Pretty much every advertiser using Facebook ads will have an ad account restricted one day, usually multiple times over your marketing journey. In this article i’m going to talk about why you may have gotten restricted, how to avoid restrictions in the future, and how to appeal a restricted ad account.
How to appeal a disabled Facebook ad account:
- Go to Account Quality inside Facebook ads.
- Check whether it was your ad account, business manager or personal profile that got restricted.
- Click the ‘Request Review’ button.
- Upload a picture of your drivers license if Facebook asks for it.
- Choose your ad account and the reason you’re requesting a review.
- Send your appeal and wait for a reply.
Now let’s talk about why your account may have been restricted and how you can prevent this from happening again.
Why was your ad account restricted?
In most cases that i’ve seen, Facebook will restrict your ad account for no reason. Most of the times I see people end up with a restricted ad account its simply that they have a relatively new ad account and they published several ads at the same time in a conversion campaign. In most cases these people get their ad account back but sometimes Facebook doubles down even though its incredibly clear the individual never broke any of Facebook’s Advertising Policies.
Despite that it’s very important that you look over and think about any possible reason why Facebook restricted your ad account. If you get your ad account back you don’t want to make the same mistake again and end up with a permanent restriction, and if you’re stuck making a new ad account you don’t want to get that one shut down either.
Facebook doesn’t really tell you which rules you’ve broken when they restrict you. They might say something vague like ‘circumventing systems’, but thats it. It seems like thats their catch-all statement when they have no actual reason to restrict you.
Remember Facebook doesn’t have real humans reviewing every ad, its all automated systems. False flags happen a lot. In most cases the reviews of appeals aren’t even reviewed by a human, its just another bot.
Facebook Advertising Policies
I definitely recommend reading through Facebook’s advertising policies. For the most part they’re common sense: no nudity, alcohol or drugs etc. However there are some niche rules like no showing zoomed in photo/video of specific body parts, like your elbow, and nothing related to cryptocurrency.
It’s imperative you play by Facebook’s rules if you want to keep using Facebook ads. Plenty of people will get away with breaking the rules but its simply not worth the risk. If you get away with something now its possible they may retroactively block you for it down the line.
Read the Facebook Advertising Policy here: https://www.facebook.com/policies/ads/
Extra Tips to Avoid Restriction in the Future
Despite following all of Facebook’s rules there is a good chance you can still have your ad account restricted. Even though it’s incredibly likely that you will have your account reinstated it still takes you out of the marketing game for a couple days which can be a big deal.
If your ad account is new, use these tips to avoid getting restricted:
- Until you’ve spent around $120 in the ad account, don’t run any traffic or conversion campaigns.
- For your first few campaigns I suggest video view or engagement as the objective, and instead of uploading an ad choose ‘Use existing post’.
- For the first $500 and 1 month of your ad account, don’t ever have more than one ad in review at the same time unless that ad has been previously approved. Meaning if you want a conversion campaign with multiple ad sets and multiple ads per ad set, it may take several days to publish the whole thing.
- Never spend more than 50% of the lifetime ad spend of your ad account per day. Of course this won’t apply for your first few campaigns, but if you’ve only spent $100 in your ad account then don’t go more than $50 per day in your next campaign.
If you’re trying to open a new or use another ad account or business manager account on Facebook, here are some tips to avoid having issues:
- Don’t use the exact same credit card you used in your restricted ad account.
- Don’t open a new ad account or new business manager account if you just had one restricted, this may lead them to block your entire Facebook profile which is a much longer appeal process
- Don’t publish the same campaign that got your ad account blocked in any of your other ad accounts. Be very cautious in your other ad accounts until you get this one appealed.
