What to do if the Facebook ad account is blocked?

Facebook is concerned about the security of its users and the quality of the advertisement that runs on their site. Therefore every day Facebook automatically checks millions of advertisements, accounts, constantly updates its rules and tightens the verification criteria.

If your account has been blocked, it is not an excuse to give up and run to create a new one (it may even aggravate the situation, but more on that later). If you understand all the reasons and take the necessary measures, you can restore your ad account and continue to run the advertisement safely.

Main reasons for blocking

In order to deal with this situation properly and quickly, it is necessary to understand the reason for the blocking. This will help to quickly react and accurately describe the situation in the right form.

Of course, you can write to the tech support at once and ask them to sort things out, but that would take a lot longer to unlock.

All reasons for blocking can be conditionally divided into several categories of “complexity”:

warning blocking due to suspicious activity
blocking for violation of Facebook advertising rules

Today, I’m going to tell you a little bit more about each of these points.

Warning blocking due to suspicious activity

Suspicious actions related to payment – payment from another card, payment from a card which is issued in another country; the name on the card differs from the name of the owner of the Ads Manager. This can also includes a change in the usual payment method – all these activities Facebook considers suspicious, and in some cases block advertising accounts for security purposes.

Login to the Ads Manager from another country / region. If you entered the Ads Manager from the Crimea, your account will probably be blocked as well, so it is better to use VPN as a backup.

Connecting to a user account with suspicious activity. A user with suspicious activity is a person who was previously involved in launching an advertisement that disrupts Facebook advertising. Therefore, try to give access to the account to those whom you are 100% sure.

Blocking new accounts

Often, new accounts that are active in the Ads Manager are blocked:

The advertisement is launched from an empty personal page. Preferably in the first 2-3 weeks to delay the launch of the advertisement: add friends, photos, join groups – behave as an ordinary user and revive your page, and then start the advertising campaign

Create many campaigns and ad groups at once. Start small: one or two campaigns with a couple of ad groups in the beginning will be enough, otherwise you risk getting a bath from Facebook.

Spending a lot of money on advertising. This is mainly due to the fact that in the CIS countries most of the advertising post-payment is used when the advertisement is running at the beginning of a certain time and the payment is written off from the card only after a certain period. At the beginning, earn the trust of Facebook, pay small checks for $20, and then if you were planning to launch a large-scale campaign with a large budget, increase the daily budget by 15-20%.

If you have a prepaid system on your account, be on the alert too. Don’t throw too much money in, or your account will be blocked, and if you can’t unlock it for some reason, the money will be lost, so I wouldn’t advise taking risks, there are different cases.

How to deal with this:

The locks described above usually occur for your own safety and are resolved very quickly. All you have to write in this form and confirm your identity.

Blocking for violation of Facebook advertising rules

Usually, if an ad does not comply comply with the Facebook rules, it is blocked separately, without affecting the operation of the account itself. However, if your ads are rejected too often, then this may cause blocking.

Also, keep in mind that sometimes Facebook checks the ads you have on your account. Therefore, try to remove the ads that have not been moderated immediately, otherwise Facebook may find a large number of rejected ads immediately suspicious – and ban you.

What are the most common reasons for rejecting ads

For obvious reasons: frankly prohibited content. By “frankly”, I mean illegal products, tobacco products, weapons, goods for adults, unacceptable business practices. All this has long been banned for advertising and this applies not only to Facebook, so few people openly launch advertising on such products.

However, there are a few other factors you have to take into account when designing your creative and text that can affect ad moderation:

consider the laws of the country in which you launch advertising. For example, alcohol / gambling advertising is not permitted in all countries.
personal characteristics. Do not directly talk about age, race, religious affiliation, sexual orientation, diseases, etc. in advertising.
sensational content: any content which can frighten or shock people (accidents, catastrophes, scenes of violence, blood, wounds).
controversial content: this includes the promotion of goods, the demand for which has greatly increased due to certain economic, political and crisis situations. What’s relevant now are medical masks, antiseptics. Also, if you mention Covid-19 in an advertisement to add a sense of urgency, fear (for example, “you are afraid to go outside because of the coronavirus – use home delivery of groceries”) – your ad will be blocked.
Elements in the image that motivate you to click on it. Do not use any underlined, arrows, fake buttons in creations, so as not to accidentally get banned.

There’s an article in our blog on what to do if your Facebook ad was rejected. Read it so that multiple rejections do not lead to the blocking of the entire account in the future.

Also, Facebook can block an account for certain violations related to the landing page:

mismatch of the landing page with the ad. This includes both non-compliance with the product / service and non-compliance with certain expectations – when a free product / delivery / discount is promised and the site does not talk about it.
a site with scripts: pop-ups, pop-ups that cover most of the screen, automatic start of sound or video – all of this can cause account blocking.
site with a redirect: be aware if you transferred your site to a new domain, and spin ads with the old one using a redirect – there is a high probability that you will soon have problems with the account.

What to do in these cases:

First of all, try to follow the instructions that will be specified in the red field in your Ads Manager.

If this does not work, describe the problem in this form.

Also, another effective option is to write to the tech support chat on this page. But unfortunately, it is only available to those users who spend a certain amount of money on their account. If you do not have a chat and you are not answered in the above forms, you can try to write from the page of the person who has access to the chat and get feedback from the Facebook support.

When filling in the forms, follow the basic rules: maximum of information requested, specificity and courtesy to the Facebook staff. If you don’t get an answer for a long time, feel free to write again, sometimes your address can get lost in a lot of others – it’s okay. Also, if there is no answer for a long time, try to write in English.

Do not create a new account without solving the problem with the old one. There are several reasons for this:

if your account is blocked due to problems with the site / advertised product, then Facebook will instantly track the new account.
plus, keep in mind that Facebook tracks almost everything: your ip, phone number, other linked pages – any match, and the ban is guaranteed, since Facebook does not allow creating a new account in case of problems with the old one.
Even if you move, change your phone number, change your laptop, and start from scratch, you’ll have to earn back the trust of Facebook, and you won’t be able to run an ad campaign on the same level. So think a few times, is it worth it?

And most importantly, never lose hope: even if one employee makes a helpless gesture and says he can’t help, after a while another person will answer you, who may look at the situation differently and can solve your problem.