My Facebook Ad Account Was Closed! Here's what happened...

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What's up guys? I don't post to WF that much these days, but over the past week, I've had a bizarre experience with Facebook and their ad program. I shared it with my readers and I figured you guys would probably get a lot from it as well. I figured it fit best into PPC discussions. Here it is:

Well f*&^! That pretty much sums up this past week for me. A few hacker attacks and a douche bag Risk Management employee at Facebook has made the last 7 days quite a big bundle of stress.

The hacker issue isn’t that big of a problem. Hackers and viruses are part of the game so you get used to cleaning up the messes they make… but one of the worst things that could of happened to my business actually happened… My Facebook ads account got closed. And worst of all, it got closed for no real reason or not a good one.

PPC ad agencies like Google, YouTube, and Facebook are known for their horrendous customer support and iron fist rulings, but I’ve never lived it first hand until a few days ago.

I had no idea about it until I tried to login to post a new batch of ads for my clients. I got sent to an Ad Account Error screen instead.

It said there was suspicious payment activity on my account and they would have to close it down until it’s investigated.

At first, I figured the hacker got into my ad account too. I expected a quick email to let them know I am me would clean it up.

Well, I was wrong.

First off, Facebook has ZERO customer support. I’m serious. Look for an email to reach them. Find me a phone number to call. You’ll find nothing.

Wouldn’t you expect there to be some form of contact info especially for a user who spends money every week on ads.

I dug for a few hours and finally came across an email address in their payment appeals department.

I sent my ticket to this email to let them know what’s going on and for them to see if they could fix it. After all, I have clients paying $5k+ every month to have these ads going.

Within a few hours, here’s the response I got:
Hi Travis,
Thank you for your patience. Based on the information you provided, we have concluded the review of your account and you can now make payments normally. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.
Please let us know if you have any questions or issues in the future.
Thanks,
Don
Risk Management
Facebook
I was happy. This email came in late at night so I figured I would go to bed and get posting my ads early morning.

Well, it only lasted a few hours. When I woke up the next morning and went to post my ads, the error page was showing up again.

I went straight to my email and found a new message in my inbox from Facebook… this time from a different Risk Management guy.

Here’s what it said:
Facebook is committed to presenting ads to our users that are useful and non-intrusive, and we are continually working to increase the relevance of ads. Our goal is to provide the highest quality user experience.
We reserve the right to reject any advertising that we deem contrary to these objectives. Similarly, we reserve the right to close an account creating ads contrary to these objectives.
For this reason, if any of your ads have been removed or your ad account has been disabled, we will be unable to reactivate either. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause. Please consider this decision final.
Thanks for your understanding,
Carlos S.
Risk Ops.
Facebook
Keep in mind, at this point, I thought it was just a payment account error and not a problem with my ads. I honestly couldn’t even think of any ads I had posted that would be a problem.

So, I figured it’s got to be a misunderstanding. I emailed Carlos back and of course as these amazing teams do… no reply.

I go back to the original email I found and send another message to them. I addressed it to Don since he was the one who actually opened it for me and said it was good, but I received a quick reply from Carlos that stated:
“This decision is final. Please consider this the end of our correspondence regarding this matter.”
At this point, I’m extremely confused. I pleaded for them to just explain. I needed to know what was causing the problem for my future ad campaigns.
Of course, nothing again.

My ad marketing could not stop though. I have too many clients and make too much from the traffic.

So, I went ahead and created a new Facebook account. I wasn’t sure on what they blocked or blacklisted, so I started small with just a new Facebook account.

Everything was going great until I uploaded my payment system. Like I said, I wanted to see what constituted on the blacklist so I tried my original PayPal account.

Within a few minutes of trying this PayPal account, the new Facebook account was getting a login error. It asked me to provide proof of who I was. They wanted a driver’s license, utility bill, or something of the like.

I was going to push the limits here, so I doctored up one of my phone bills to have the name Derek Wrigley on it… that’s the pen name account I was using.

Within a few hours, I was back inside Derek Wrigley’s ad account and posting ads. I used a secondary credit card that’s not on file with my original account and everything ran great.

Now, I like to run things legitimately as much as possible and running an ad account through a fake person would probably come and bite me in the ass eventually.

So, I hit up a close friend who never uses Facebook and asked to be able to use it for ads. He agreed and we were back up and running within 48 hours.

Now, here’s the real funny part. I was in the middle of writing my rant post about this scenario last night. As I went to try and enter my original ad account for a screen shot of the error page, the account was open again!

I just posted an ad through the account with my original PayPal account.

Weird stuff for sure!

I’ve still received no explanation or even notice that my account is open again, but I do have my assumptions from the extensive research I’ve been doing this past few days.

Facebook is changing a bunch with their system. I talked about their layout changing the other day, but they are rehauling almost everything… even their ad program.

I feel like my account got caught in a spring cleaning event for the Risk Managers with this new Facebook rolling out.

One of the big mistakes I made and I had no idea I was making is not deleting my ads campaigns once I’m done with them.

Don’t just pause them… don’t just stop the ads… DELETE THEM!!!

If they are still on your account (even not running) and Facebook changes their TOS, you are violating their rules.

This is one of the violations I believe came up on my account. Over a year ago, I had created a small ad campaign to test out using Kim Khardasian’s face.

I spent less than $5 on these ads and it hasn’t run in over 13 months. BUT, the ads are still on my account in the campaign list.

Today, Facebook’s ToS isn’t as lenient with using celebrities faces and they might of raised a red flag.

The next possible violation I could imagine is the fact I’m in the ‘make money’ niche. No ad agencies like this niche because it ruins the user experience over time… yes, marketers ruin website experiences!

My last ads I ran before the shut down were inviting viewers to register for my upcoming webinar.

The initial ads I ran for this campaign had too much text on the image. New rules state you can only have images with 20% text in your ads. This one probably had about 23-25% and stated the income I as making from email marketing.

Right there, that’s two risky scenarios for this Facebook team that could of brought up red flags.

Was I spamming or sending these people to crap? No way, but let me tell you something.. a Risk Management team will spend very little time if any actually looking at what you provide and what type of business you run.

The last ads that might of brought up a problem were in the weight loss niche about 8 months ago. I had posted an image of some over weight people and Facebook didn’t like me portraying a desire for the perfect image.

That was 3 ads that weren’t approved 8 months ago though. Overall, that’s the only ad problems I can imagine would cause any problem at all.

In reality, these ads probably made up about $50 of the $15k I’ve spent on Facebook ads. I’m still flabbergasted by my account being closed.

Who knows how long it will be left alone. We seem to have a Stalin-esque figure in the department who isn’t being appreciated enough. I’m keeping my secondary account going from now on.

Hopefully this helps you out or at least gives you an idea of what you can do if your account gets closed.

From the searches I’ve done, the majority of people getting closed are blackhatters and hackers… but apparently they catch normal advertisers in the crossfire.

Let’s just keep our fingers crossed my account stays open!

UPDATE: The account is closed again lol.

Travis
#account #closed #facebook #happened
  • Profile picture of the author nik0
    Banned
    Christ what a story, it seems like you can't even spend money any more lol.
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    • Profile picture of the author petelta
      Originally Posted by nik0 View Post

      Christ what a story, it seems like you can't even spend money any more lol.
      It is definitely not comforting. After doing some deeper research over the past few days, I've come across a few users who have had the same type of trouble for little or no reason. Some of them have had their account reopend 6-8 months later, but it seems to only happen when a new Risk Manament Officer is put in charge. There isn't great communication in this department apparently.
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      Niche Pro Profits - How I raked in OVER $120k in 9 months with authority niche sites...

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      • Profile picture of the author 1byte
        Thanks for sharing your experience. So sorry to hear about this. I don't use Facebook, but I had a similar experience with Google Adwords last year. They closed my account for some very old (5 years) paused ads that no longer complied with TOS.

        Of course they were within TOS when I originally ran the Ads way back, but once they changed the TOS, and I was apparently out of compliance, they suspended my account with no recourse.

        Hope you can get it all worked out with FB. At least you have a 2nd account to fall back on, so that's good.
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  • Profile picture of the author KuhNoodle
    Hey any update on this? You've still got the other account right? The one you made with the fake details. Straight Black Hatted Facebook
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    • Profile picture of the author petelta
      Originally Posted by KuhNoodle View Post

      Hey any update on this? You've still got the other account right? The one you made with the fake details. Straight Black Hatted Facebook
      My ISP is blocked. So, I have to use a second account, a second paypal account, and use my computer from anywhere else other than my home.

      Lol, they are forcing me to bend the rules. I'm still legally fine though. It's a real person's Facebook account and paypal account, I'm just running it.
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      • Profile picture of the author newz
        Originally Posted by petelta View Post

        My ISP is blocked. So, I have to use a second account, a second paypal account, and use my computer from anywhere else other than my home.
        This little proxy is what the Chinese dissidents use to get around the Chi-coms filter. Maybe it will help. Don't need to install. Just put on your desktop. Check it with whatismyip.com or a site like that...Hope it helps.

        Here is there website blurb. Site is ultrasurf.us

        Ultrasurf is a product of Ultrareach Internet Corporation. Originally created to help internet users in China find security and freedom online, Ultrasurf has now become one of the world's most popular anti-censorship, pro-privacy software, with millions of people using it to bypass internet censorship and protect their online privacy.
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  • Profile picture of the author newz
    Originally Posted by petelta View Post

    Well f*&^! That pretty much sums up this past week for me. A few hacker attacks and a douche bag Risk Management employee at Facebook has made the last 7 days quite a big bundle of stress.
    Thanks for the post, Travis! I tried to post my first ad on Facebook and got the "unusual payment activity" account shutdown. When I questioned it, I got a response email from that same "Don" stating the decision was final. Thing is I never made any payments or collected any but got shutdown for "unusual payment activity". Quite aggravating! Thx.
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  • Profile picture of the author CoachManny
    Facebook is weird.

    They are quickly putting people in "jail" requesting friendship. Someone says they don't know you...boom you are unable to friend a person for 7 days. I still have another 3 days before I can friend people. Mind you I only request friends who have a lot of mutual friends but still was put on lockdown.

    I am spending a lot more time on Google+ these days.

    Manny
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    • Profile picture of the author Jgowen77
      Originally Posted by CoachManny View Post

      Facebook is weird.

      They are quickly putting people in "jail" requesting friendship. Someone says they don't know you...boom you are unable to friend a person for 7 days. I still have another 3 days before I can friend people. Mind you I only request friends who have a lot of mutual friends but still was put on lockdown.

      I am spending a lot more time on Google+ these days.

      Manny
      Half the friends I have on FB are people I've never met.
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  • Profile picture of the author Jgowen77
    I've had several ads approved on FB, told they were running, and all my numbers have been zero across the board. I know that can't be right, I got decent action with Adwords and Ive run FB ads in the very beginning that got action. After hearing your story I may just go delete all of them and say screw it.
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  • Profile picture of the author Edk
    The plus is that Facebook seem quite a bit more flexible than Adwords. Let's glory in the plus...
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