Are you struggling to get past the dreaded ‘Facebook ad rejected’ notification despite trying multiple fixes to get your campaign approved? Facebook ad rejections are common, for Meta utilizes an AI-powered algorithm to scan and review every piece of content uploaded to the platform. Facebook is a strictly regulated social media space, and violations of the platform’s content guidelines are the most common reason behind Facebook ads being rejected.
Some common violations include misleading claims, low ad quality, promoting illegal products, copyright infringement, and targeting the wrong audience. Advertisers can avoid the ‘Facebook ad rejected’ issue by familiarizing themselves with Meta’s advertising policies and prioritizing ad quality to ensure compliance with content guidelines.
This article offers a detailed overview of the common issues behind Facebook ads rejected by the platform, alongside exploring common fixes and best practices to avoid rejections.
Table of Contents
Why is My Ad Rejected on Facebook?
Nothing is more disappointing than seeing your Facebook ad rejected by Meta after weeks of campaign creation, planning and ad optimization. The rejection and review process can be quite frustrating, especially for marketers who are new to Facebook ads and getting accustomed to the guidelines.
Understanding Meta’s Ad Review Process
Before we dive into the reasons and fixes for Facebook ad rejected, it’s important to understand Meta’s ad review process to avoid future rejections.
Meta has an AI-powered automated review algorithm that examines each ad to ensure the content, visuals, targeting parameters, attached URLs, and associated website are fully compliant with the platform’s advertising policies. If your ad is approved after the automated review, it is added to Facebook’s delivery system and displayed on the News Feeds of your target users.
However, if you notice the Facebook ad rejected notification, you’ll have to submit an appeal after addressing the issues that may have caused the rejection. In some cases where Meta’s automated review system is unable to assess the ad quality and status, the ad campaign is passed on to the Meta support team for a more detailed, manual review.
The support team will review the ad, resulting in acceptance or rejection, based on the ad’s content and compliance with guidelines.
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How Long Does the Ad Review Process Take?
Multiple factors come into play to determine the ad approval timeline, such as account history, publishing schedule and content violations. Typically, Meta requires at least 24 hours to complete its automated and manual ad review processes.
If you’re struggling with Facebook ads rejected during the holiday season, you’re not alone because high-traffic seasons tend to overwhelm Meta’s automated review system. Black Fridays and the holiday season are a busy time for marketers and Meta’s bots and crawlers tend to delay the review process, especially if your campaigns require a manual inspection.
Facebook considers your account history to determine whether your ads require an automated or manual review process. Accounts that have published successful campaigns without struggling with Facebook ads being rejected tend to breeze through the review process. In contrast, newer ad accounts typically face delays as they wait for their ads to get approved.
Manual ad reviews are much longer than the automated process, often taking more than 24 hours as the team examines the content and ad quality. We strongly advise marketers to follow Meta’s advertising policies to avoid manual reviews.
Facebook Ad Rejected: Common Issues & Mistakes
Now that we know how the Meta ad review process works, let’s examine common issues and mistakes to understand why your Facebook ad keeps getting rejected which can lead to your Facebook ad account being disabled. Once you identify the issue, you can address it to ensure your ad is fully compliant with Meta’s policies.
Advertising Prohibited Content, Products & Services
Familiarizing yourself with Meta’s advertising policies and content guidelines is a crucial undertaking before you gear up to create your first ad campaign. Marketers must identify all activities and content that Meta has prohibited on the platform to avoid issues like Facebook ad rejected.
The following content is prohibited and marketers aren’t allowed to advertise it across Facebook:
- Tobacco and related products, including E-cigarettes
- Illicit products or illegal services, such as drugs or prostitution
- Promoting discrimination toward a specific ethnicity, race, religion, sexual orientation or cultural identity
- Advertising ammunition, explosives or weaponry
- Adult content, products or services
- Financial products and services related to cryptocurrencies
If your ad features any of the above mentioned prohibited content, Meta’s automated review system that abides by the rules of Facebook’s ad policies, will flag your ad and send it for a more detailed, manual review. If you’re attempting to advertise prohibited products and services, there’s no way to submit a review to address your Facebook ads being rejected. Meta does not allow marketers to advertise prohibited products on the platform.
Promoting Restricted Content
Meta’s advertising policies imposed restrictions on various kinds of content to maintain a safe and inspiring social media space for all its users. Each ad campaign must follow the guidelines when promoting restricted content to avoid rejections.
The following content is restricted on Facebook:
- Alcohol and illicit substances
- Advertisements regarding upcoming elections, political agendas or social issues
- Cosmetic procedures and surgeries
- Dating services
- Financial products or services
- Online gaming and gambling platforms.
- Online pharmacies selling prescription drugs
- Subscription services
If your ad involves any of the above mentioned restricted content, you must follow the guidelines to avoid ad rejections and Facebook ad account suspensions. These guidelines typically revolve around ad positioning and audience targeting to ensure your ad engages an age-appropriate and relevant audience.
For instance, breweries can advertise their alcohols and beers to an audience that meets the legal age requirement for alcohol consumption. If you’re attempting to address a Facebook ad rejected due to violations related to restricted content, it’s best to review the ad and make necessary edits.
Nonexistent Functionality Policy: Misleading the Audience
If your ad doesn’t feature any prohibited or restricted content, it’s likely that Meta’s nonexistent functionality policy is the reason behind your Facebook ad rejected. This policy prevents advertisers from misleading the audience into believing that the ad’s images or video offer a function that isn’t available.
Facebook will flag each ad that claims to deliver an experience that it doesn’t. For instance, promoting a quiz or a poll with a static image is likely to get your Facebook ad rejected. It’s common for advertisers to promote ads with static images and lead users toward their websites to participate in the poll. For Facebook’s algorithm, this is a misleading practice that will get your Facebook ads rejected.
If you’ve identified misleading content in your ad, it’s important to avoid repetitive reviews as it could lead to temporary or permanent Facebook ad account restrictions. Marketers mostly focus on avoiding discriminatory content and illegal products, ignoring more complex issues like inadequate ad positioning and copyrights infringement.
Ad positioning is a common reason behind Facebook ads rejected by the platform due to irrelevance. If you’ve created an ad campaign with an irrelevant image, it will be rejected. You can address this issue by improving the ad with a more relevant image.
Copyrights Violation
Copyrights infringement is an issue that warrants severe penalties from Meta’s support team, resulting in Facebook ads being rejected, temporary restrictions and being permanently banned from the platform. If your Facebook ad keeps getting rejected, review your content to ensure you haven’t violated any copyrights.
Marketers unknowingly commit Facebook copyright infringement while designing visual assets with popular soundtracks, pop songs and trending graphics. When designing a Facebook ad, it’s important to ensure you’re using original imagery, videos and soundtracks. Sharing an image, video or song with a copyright claim can lead to several complications, including getting your Facebook ad rejected.
You can address this issue by simply removing the copyrighted element and resubmit the ad for approval.
Addressing the ‘Facebook Ad Rejected’ Issue
At GCG Media, we strongly advise marketers to familiarize themselves with Meta’s advertising policies before setting up their first ad campaign. Facebook is a strictly regulated platform and committing repetitive violations can result in severe penalties, such as being permanently banned from the platform.
Familiarizing yourself with the guidelines and identifying violations will help you avoid getting your Facebook ad rejected. If your account has a history of multiple ad rejections, you can face complications like delayed review processes and reduced ad visibility. Embracing Meta’s policies and avoiding violations is of the utmost significance to ensure a substantial return on ad spend (ROAS) on Facebook Ads.
If you’ve received an email notifying that your Facebook ad has been rejected, you can take multiple steps to address this issue and get your campaign back on track.
Investigate the Reason behind Facebook Ad Rejected
The first step is to identify the reason behind your Facebook ads being rejected by Meta, and in most cases, marketers receive email notifications outlining the reason.
If you didn’t receive an email, go to the Delivery section in the Facebook Ads Manager dashboard and check the delivery status of the campaign. The status should be either Active or Published. Facebook’s Ad Manager is a highly interactive and user-friendly dashboard, offering multiple tools to monitor ad status, and review performance by examining ad spend, reach and other metrics.
If your ad has been rejected, your ad campaign will be marked ‘Rejected’ in a red font.
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Editing & Resubmitting Facebook Ads Rejected
Once you’ve identified the reason behind the rejection, you can edit the rejected ads and resubmit them for approval.
Open the Ads Manager dashboard and go to the rejected ad. Examine the reason behind the rejection, and then edit the ad set to remove the content that didn’t comply with the policies. In most cases, rejected ads are approved after editing but in some cases, editing doesn’t guarantee approval.
If your Facebook ad keeps getting rejected despite multiple edits, consider setting up a new ad with close attention to avoid adding prohibited or restricted content. Most advertisers struggle with Facebook ads rejected due to inadequate audience targeting – an account error in Facebook ads that’s difficult to identify as most marketers focus on the content and visuals.
Facebook ads rejected despite no content violations are often disapproved due to irrelevant target audiences and target filters.
Once you’ve made the necessary edits, select Request Review to resubmit the campaign for approval.
Facebook Ad Keeps Getting Rejected: Submitting an Appeal
If your Facebook ad keeps getting rejected and you haven’t committed any violations, you can submit an appeal to the Meta Support Team and request a manual review of the content.
Facebook ads rejected during review are added to the Unchanged section, indicating that this ad has not been approved despite the edits. You can submit an appeal requesting the Meta team to review the content, providing relevant evidence to support your claims.
Marketers can submit appeals directly via email or they can use the Ads Manager dashboard to request a review. Submitting an appeal doesn’t always guarantee ad approval, and in some cases, it further derails the campaign timeline as the support team takes time to respond to such appeals. If you’re struggling with a time-sensitive Facebook ad rejected, it’s wise to set up a new campaign.
Final Thoughts
Prolonged ad review processes and Facebook ads being rejected repeatedly are common issues associated with regular ad accounts, derailing campaign launches and timelines. The frustration is overwhelming when a time-sensitive Facebook ad keeps getting rejected, despite making multiple revisions to the ad’s content.
Meta’s algorithm isn’t entirely free of flaws, and technical issues can lead to your Facebook ads being rejected despite committing no violations whatsoever. If you’re constantly dealing with Facebook ads being rejected, consider upgrading to GCG Media’s specialized Meta agency accounts.
Designed to support professionals and businesses running multiple campaigns, these privileged accounts offer an unlimited ad spend to expand your audience and maximize conversions. Get in touch with our team to learn more.
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Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Why my ad is rejected on Facebook?
If you notice Facebook ads being rejected, address this issue by reviewing the ad’s content for violations, such as discriminatory language, politically incorrect images, promoting prohibited items, or copyright infringement.
How do I fix rejected ads on Facebook?
In order to address the issue of Facebook ad rejected, you must identify the reason behind the rejection. The platform sends an email notifying the account holder, detailing the reason behind the rejection. Then, marketers can edit their ads to eliminate the issue and resubmit the ad. If that doesn’t work, consider setting up a new ad without any violations. If you haven’t committed any violations, submit an appeal requesting a review.
What is a valid reason that an ad would be rejected by Facebook?
Meta maintains a safe and inclusive social media space by imposing a series of stringent community guidelines and advertising policies. Valid reasons behind a Facebook ad rejected by the platform include, using profane language, advertising illegal or prohibited products, misleading the audience, using sexually explicit imagery.
