it turned back on again. But in case you've made an error or whatever, it's totally fine and we can help you fix it. So what matters? What are they looking at when they say, "Yeah, that's a good ad." Or "Yeah, that's not going to work." They look at your images and make sure that you don't have too much text in them, they look at your videos, they look at your carousels, and they try to figure out if your content, your visual content, is compliant. They look at your copy, your headlines, your description, your body copy, they look at your targeting, your positioning, and your landing page content.
So it's not just the experience that the user has when they click on your ad on Facebook, it's the experience that they have when they land on that first page after Facebook. So it's really important to Facebook to have an amazing experience for both the user and the advertiser, and this is why they have these rules in place. So the first thing to do is go to your Settings and go to your Account Quality, what you're going to find is Business Accounts, and then Ad Accounts, and inside of there, all your rejected ads will show and they'll show the reason. So they'll either show the landing page is not compliant, they'll show, "Hey, this is an ad for an MLM." And you're like, "Nope, actually it isn't." So regardless of what's going on, you definitely want to check to see what the disapproval reason is. I wouldn't to just throw that ad out, I would go in, see why it's been disapproved, make sure that they haven't made an error at all, and then appeal it if that's the case, if they have made an error.
Now, there's two routes or two outcomes for Facebook rejections, or disapprovals of ads. One, it can't be fixed, so you're going to have to try again with a new ad, which is a bummer, but you've learned, so it's going to be better next time. It can be fixed, in which case you can either edit the original ad and reapprove and republish it, or appeal the decision.

So let's talk about editing the original ad to see if you can make it better, because this is definitely the faster way of getting ads up and running. The first one is you're too specific with your copy basically. So the targeting headlines and ad copy are definitely making people feel like you know a bit too much about them. A good example would be if you were targeting seniors, let's say seniors in America, and you had everybody who is 65 and up living in the USA as your targeting, and you had, "Meet other seniors." Or, "Hey, you're a senior." In your copy, and in your headlines. They're going to disapprove that, because people do not like to know that you know that much information about them. So a good way to do that is to either talk about it as a third group, so not talking directly to that other person, but talking about those qualities as another group of people, or to just take it out entirely or remove "you" or "other."

So a good way to see this is like, "Meet other black singles near you." That's way too specific for Facebook to be like, "That's okay." You definitely want to make it safer feeling for people to feel like they are not being advertised to or marketed to, and that you know a lot about them. So definitely make sure that your copy and your targeting and your headlines should be specific, but talk more about your product or talk more about the problem itself, instead of the people that you're targeting. Common ad fix number two, sensational content. So Facebook wants it to be very PG on their site, it just allows them to have more types of people on there, so what you want to do is take out any images that show violence or accidents or guns, definitely take out. You can swap out that image or change your copy, and then you'll be able to run it. But you should definitely not have any of this stuff on Facebook.

Number three is misleading or deceptive. Basically, if you can guarantee that everybody will get the same result, then go ahead and you can run it. But for a lot of us in the different product and service based industries, we can't do that. So different people have different results, so only include the stuff in there that you know you can help people achieve. So a good one that is commonly rejected is, "Three shocking tips to lose all your belly fat." That will get rejected outright, and it won't get allowed back on. So what you want to do is try, "Learn to lose belly fat." Or something along those lines. Facebook doesn't want it to feel like an infomercial, so they're going to not allow any of those before and after images or images that contain unexpected or unlikely results. So if you have an outlier of a client or a customer, they're not going to let you use those results for your ad. So find out what are your least, lowest common denominator of results are, or benefits are, and go with those.
Definitely nothing around nudity or sexuality in terms of your ads, like we said, or like I said before, PG is what Facebook's going for, so flatlays of a product are a great workaround, once the item is on a model it's a longer approval process and leaves yourself open to the possibility of disapprovals where you can not likely appeal them. Basically, again, go with what is safest in terms of if you are going to be showing it to a very PG group. Another big thing when it comes to Facebook ads is that they don't like you using their assets, so their logo, Instagram's logo either, nothing along those lines that makes it seem like it is basically Facebook running these ads, they don't like it. So make sure to take out any of their logos or icons or whatever out of your ads, as well as buttons, they don't like it when you run things that look like there's additional functionality and you can click a button inside of the image, they just don't like it.

Links to non-functional landing pages, so your landing pages definitely have to work. Nothing with tobacco products, drugs, or drug related products, unsafe health supplements, weapons or ammunition, adult products and services. These are things that Facebook does not allow because it is basically a babysitter for the internet and it doesn't want them on there at all, they don't want to get in trouble. Facebook will never approve, "The next Tinder." For dating, "Win big in New York." State lotteries, except for government entities, "Get your prescription filled fast." So any online pharmacies, "Buy Dogecoin, Bitcoin." Et cetera, cryptocurrency products and services, "Visit Recovery Haven." Drug and alcohol addiction treatment centers. Those, they just don't allow them, and it's their platform, so they get to decide.

Final takeaways, mastering their Facebook compliance steps and actions in how to be compliant with your copy and images takes practice, so don't be surprised if you get your ads rejected, it's not a big deal. Double check your work. Most disapprovals we see are small mistakes that can be solved with quick fixes or they're actually very often, if you know you have compliant ads, your ads might be getting rejected quite often because Facebook is using a robot instead of a human to review them, so definitely appeal. At the end of the day Facebook's main goal is to keep Facebook safe for people, keep it PG, playing it safe to align with this goal will help you avoid disapprovals and in the long run just make your life easier. So thanks for watching, and let us know if you have any comments below or questions.

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