If you are reading this article, you are probably panicked and stressed because your Facebook account was disabled or deactivated. Before we move ahead, you need to know that you are not alone. Thousands of advertisers, including some well-known names, for example, Gil David and Winner Winner Chicken Dinner, had their accounts disabled. In most cases, accounts were deactivated for a short-term, from 48 hours to a few weeks. Facebook authorities keep silent and no one is actually in a hurry to help you to solve the issue.
The situation seems familiar: you open your Facebook Ads account to check the performance of your active campaigns or getting ready to launch a new one and then you notice a notification in your Ads Manager informing you that your account has been deactivated. Shocked, you are trying to check whether your account was hacked or something went wrong. Then, you realize that nothing is wrong and all your activities are in full compliance with Facebook’s Ads policies.
Actually, most reasons behind ad account bans are attributed to two categories:
- Violation of Facebook’s Advertising Policies;
- High percentage of negative feedback;
Negative Feedback
As you should be well aware, Facebook users can send their feedback to the platform. With so many ad campaigns running at the same time on the platform, users get annoyed with ads and can choose to:
- hide a single ad;
- hide all posts from an advertiser;
- unlike your Facebook page;
- report your ad as spam.
All the above-mentioned actions are considered negative feedback. It is no big deal if a couple of people hide your ad or even report the ad. Important is the ratio between negative feedback and the total number of ad impressions.
To see the negative feedback score, open the Facebook Ads Manager, select an ad and click Preview. In the pop-up window select Facebook Post with Comments.
Then, scroll till the end of your post and select the Performance Results section. In the Post Details check the Negative Feedback sub-section.
In fact, there is no specific percentage that might indicate potential problems. Some marketers recommend to stop running an ad if you have one spam report for 5 000 impressions, which is 0.02%, to prevent the deactivation of your ad account. Calculate the negative feedback percentage for all active ads. If you don’t have ads with a high level of negative feedback, then your account was probably disabled for violation of Facebook’s Advertising Policies.
Violation of Facebook’s Advertising Policies
Facebook provides clear guidance on allowed and prohibited content. You should know that every single ad should be reviewed for compliance with the platform’s policies. Marketers who use grey and black hat marketing techniques are well aware of the potential risk of getting banned. Farming accounts and cloaking are on the prohibited activities list. Some people still believe that they can skirt the ban and insist on dubious methods; as a result, they get banned for violation of the platform’s policies.
Now, let’s see what you can do to reinstate your ad account.
How to Fix a Disabled or Deactivated Facebook Ad Account: Step-by-Step Guide
If this happens to your Ad account, do not freak out and follow the instructions below.
Step 1. First of all, inspect your account thoroughly once again. Before you take any further steps, read Troubleshoot a Disabled Account section on the Facebook Business Help Center. Scroll again Facebook Advertising Policies to be on the safe side.
Step 2. Open Ads Manager. You see a red bar informing you that your account was deactivated or disabled. Click on Contact Us to submit an appeal. Sometimes you don’t see the red bar if the notification was sent to your email. Again, to submit your appeal, follow the instructions from the email.
Step 3. Check the details of your ban. Open the Facebook Ads Manager and click “See Details”. In the message pop-up window, you will see “This ad account, its ads, and some of its advertising assets are disabled. You can’t use it to run ads.”
Step 4. Check the reason why your ad account was disabled. When you click on Details, you are redirected to the Account Quality page where you will see the specific section of Facebook's Advertising Policies that was supposedly violated. You will also find information on what you cannot do with your account while it is suspended.
Step 5. Request an account review. On the same page (open it from a laptop/desktop) you will see a “What You Can Do” line and a warning that your account can be disabled permanently in six months if you do not take any action. Below you will see the Request Review button. Click on the button to open a special form that contains the details of your account. Request a review of your account.
Describe the problem in a polite and straightforward way. Do not use caps lock or cursing – this way you can just worsen the situation instead of getting a quick and positive review.
Step 6. Wait. Once you have submitted the Request review form, you should receive a notification that your ad account will be reviewed as soon as possible. Unfortunately, Facebook specifies that there are “fewer people available for reviews due to the COVID-19, and it may take several weeks to get a response.”
Now, you just wait for their response. Hopefully, you may get it within 24-48 hours. While waiting, you can try using other Ads accounts if you have any. Or try another way to re-enable your Facebook Ads account.
Step 7. There are other ways to reach the support team that increases your chances to reinstate the account faster. Facebook Business Help Center provides support via live chat. Find the section “Still Need Help? Find Answers or Contact Support”. Click “Get Started”.
You are almost there. Click the blue button "Get Started" again.
Next, you need to choose a problem you require to solve. Double-check to choose the right ad account.
Then, you need to specify the issue you need help with. Actually, deactivated and disabled accounts are one of the most common problems, so it is usually listed first.
Now, you have to fill in the form. Specify your email address, phone number and provide a brief summary of the problem. Ideally, include at least one screenshot. Then, click on the Start Chat button. Next to the button, you can see the average wait time for support to contact you.
After a few minutes you will get a response that will look like this:
In fact, at this stage, there is a high chance that your account will be reinstated. At least, it helped to re-enable the Winner Winner Chicken Dinner ad account. Usually, you still need to request the account review and wait for up to 48 hours for an official response.
If you receive a negative response that your account is disabled permanently, you can try to contact the Help Center after a couple of days, so that another person could review your account.
While you are busy reinstating your Facebook Ad Account, you can try out paid ads on other platforms. Maybe, this is your golden ticket, and ads on other social platforms will perform much better. Alternatively, you may consider Pinterest Ads, Twitter Ads, Quora, Amazon Ads, Spotify Ads, TikTok Ads, Reddit Ads, or any other platform your target audience can be found on.
How many times has your Facebook Ad account been disabled?
1 vote
How to Prevent Your Account Deactivation
Once you get your Ad account back safe and sound, take preventive measures to avoid being banned again. Just think that in most cases Facebook ad accounts get disabled or deactivated due to improper advertiser’s actions. Read the list below and adjust your strategy and gain an advantage from one of the best advertising platforms.
- Make sure your activity as an advertiser fully complies with the Facebook Advertising Policies. Yes, in most cases, accounts are suspended for violating some simple rules. Pay particular attention to the Prohibited Content section of the Advertising Policies. Your ads shouldn’t contain Facebook brand usage, personal attributes, sexually explicit content, prohibited product categories, misinformation, sensational content, restricted keywords, bad grammar or punctuation, deceitful practices, excessive capital letters, before-and-after images, and so on.
- Make sure your ads do not contain links to non-functional landing pages.
- Develop an advertising strategy to minimize negative feedback from Facebook users. Use different ad types and objectives to avoid being marked as a scammer.
- If your account is not re-activated, use a different credit card for a new ad account.
- If you run ads for your own company, update the Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy pages.
Bottom Line
Discovering that your Facebook Ad account has been disabled might be frustrating. Yet still, following the detailed instructions provided above you can re-enable your account in no time. Try to use this challenging situation to your benefit and reconsider some aspects of your advertising business: review terms and conditions, update the privacy policy, do not use the same credit card for several ad accounts, and re-read Facebook’s Advertising policies once again to reduce the risk of account deactivation in the future.
