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Facebook Ads - How are these people getting away with this?

by WillR
14 replies
  • SEO
    • |
I've noticed a number of Facebook ads these days that are displaying urls that have absolutely nothing to do with the actual destination url of the ad. I have posted two examples below. You will see in both of these ads the person viewing the ad would be right in assuming they are going to be clicking through to Amazon. The reality is when you click on the ad you are instead sent straight to a Clickbank affiliate link for some muscle building product. I've seen this done using urls such as amazon.com and also ezinearticles.com.


How on earth are these people getting away with this and why are Facebook allowing it? I've always been led to believe Facebook are quite strict in enforcing their advertising guidelines so I can't for the life of me imagine how these slip past seeing as though it's not just the one occasion I have seen these.

Can anyone shed any light on this?
#ads #facebook #people
  • Profile picture of the author HeySal
    I have a feeling someone is about to be on a forum pretty soon crying about how FB leveled their business. LOL.

    I'm wondering, though - if maybe it's a product that the vendor has on both Amazon and clickbank? Not sure that would make the redirect any more "legal" though. It's just the only other thing I can think of at the moment.
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  • Profile picture of the author Brendan Vraibel
    Yea something isn't right there. I don't really advertise much on FB but I've heard of them banning accounts for stuff as simple as linking to a squeeze page. Somehow they let someone false advertise on there?

    Interested to see if anyone has a logical answer.
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  • Profile picture of the author officer_iron
    This is just a guess...

    But aren't there fake referrer services out there that can make it look like the the link is coming from wherever you want? I just read an article that was posted in this forum about a cpa scam where they were using a service like this to fake their cpa network as to where the traffic was coming from.

    The link the scammer would use was something like http ://refersite.c0m/affiliate.link/fakereferring.link

    Perhaps if they were doing something like this, FB would be reading the fake referring link, and thus displaying it as the external TLD.

    This is just an idea. No clue if it's even possible.
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    • Profile picture of the author WillR
      Originally Posted by officer_iron View Post

      This is just a guess...

      But aren't there fake referrer services out there that can make it look like the the link is coming from wherever you want? I just read an article that was posted in this forum about a cpa scam where they were using a service like this to fake their cpa network as to where the traffic was coming from.

      The link the scammer would use was something like http ://refersite.c0m/affiliate.link/fakereferring.link

      Perhaps if they were doing something like this, FB would be reading the fake referring link, and thus displaying it as the external TLD.

      This is just an idea. No clue if it's even possible.
      I know what you mean but I am pretty sure even Facebook would be smart enough to check each URL and see where the end-user actually ends up. They would have seen every trick in the book. I am fairly certain they check landing pages so I can't see why they wouldn't notice the two urls are completely different. Especially when someone is using Amazon.com that should be a dead giveaway for them to double check the destination page and url.

      Maybe someone (an affiliate) went out last weekend and scored with a girl in the Facebook Ads department?! Half his luck!
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      • Profile picture of the author officer_iron
        Originally Posted by WillR View Post


        Maybe someone (an affiliate) went out last weekend and scored with a girl in the Facebook Ads department?! Half his luck!
        That probably has happened before.

        I agree with what you said, and I don't have any clue how the fake referrer service works, but if you can actually choose a URL for the traffic to "come from," (ex. a specific amazon item URL, instead of just amazon.com), you could set your external domain in your FB ad to http://refersite.com/yourdomain.com/fakeAmazon.link

        You could redirect "yourdomain.com" to the actual amazon product link you're faking as the referrer. That way, when FB clicks on your ad, they are actually taken to the Amazon product.

        Once your ad gets approved, you could change the redirect on "yourdomain.com" to your affiliate link.

        Maybe? I'm just spit-ballin'

        ***DISCLAIMER TO ANYONE READING THIS! DO NOT TRY THIS. I'M SURE THAT YOU WILL GET YOUR ACCOUNT BANNED.***
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  • Profile picture of the author Gary Gomez
    Its more than likely being cloaked as officer_iron says.

    This is still possible to do and not get caught but not within the realms of most peoples skillset.
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  • Profile picture of the author Gary Gomez
    Originally Posted by Stephen41 View Post

    Its more than likely being cloaked as officer_iron says.

    This is still possible to do and not get caught but not within the realms of most peoples skillset.
    wtf?

    how come you just copy/ pasted what I posted first...you a bot?
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  • Profile picture of the author amika1968
    I've seen this with adsense. A competitor was using my business name as their "ad word".
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  • Profile picture of the author GetRichMatrix
    Those ads won't be around very long. Some bad ones can get through. The people approving the ads have to approve a certain number per hour, and when they're not having their day, when they had a fight with the misses and what have you, maybe they click "sure, OK" more often :-)

    But these ads will be reported and the account linked to them will be banned. FB doesn't like misleading claims either and a redirect is 'misleading', literally.
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  • Profile picture of the author smartyjohn
    I am wondering How FB can allow scrammer to do this type of stuff.
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  • Profile picture of the author yugaeko
    that's learn us that we should not do that..

    let's be Pro marketer, keep on trust get the truth..
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  • Profile picture of the author tylerjaysen
    [DELETED]
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    • Profile picture of the author down
      Guilty here.

      I was doing this campaign method as well. But I'm the lucky one, FB not banned me, they asking nicely to remove my campaign within 48 hours. If you found this campaign type just report it, and definitely they will be removed.
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  • Profile picture of the author awj888
    there was an IM product a couple years ago which did this! - basically you couldnt just put direct afiliate links in your FB ads without getting blocked or banned or nonapproved so they made a nice lil cloaking tool - basiclly how it worked was you would have 2 types of redirect so you could place the url you want (affiliate link) and then when FB moderators checked the site they would be directed to an amazon product or random blog related to the ad. it worked pretty well for a few months then just ran out... like most Im products it seem! it was AutoTrafficAvalanche and im pretty sure this method is long outdated now - though theer will still be people trying to make it work.
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  • Profile picture of the author KarimPPC
    maybe they are redirecting the link using amazon s3

    though that is amazonaws.com
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