Before your Instagram and Facebook ads can be published for the world to see, they must first be reviewed by Facebook to ensure they meet advertising policies. This is one of the most important things to keep in mind for Facebook ads management services. To avoid delays, read the Facebook advertising rules listed below.
Note: This post has been updated on Dec. 5, 2023 with more Facebook ad policies.
Table of Contents
Prohibited Content
Prohibited ad content is content that you cannot submit. Prohibited content includes
1. Ads that promote illegal substances and products illegal to minors
Includes alcohol for audiences below 21.
2. Ads that contain weapons
Includes guns, tasers, explosives, etc.
3. Ads that contain adult content
Includes nudity, sexually suggestive and overtly sexual images, adult products and service. For example, exotic dancers and sex toys.
4. Ads with shocking, sensational, disrespectful, and violent content
5. Ads with content that asserts or implies personal attributes
Includes race, ethnic origin, religion, beliefs, age, sexual orientation or practices, gender identity, disability, medical condition, financial status, membership in a trade union, criminal record, or name.
6. Ads with deceptive, false, or misleading content
Includes deceptive claims, offers, or business practices.
7. Ads with politically exploitative content
Includes ads with content that exploits controversial political or social issues for commercial purposes.
8. Ads with audio or flash animation
Includes ads that play automatically without a person’s interaction or ads that expand within Facebook after someone clicks on the ad.
9. Ads with non-functional landing pages
Includes landing pages that interfere with a person’s ability to navigate away from the page.
10. Ads with spyware and malware
Includes any software that causes an unexpected or deceptive experience or links to sites containing spyware or malware products.
11. Ads with bad grammar or punctuation
Punctuation, symbols, numbers, and letters must be used correctly.
12. Ads with fake functionality
Includes images that portray nonexistent functionality such as a fake CTA button.
13. Before-and-after ads
Includes ads with before-and-after images or images containing unexpected or unrealistic results.
14. Ads promoting loans
Includes payday loans, paycheck advances, or any other short-term loan intended to cover someone’s expenses until their next payday.
15. Ads with content leading to bad quality external landing pages
bad quality pages bring an unexpected or disruptive experience, including misleading ad positioning, such as overly sensationalized headlines, and leading people to landing pages that contain minimal original content and a majority of unrelated or low quality ad content.
Restricted Content
Unlike prohibited content, restricted content can be published with Facebook’s permission. Restricted content includes
1. Ads that promote or reference alcohol
You must target an audience that meets the legal age requirement for your country.
2. Dating Ads
Ads promoting online dating services are only allowed with prior written permission. To be a registered dating partner, fill out the application located here.
3. Ads promoting real money gambling games
Includes online real money gambling, real money games of skill or real money lotteries, online real money casino, sports books, bingo, or poker. Only lotteries run by the government may advertise on Facebook.
4. Ads promoting online and offline pharmacies
Only permitted with prior written permission from Facebook.
5. Ads promoting supplements
Ads promoting acceptable dietary and herbal supplements may only target users who are at least 18 years of age.
6. Ads promoting subscription services
Includes ads promoting subscription services, services with negative options, automatic renewal, free-to-pay conversion billing products, or mobile marketing.
7. Ads with branded content
Ads from verified pages promoting branded content must tag the featured third party product, brand, or sponsor using the branded content tool.
Video Ads
1. Prohibited content
Video ads with disruptive experiences such as flashing screens are prohibited.
2. Entertainment related restrictions
Move, TV shows, and video game trailers with mature content are only allowed with written permission from Facebook. All trailers with mature content must only target an audience that is at least 18 years of age. Excessive depictions of drugs and alcohol, adult content, profanity, and gore are not allowed.
Targeting
1. When targeting an audience, you cannot discriminate against, harass, provoke, or disparage users or to engage in predatory advertising practices.
2. If you target your ads to custom audiences, you must comply with the applicable terms when creating an audience.
Positioning
Relevancy: All ad elements including any text, images, or other media, must be relevant and appropriate to the product or service offered and the audience viewing the ad.
Accuracy: Ads must clearly represent the company, product, service, or brand that is advertised.
Landing pages: Products and services promoted in the ad copy must match those promoted on the landing page, and the destination site may not offer or link to any prohibited product or service.
Lead Ads
Advertisers must not create Lead Ad questions requesting the following types of information without our prior written permission:
1. The same or substantially similar information that you could use a Template Question to request. If Facebook has a Template Question asking for information, you must use the Template Question rather than write your own question. For example, if you want to learn a person’s age, you should use “Date of Birth,” not your own question asking, “How old are you?” or “What year were you born?”
2. Government-issued identifiers, including Social Security numbers, passport numbers, or driver’s license numbers.
3. Financial information, including bank account numbers, bank routing numbers, credit or debit card numbers, credit scores, income, net worth, and debt.
4. Account numbers, including frequent flyer numbers, loyalty card numbers or cable/telephone account numbers.
5. Health information, including physical health, mental health, medical treatments, medical conditions or disabilities.
6. Insurance information, including current insurance policy numbers.
7. Usernames or passwords ,including usernames and passwords for existing and new accounts. For example, don’t ask a person to create a username and password in your Lead Ad. If you want people to sign up for an account, use the “Continued Flow” option which allows the person to sign up through your website.
8. Race or ethnicity, sexual orientation, and details about sexual and dating habits.
9. Religion or philosophical beliefs
10. Political affiliation
Use of Facebook’s Brand Assets
1.Ads must not imply a Facebook or Instagram endorsement or partnership of any kind, or an endorsement by any other Facebook Company.
2. Ads linking to Facebook or Instagram branded content (including Pages, groups, events, or sites that use Facebook Login) may make limited reference to “Facebook” or “Instagram” in ad text for the purpose of clarifying the destination of the ad.
3. All other ads and landing pages must not use our copyrights, Trademarks, or any confusingly similar marks, except as expressly permitted by our Brand Usage Guidelines or the Instagram Brand Guidelines, or with our prior written permission.
Data Use Restrictions
1. Ensure any ad data collected, received or derived from your Facebook or Instagram ad (“Facebook advertising data”) is only shared with someone acting on your behalf, such as your service provider. You are responsible for ensuring your service providers protect any Facebook advertising data or any other information obtained from us, limit their use of all of that information, and keep it confidential and secure.
2. Don’t use Facebook advertising data for any purpose (including retargeting, commingling data across multiple advertisers’ campaigns, or allowing piggybacking or redirecting with tags), except on an aggregate and anonymous basis (unless authorized by Facebook) and only to assess the performance and effectiveness of your Facebook advertising campaigns.
3. Don’t use Facebook advertising data, including the targeting criteria for your ad, to build, append to, edit, influence, or augment user profiles, including profiles associated with any mobile device identifier or other unique identifiers that identifies any particular user, browser, computer or device. This is especially relevant to messenger ads.
4. Don’t transfer any Facebook advertising data (including anonymous, aggregate, or derived data) to any ad network, ad exchange, data broker or other advertising or monetization-related service.
