What to do if your Facebook Ad Account is disabled?
The Ultimate Guide to Dealing with Disabled Facebook Ad Accounts
Oh no! Everyone who has worked with Facebook Ads long enough eventually faces this problem.
Let this be a complete guide to all the different things that could go wrong with your Ad account.
There are 4 levels of disabling that may trigger on Facebook.
1. Disapproved Ads
This is by far, the smallest offence on Facebook.
If the algorithm finds that your creatives (both video and text copy included) violate any one of their Community Guidelines, your ad may be rejected.
Even if it isn’t obvious, or even in some cases, reasonable, Facebook rejects ads first then reviews them later. It isn’t a sure occurrence though, there are many instances where a violating ad is allowed to run and then gets rejected later on, or not at all! It’s a machine learning algorithm that adheres to the laws of statistics.
What to do:
Don’t worry though – if you feel that your creatives do not violate any policies, you can simply click “Submit for manual review”, which sends the rejected ad to a dedicated Facebook Business team to review.
After you’ve clicked on it, let the manual review happen on its own, and if they find that nothing is wrong, the ad will be reapproved for running again.
Try not to let this happen as much as you can though, as they add to a running count of strikes your account has received. The threshold for the number of strikes before a disabling is dependent on many other factors.
2. Disabled Ad Account
One morning when you wake up, your Ad Account has been disabled!
I know, I know.. That feeling! The world suddenly halted. Palms sweaty, arms spaghetti.
Facebook routinely disables ad accounts for reasons including but not limited to:
- Too many disapproved ads
- Negative complains by customers
- Insufficient payment balance
- Algorithm finds one of your running ads violating community guidelines
- Ads do not link properly to your site etc.
This is localised to your Ad Account. Your Business Manager is still alright and you CAN create a new Ad Account.
What to do:
It is up to you whether you would like to create a new ad account or wait for the existing one to be reinstated.
I’d personally recommend the latter, to avoid “infecting” your accounts with whatever Facebook deemed the problem to be. “Circumventing systems” is also a violation in Facebook’s eyes, so be very sure you know what you’re doing if you want to bypass this.
Most importantly: Be calm, even if it feels like world is falling apart.
Before you do anything rash, write a first draft of what you want to say and how you feel on a Notepad. If you’re angry, write it out. Do not send this anywhere just yet!
Now, go for a stroll if you’re not under lockdown, or have a sip of your favourite drink.
Then once you’ve truly calmed down, either revisit your draft or just toss it out.
Now, we begin 🙂
First, we need to understand why this happened. You’ll have to look at the Ad Account Quality page to understand what went wrong. Then, see if there is anything you could do to resolve it from your end. Perhaps a change in your internal policy?
Next, we’ll write a Review Request on a text editor.
Firstly, apologise for trigerring the system (whether or not it is your fault, it is in your interest to do so)
State that you’ve identified the problems and have since resolved the issue.
Finally, thank the Business Team for reviewing your Ad Account
Review your draft, make sure you’re giving sufficient details for them to act on.
Remember that the person who reinstates your account is a Facebook employee, a real person who has feelings reading what you write. They have protocols to follow but it doesn’t help them if you wrote them a flaming, angry Review Request.
Once you’re ready, paste your draft into the Review Request and hit Submit.
Now, be patient with the Business Team. They cannot be reached via regular means. Contacting support does not help change their decision. Support will tell you the same thing too.
So, let the Business Team review your account. It takes a variable amount of time for them to get back to you. I find it best to give them up to 2 weeks to review. After which, you can ping the support team to check up for you.
Your Ad Account will most likely re-approved if you followed these steps, providing your account has not been disabled before.
If not, there must be some serious policy violated, double check and look at your entire account as if you were working for Facebook.
3. Business Manager Disabled
Ok. The situation is serious now. If you’ve made it here and are still serious about your business, you’d find that panicking now is kind of pointless. It’s another exercise in writing calmly, just like you did with your Disabled Ad Account.
How does this trigger? When it comes to violating Community Guidelines, both the individual Ad and the Ad Account would get disabled first.
If your Ads and Ad Account have been disabled multiple times, there are strikes on your account. There is a strong case for disabling your Business Manager in Facebook’s eyes. The threshold at which it becomes a problem to them differs based on their internal policy.
I’m not sure if your BM could be disabled due to being flagged for other reasons, but whatever the reasons may be, it isn’t always accurate. I’ve seen countless reports of very honest businesses getting their accounts disabled, sometimes permanently for misleading reasons.
What to do:
Every Personal Account can create two (2) Business Managers. If you create a new BM, it should not be tied to your old one in any way. If it is a verified BM, you cannot use the same business certificates on the new one.
Unless you know what you’re doing before creating a new BM, you should opt to request yet another Manual Review. Beware though, as reinstating BM’s is a lot stricter than reinstating Ad Accounts. Facebook is not as lenient when it comes to Business Managers that are known to have repeatedly violate policies (even if it has been false positives)
As you’ve practiced before with a Disabled Ad Account, write your angry thoughts first. Then calm down and write your proper one. If you skipped this previously, you can go [insert anchor link]back to read it
Now, cross your fingers and pray for the best!
4. Personal account Advertising access disabled
At this point, you’re gonna start going on the run with Facebook.
Your personal account is no longer useable when it comes to ads. You can still contact your friends and use Facebook like normal, but your Personal account is now on a blacklist.
I’ve seen instances where the Personal account access is reinstated after a while, but it leaves a stain on your Personal account – which makes you wonder if you still want to use it at all.
What to do:
- Try to create a new Personal Account. – I highly advise against this, unless you know what you’re doing with your online fingerprint. Facebook knows you more about you than you think you know yourself haha! Creating a second account is against their policy.
- Ask family and friends for help – but beware that Facebook knows they are related to you even if you’re not directly connected on Facebook.
- Buy a Facebook account – Before wasting upwards of $200/month, know that Facebook would usually know when accounts have changed hands or which accounts are coming from certain blacklisted IP Addresses. We’ve tested this approach, finding out that their Ad Accounts get disabled very quickly from day one.
- Get Managed Ads – Find an agency to help you with Facebook Ads. This is by far the BEST option that has worked for our brands so far. Plus, you’d be hands off with technical work of managing ads daily.
- Move off of Facebook – You can use alternative Ad Platforms, have a look at this article. Love it or hate it, we know how Facebook still brings results like no other, for most niches.
Bonus for your Disabled Ad Account
Often times, it is more difficult to recover an existing account than to start a new one, with the right policies in place.
We have connections inside of Facebook to help ease reviews. We can request more directly to get your account reviewed.
However, understand that we cannot guarantee if an account gets reinstated though – these are all ultimately Facebook’s decisions to make.
If you need help with your Facebook Ad Account, let us know how we can help you.
How far are you willing to go to get your ads running?
