Why Facebook Ad Accounts Get Banned - And How to Avoid It
As a full-time Facebook ads freelancer, I've seen this issue come up quite a lot with both prospects and sometimes clients who accidentally do the wrong thing without realizing that they're contravening Facebook's advertising rules somehow. And get dinged.
So I talked to Meta Support directly 2x to try and unravel the mysteries as to exactly why some people get banned and why others don't.
(It's a little bit sad that they don't have a long-form article written somewhere about the reasons all in one place, but this is the best that I can get).
Based on those conversations, I've put together this list in order to help people troubleshoot why they're being banned and also avoid getting banned in the first place. Hopefully it helps.
Not Using a Real, Verified Facebook Profile
I notice a lot of people want to stay off social media so they use like semi-anonymous style profiles, but that's definitely a problem. I've also heard that sometimes Facebook will ask for photo ID in order to confirm your personal profile, so if you don't have a picture and a proper name and stuff, they won't be able to verify it.
What to do: Make sure you have a real profile set up with a proper name and photo.
Using Multiple Personal Profiles
I've seen people create multiple profiles so that their staff members can use one profile to manage the business, but this isn't the proper way to do it.
What to do: Firstly, you shouldn't have a fake profile that's just your business name, given the first thing that we've been talking about here, but also it will mean multiple people are going to log into that account from the same IP, which is obviously going to flag something in the back end there and risk your account getting banned.
The best way to do it, and the alternative, is to set your business manager settings up properly (see more below) so that people have access to the page and they can respond on your behalf as the business page, rather than from a personal profile somewhere.
Improper Set Up of Business Assets
Another thing is not having your complete business information filled out like name, address, phone number, and VAT, and making sure that you have 2FA set up seems to be really important.
What to do: Make sure you've completely filled out your business information everywhere possible.
Having a Single Admin
So from having talked to Meta, it seems like it's really important to have more than one admin on your business account.
I'm guessing that's because it makes it easier for them by lowering the support requirements needed because they have another person in your account that can help you retrieve and give access to things in case you get locked out, but also it may seem suspicious from their side.
What to do: Add someone else trusted into your Business Manager so that they can help manage things and access support if needed.
No Two-Factor Authentication (2FA)
I'm guessing they push hard on having 2FA set up because of the amount of spam and advertising of prohibited or shady stuff on the platform, and using 2FA helps them avoid the amount of spam and hacking that goes on.
What to do: Set it up, and make sure you’re not just using SMS. Saving backup codes is important too.
Source: About Two-Factor Authentication
Using Third-Party Tools Recklessly
To be honest I don't quite understand why they don't want you to use third-party tools (like scheduling tools) that much, but I'm guessing it's also because there can be issues with multiple IPs connecting to your account or using the API in a way that might look spammy. So that probably applies more to 3rd party AI engagement tools.
So for example, if there's suddenly a flood of posting that goes out, I'm guessing that can accidentally trip up some spam red flags that creates issues for your account.
What to do: Avoid using spammy 3rd party tools.
Source: Meta's Inauthentic Behavior Policy
Circumventing Behavior
If one of your accounts gets banned, they don't want you creating multiple accounts to try and get around that. They’ll see that as circumventing behaviour.
I've heard rumors too that they will track which credit card you've used and which profile you've used to set up the account, so if one account gets banned with those details and you set up another with those same details, it's very likely that that account's going to get banned as well.
This one was a surprise to me when it came up in my conversation with support, because naturally I know a lot of people have created multiple ad accounts, but to be fair, they've often ended up in some kind of doom circle where they can't unlock any of them and all of them have problems.
What to do: Focus on having one clean account. If you have issues, try your best to solve them there instead of creating more.
No Organic Presence Before Advertising
This one was also surprising to me because I've been taught to warm up ad accounts and this is a practice I've used and will continue to use, not because I disbelieve the advice coming from Meta, but I have a feeling it may be best to do BOTH to warm up your profiles with an organic presence at the same time as running warm-up campaigns rather than diving straight into hard objectives like lead generation first.
What to do: I'm guessing a couple of days of organic presence building is probably sufficient because that's typically the amount of time I've seen work for warm-up campaigns.
For doing this, I suppose it can be as simple as making sure that your organic profiles are fully completed and that you've invited a couple of friends to like and engage with your stuff from the beginning as well as doing doing some basic posts.
🔥 Tip: Prepare for Access Recovery
A lot that clients get locked out of their accounts and it can be really frustrating because you end up in a chicken-and-egg situation.
You can't log in, but in order to get help logging in by contacting support, you need to log in somehow. So that's pretty annoying.
The solutions that were shared with me from Facebook support was:
To use their Hacked account recovery option because it's funnily enough not the same support team that helps with account recovery as the team that helps you with ad support, which kind of makes sense.
Ask on your ads manager (or someone else added to your business account) to submit a support ticket on your behalf and then the ad support team will escalate that issue to the internal team that helps with account recovery.
Hopefully this clarifies some of the reasons why your account may have gotten dinged - or what you need to do to avoid getting banned in the first place.
Want help with Facebook lead gen ads? Here are 3 ways I can help:
Drop a comment below if you’ve got a question or want help thinking through your offer - I’m happy to share feedback.
Try my DIY course. I made this for my friends who kept asking how to run lead ads. It’s a simple, practical guide to getting up and running fast.
Get me to run your ads for you. If you want done-for-you help, that’s what I do, specifically for sales-led and education businesses.