What to Do When Your Facebook Ad Account Gets Shut

May 4, 2017 by Julie

*This is a sample lecture from my flagship program –  The Digital Gangsta – You can see the lecture here.

Nobody wants this to happen, and yet- if you’re an avid advertiser on Facebook, it’s inevitable. So first things first – don’t panic! The best thing to do is to prepare for this ahead of time, and the post below will explain some tips and strategies to help you.

The Difference between a Personal Ad Account and The Business Manager

The Business Manager removes you a bit more from your personal profile, which is a good thing. NO ONE wants a profile disabled, so set up a Business Manager as soon as possible! You can go to https://business.facebook.com and create one anytime. PLEASE NOTE! If you’ve already had your personal ad account shut down, you need to follow some precautions so read this WHOLE post first. Some of the perks of the Business Manager are:

1. You start with 2-5 ad accounts and pixels per account (you can actually get more by requesting it over and over and over – for like six months).
2. You can manage permissions with clients and colleagues.
3. If you’re using a personal ad account currently, you can drag all your accounts + pages into the business manager easily.
4. You can add team members to the Business Manager so they can manage other accounts without making a client do all this legwork.
5. You can share audiences between Business Manager accounts.

Only use payment info on the account you are using ACTIVELY.  Set up ONE ad account and add payment info, and leave all the others alone for now.

Season Your Pixel and Your Pages

1. Facebook is more lenient with accounts, pixels, and pages that have high engagement and shares.
2. If you’re in a risky niche, start with easy ads that will AUTOMATICALLY approve.
3. Do videos and livestreams and encourage your email list to come over and engage on the posts.
4. Make sure there are no weird claims or flagged words on the description of the page.

Spend time nurturing your page and your ad account, and don’t go for crazy or risky ads right off the bat!

When Things Go Wrong – Disapproved Ads

There’s a difference between an ad that gets disapproved immediately vs. one that runs a long time and then gets flagged.

If you’re dealing with an automatic disapproval, here are some of the most common causes:

1. Display URL: When the display URL field is different than the URL of the landing page
2. Redirects on the landing page: If your landing page does a redirect to another type of page or has obtrusive pop-ups, it’ll get flagged
3. Blacklisted or flagged URL: If the URL is on any blacklists, it’ll get flagged immediately
4. Obvious or not-so-obvious words that are flagged: Run through these community standards (and read the examples) https://business.facebook.com/policies/ads/prohibited_content/community_standards. The word OTHERS is a flagged word!

If your ads are disapproved after a long time running, check the following:

1. Frequency: This refers to how long the ad has been running. If people see the same ad too often, they might report or hide the ad and cause enough bad ju-ju to get Facebook to shut it down.
2. Negative Feedback + reporting makes them look MORE closely so don’t just set it and forget it.

So here’s what you do!

1. 9am EST on business days, go to facebook.com/business/resources.
2. Under top questions you will see either the chat or email icon.
3. Chat with a rep to see what the problem is. You may or may not get a good answer, but it’s much faster than the appeal process inside the Power Editor.

Remember that an ad could be disapproved because of the AD ITSELF, the LANDING PAGE, the FACEBOOK PAGE, or the AD ACCOUNT. You really have to do some digging around, and use the scientific method!

• Try the same ad from a different Ad Account and the same Page.
• Try the same ad from the same Ad Account and a different Page.
• Try a different ad (easy to approve) with the same Ad Account and Page.
• Try a different ad (easy to approve) with the same Ad Account and a different Page.
• Try a different ad (easy to approve) with a different Ad Account and the same Page.

Once you’ve figured it out, you need to run lots of easy ads (like and awareness ads), and just get them approved, and let them run for a few hours and turn them off. You want to “reset” the ad account so approvals start happening automatically.

When Things Go Wrong – Disabled Accounts

Ay yi yi. No fun, but here’s what I recommend you do. If your PERSONAL ad account is shut down, the process is a bit more dramatic.

1. Find a trusted friend, colleague, or family member.
2. Go to their house (so you’re on a different IP).
3. Have them open up a brand new business manager account.
4. Set up a new ad account.
5. Set up a new Facebook business page.
6. Get a new type of payment information (new credit card, debit card, etc.)
7. Have them make you an admin on the page and the account.

If it wasn’t a personal ad account that got shut down, but a simple business manager ad account, then you can ignore all the friend and family IP nonsense and simply create a new ad account in your business manager, create a new Facebook page*, and get a new payment method and be on your way!

*In some cases, you don’t have to make a whole new Facebook page. It depends on what your scientific method revealed.

You can also go to the chat support I mentioned above and work on being VERY persistent if you’re sure you didn’t break any rules!

How to Protect Yourself

Whether you’ve already gotten your hand slapped or not, here are some tips to keep you from dealing with this:

1. Test ads before making a million of them. Send one up before you duplicate the ad sets and start running 1000 ads at once.
2. Familiarize yourself with the policies.
   1. Restricted Content Examples –> https://business.facebook.com/policies/ads/restric…
   2. Prohibited Content Examples –> https://business.facebook.com/policies/ads/prohibi…
   3. Policy Overview –> https://business.facebook.com/policies/ads
3. Multiple Admins! Have other people as administrators on the account in case something happens.
4. Don’t set up ad accounts with payment info until you’re ready to use them.
5. Start using the Business Manager and stop using your personal ad account.
6. Stay persistent.

Pick yourself up, and keep going! **This is a sample lecture from my flagship program –  The Digital Gangsta – You can see the lecture here.

Video version of this post is below.

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