Facebook Ad Account Disabled – no reason and forever

This is our true story about how Facebook disabled our Ad account.

We learned that Facebook can stop you from advertising without giving you a reason, without explaining what you did wrong, and without giving you a chance to make things right.

While trying to contact their support, you will find out that you are communicating with a robot and even so, you need to wait at least hours for the reply so it looks like human interaction. When you finally get reach of a real live person, their advice is to break the rules and create a new “fake” account.

But wait, breaking some rules probably was a reason for disabling our account? Well as we investigated further, probably not in our case. It looks like robots and artificial intelligence are not that great and fair as they closed our account before several times by mistake. Facebook’s review processes are set up in such way, that you have to appeal, you don’t get a reason, just one sentence apology and your ads are paused in the meantime.

Usual response from Facebook support:

We reviewed your Facebook account and determined that access to advertising features was incorrectly disabled. We’ve reinstated your access to advertising. Any ads that were affected will return to their previous status.

We apologize for any inconvenience.

Thanks,
The Facebook Business Team

So we got blocked many times before, some Ads were rejected, some accounts got warned, we did a lot of Ads for many of our clients. Mistakes were made, corrected. When you deal with Google Ads, if you make a mistake or break some policy, they will give you a reason why your Ads got rejected.

Facebook decided to take a different approach, they permanently disabled our account without a notice

Hi ******,

After further review of your Facebook account, we found you didn’t comply with our Advertising Policies (https://www.facebook.com/policies/ads) or other standards. You will no longer be allowed to advertise and your access to features for managing ad and business accounts will remain limited.

The Facebook Business Team

These error messages started to appear in the Facebook Ads Manager:

Ad Account Disabled
This ad account, its ads and some of its advertising assets are disabled. You can’t use it to run ads.

On the Campaigns page :
facebook.com/adsmanager/manage/campaigns?act=****
Ad Account Disabled
​You can’t use this account to run ads. Its ads have stopped running and some of its advertising assets are also disabled.

On the Account Quality page:
facebook.com/accountquality/***/***
Ad Account Disabled
This ad account, its ads and some of its advertising assets are disabled because your Facebook account is restricted from advertising.

Restrictions

Can’t create or run ads
Can’t use or share audiences
Can’t use Facebook pixel, offline event sets or custom conversions
Can’t use app SDKs to send app events

Disabled Assets

Audiences
Pixels
Offline event sets
Custom conversions

So what now? What actions to take? How to proceed?

If you get blocked too many times, even by a mistake of machine learning of Facebook’s AI, your account will be disabled and Facebook staff is not authorized to make it right. Their advice is to create a new account, Ads account on the affected account is supposedly unrecoverable.

So at first, we appealed as always. Filled out the forms, pasted account ID or product ID’s and made our case. No response for a week. No response for a month. No response to anything for three months, … We tried every publicly available way to get in touch with Facebook support. Finally, an e-mail came explaining that our account is permanently blocked and we should create another account.

As we could not believe it and assumed that it was just a badly trained support staff, we reached out to our colleagues and competition from the industry. They confirmed having the same experience. Happened to some of them, most of them heard about someone in the same situation. None of them liked the idea they could be switched off anytime Facebook feels like it.

So I am here begging Facebook robot to let me spend our dear client’s budget on their platform? We got suspended, disabled, ignored, and advised to break the rules. Meanwhile, Russians tried to supposedly hijack elections using Facebook and were allowed to advertise stupidly insane and offensive stuff. We were denied a simple promotion of local services and business.

By the way, we are also getting this message into our inbox every time we appeal, but it is just a robot response, don’t be fooled and don’t be happy, they don’t mean it and no, your account will not get activated:

Hello ****, Thanks for reaching out to us. We’ve reactivated your advertising account and you should now be able to create new ads and manage your existing ones. If you have a campaign that’s currently stopped, the ads within the campaign can’t be restarted until the campaign is active again. To turn your ads on:

1. Go to your Ads Manager
2. Find the ad you want to turn on or off
3. In the Status column, use the switch to change the status to on or off
Sorry for the inconvenience this may have caused.

Thanks for your understanding. How was your appeals experience? Give us your feedback to help us do better. Thanks,
The Facebook Ads Team

Lessons learned

Don’t trust Facebook. They don’t give a shit. Use their platform while you can, but don’t become too attached or dependent on their Ads.

Instead, use proven platforms like Google Ads, where you can build sustainable advertising campaigns. We cooperate with Google since the very beginning of online Ads. They were never rude, never ignored us, always gave us an explanation of why the banner or text ad was rejected. Their measurements are accurate and fair.

While Facebook Ads appeared cheaper for a while, the price is not everything. The effort, time invested and lengthy training is not worth it if you get banned and you never know when and what for.

Do you have your own experience with Facebook? Share it in the comments.

8 Responses

  1. Same things just happened with me right now this is 2nd time with me and this time i have 5000 rupees in my prepaid account and now I’m just frusted with Facebook I don’t know what i have to do very disappointed

  2. same thing happened with me guys actually my account was hacked by someone and facebook permenentaly disable my account. some balance are there arount 1k can i use this balance? Worst Facebook Ad Policy

  3. Same thing happened to me I had a business back 10 years ago until a tragedy hit us and had to go to full time work. Did a couple of ads. nothing else since. I started my business up just last July and found someone I did not know as ad admin. and no way to remove them cause as facebook says I am not the ad manager. But everything shows them I am the owner and only one on my account. They do not care no way to remove them only the ad manager can. Also my ad account is now I find Advertising Access Permanently Restricted.

    and information that shows is;
    We noticed unusual activity on your account and were unable to confirm your identity. To help ensure the security of our community, your advertising access was permanently restricted. You’ll no longer be able to use Facebook products to advertise.

    And days emailing some guy that doesn’t care and just says its permanent. and no way I can verify who I am or get that person off my account!!!!

    oh and note all my past ads were paid in good faith (which was back in 2006). no ad violations, no negative responses.. NOTHING..

    Plus I checked and that new ad manager shows no ads at all.

    so I am disabled only because they were unable to confirm your identity. No emails saying hey ad manager has changed. No hey we need to identify you. or hey we are going to disable your ad account.

    And because it is disabled no way to prove who I am.

  4. Same experience here and I’m going to have to make a new account. Thanks for making this article, I’m glad I’m not the only one who’s experienced this.

    1. So frustrating. Same thing just happened to me. I have been told to create a new FB page to run my ads from but it’s like starting from scratch – no data, no likes, no nothing! Looking for alternatives to FB Ads.

  5. Hi. I have the same thing that was happened to me. But i cant open a new account too. Facebook understand thats me and blocked me again. What shoul i do. To get my business ads again?

  6. Same thing. But I think I really posted things against the rules. But I don’t know, sometimes to reach success I think you may really break the rules. I am not that bad. I just want success.

    This ad account, its ads and some of its advertising assets are disabled because it didn’t comply with our Advertising policies affecting business assets or other standards, such as having too many ads rejected, attempting to circumvent our ad review process, participating in fraudulent behavior, or associating with untrustworthy accounts. Learn more. Too much time has passed since this account was disabled, so this decision can’t be reviewed.

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