Facebook Ads: The Review Process
If you run Facebook ads, nothing crushes your dreams of running a glorious new campaign more than a Facebook rejection. There are a number of reasons why your ad was rejected; maybe you’re not following community standards or you’ve simply made a mistake with your landing page. Regardless, we’re here to offer a glimpse of how Facebook’s review process works - not only are these insights extremely helpful, they’ll also help get your ad back up and running as quickly as possible.
Behind the scenes, there is a mix of human and automated reviews. Facebook says that they rely mostly on automated ad reviews but use human reviews to improve and train their automated system. When your ad is initially submitted, Facebook uses an automated ad review that uses machine learning and algorithms to flag potential issues. If your ad is approved (lucky you!), it will run and you’ll see the results in Ads Manager. But don’t get ahead of yourself! Your ad still may be subject to a human review later (especially if it has been flagged by another user). If your ad is rejected, you can appeal and submit it for human review or users can edit their ad to better comply with Facebook’s advertising policies and resubmit it.
When creating your Facebook ads, adhere to the rules as much as possible. At Pennock, these are the most common reasons why our ads get rejected.
Before and after images
Facebook does not like “before and after” images because these images may contain unlikely results. Facebook especially doesn’t like side-by-side photos or images that say “before” and “after”. We’re not in the game of falsely promoting our clients’ services - it’s just that seeing is believing and let’s be honest, who doesn’t love a good before and after?! We’re currently testing out a couple work-arounds to this issue: not including the words, “before” and “after” and we’re highlighting just the “after” images.
Excessive amounts of skin or overly sexual images
We have worked with a few swimwear brands and our ads are often rejected for the “overly sexual content”. In these cases we tend to resubmit for review, assuring Facebook that we are advertising swimwear, but if our ads are still rejected, we go back to the drawing board. We’ve found that Facebook does not like if our images are focusing heavily on certain body parts. So when we recreate the ad, we make sure to show the entire bathing suit and even a beach or pool so that Facebook isn’t confused at what it’s looking at.
Too much text overlay
We try to avoid too much text in our ads (that’s what the Primary Text is for!). But sometimes, our clients have a lot to say - in this scenario, we test out a couple variations of the ad. One text heavy ad and one with minimal text. According to Facebook, they will reject anything that has text covering more than 20% of the image.
These are just a few examples of rejected ads - Oberlo compiled a more complete list that we have found helpful.
How Long Does an Ad Review Take?
Generally speaking, Facebook ads are approved or rejected within 24 hours (sometimes less and sometimes it takes longer). But an entire day seems like a long time to wait to see whether or not your ad is approved, and unfortunately, there isn’t a certain way to expedite the review process. However, there are a few things you try to potentially speed up the process:
Publish between 8am and 8pm, Monday through Friday. We see ads posted during these times often get a quicker review.
Be consistent. Not only does Facebook look at the ads you’re submitting, they also look at your profile as a whole. If you’re constantly flagged or your ads are often rejected, Facebook may take that in to account.
Don’t bend the rules. If your ad is on the verge of breaking one of the Facebook ads rules, it’ll most-likely be flagged for review. Which will take precious time away from your ad running.
Create and pause your ad. Creating your ad ahead of time and pausing it will allow it to go through the review process and you can run it when the time is right.
Allow for extra time in Q4. Businesses place more ads leading up to the holidays, making review times take longer.
You aren’t alone if you find the process of getting your Facebook ads approved to be a bit of a challenge. But knowledge is power and we suggest reading up on Facebook’s Advertising Policies. If you need further assistance, our team at Pennock is pretty Facebook savvy and we have learned how to get ads pushed through the review process - feel free to reach out to us!