Introduction
I hear a lot of people complaining that their Facebook ads have been rejected, and that frequently there is not a clear reason given.
This can be very frustrating and potentially costly if you are working to a dealine-eg a launch.
Although this post was created in 2017, revisiting it now in February 2025. the content is still a useful guide. The Adespresso article in the link was last updates in January 2021.
In a recent article Adespresso has analysed its own experience and data, to come up with some interesting and useful guidelines to help FaceBook Advertisers to get a clearer understanding of the types of issues and how to avoid them.
As usual Adespresso has compiled a comprehensive and useful article that all FaceBook Marketers should read carefully.
In this post, I have summarised, what I thought were, the highlights, to provide a quick overview, and also linked to Adespresso’s full article towards the end for an in-depth read.
How Does FaceBook Ad Review Work and How Long Does It Take?
We are all aware that Facebook rejects ads that it believes violate its policies. “But what are those policies?” It’s not always easy to figure out.
While your ads are “pending review,” anything can happen. Sometimes good ads are rejected or bad ads are approved. And Facebook reserves the right to reject or approve an ad for any reason.
Adespresso says it has “ gone over the rules time and again, and we’re here to share the most recent updates on Facebook’s policies and demystify once and for all why ads do and don’t get approved.”
Factors That May Greatly Influence Approval Time
According to the article “There’s no way to know exactly how the review process works but we can make some educated guesses.
It’s likely a mix of algorithmic and manual analysis.
Here are some factors that may greatly influence your approval time:
- Facebook Ad Account History: Every account probably has a “trust score.” The longer you’ve been advertising, the fewer ads you’ve had rejected, and the more you’ve spent, the faster you’ll get your ads approved.
- Keyword Analysis: Some keywords in the ad’s text will likely trigger more control. References to religion, ethnicity, profanities, and everything that might break any of the rules detailed below can slow down the review time.
- Domain Analysis: What are your ads linking to? If a domain has been advertised hundreds of times before, with no problems, the pending review period could be shorter. A new domain, never advertised before, could require more review.
- Image Analysis: While algorithmically checking images is still a tough task, Facebook is already very good at detecting our friends’ faces and so it might also recognize other patterns like copyrighted logos, nudity, and so on.
Takeaways
AdEspresso, said they often saw that the review time decreased, the longer you’ve been advertising on Facebook.
Also, If you’ve been at this for a while, you may see some ads immediately approved and later disapproved. This suggests that ads might be automatically approved if none of the above checks are triggered and only later sent to a human for review
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