Guest post by Pierre-Lou Dominjon.

Many factors go into creating Facebook Ads: headlines, copy, images, offers, targeting, bidding and more all have to be considered. Once you’ve assembled and created your ad, you still have to check it against Facebook’s guidelines and rulebook. If you add a landing page, the fun and chaos increase even further.

It’s therefore no surprise that a large number of Facebook Ads are rejected. When an ad comes back rejected, it can be frustrating, especially when the advertiser has a hard time figuring out what went wrong. Knowing what to do when a Facebook Ad gets rejected however, makes it easier to keep things going smoothly and get your ad back up and running quickly.

Here are some quick tips for what you can do.

How You Will Know

When you’re waiting for your ad to get approved, you can check its status through an ads manager, or through an aggregating platform like Growmobile. It will either be marked as pending, accepted, or rejected. The approval process can take anywhere from 15 minutes to 24 hours.

When your ad gets rejected, you’ll not only see that it’s been rejected, you’ll also be given a reason by Facebook.

Some reasons are very specific, such as “you used a blocked word or phrase.” Sometimes, the explanations are more vague, and you’ll have to go investigate the problem yourself. Either way, it’s time to get back to work on the ad and see what needs adjusting.

How to Get Your Questions Answered

If you have questions as to why an ad was rejected, or if you want clarification or more direction so that you can make sure your ad gets approved next time, you can contact the Facebook Ads team directly. Doing this can provide you clear directions on how to proceed in a way that your ad will likely get accepted for the next go-around. You can also live-chat with a Facebook representative to get those answers quickly. You can contact Facebook and an ads specialist here.

Revise and Resubmit

Facebook doesn’t have a computer program or software that automatically approves ads, as many have previously thought; they have a team of trained, experienced employees whose sole jobs are to approve or reject Facebook Ads.

Because of this, certain sites mistakenly recommend resubmitting the same ad without making any changes, saying that “the system is subjective,” whether to opinion or human error.

That is not the case; these experts are highly trained when it comes to Facebook Ads (hence the term “experts”) and they know the rule book front to back, as will the person next to them. Approval of Facebook Ads is much less subjective than some people seem to think. If your ad gets rejected once and you resubmit it the same way, there’s a 99.99% chance it will get rejected again.

Here’s a fun bonus: if you continue to submit the same unrevised ad time after time, it can lead to your account being suspended or even banned. Additionally, if you receive several ad rejections you run the risk of having your quality score reduced, negatively impacting your ad delivery and your KPIs (how much you’re paying for clicks and impressions).

Because of this, it’s highly recommended to always make the suggested revisions the first time around, and not continue sending an unrevised ad—this will make the process go more quickly and be less painful for everyone.

Tips to Keep Your Ads from Getting Rejected

While it’s not the end of the world if your ad is rejected, we’d all rather save some time and have them approved the first time around (or at least the second time, since continuing to submit rejected ads can lead to your account getting banned).

Here are a few quick and easy tips to make sure ads get approved:

• Some industries have additional guidelines for how they can use Facebook Ads. Liquor companies, for example, can’t advertise to anyone under 21, or to people within certain regions. Medical and pharmaceutical companies can’t advertise products requiring prescriptions to acquire. Review Facebook’s rule book to check for additional industry rules for your business before you run your ads.
• If your ad gets rejected and you have a landing page, check the landing page first. Landing page issues are among the most common reasons ads get rejected, for problems like offers not matching up, or the fine print not being spelled out. You can see a full list of common landing page errors here.
• Some ads will be rejected because consistency is a problem. The image doesn’t match what’s being advertised, the copy doesn’t match the headline, or the offer isn’t consistent in the ad and on the landing page. Consistency is key.
• Be mindful of the 20% rule. This is a rule Facebook has that states that text can’t take up more than 20% of an image on an ad. Some platforms offer a built-in tools to check if an image passes the 20% rule by activating a grid across a picture dividing it up into sections.
• Other common reasons ads get rejected include having automatic downloads, implying an endorsement from Facebook, and having misleading content. You can take a quick peek and review them all here so you know what to be on the lookout for.

Final Thoughts

Though it’s frustrating when an ad you’ve worked hard on comes back rejected, it’s always best to pinpoint the problem, adjust it, and try to resubmit it again once you’ve addressed the issue. Again, attempting to just resubmit the same exact ad again without fixing anything can lead to your account getting suspended or banned, so it’s just not worth the risk.

Adjusting your ad is often relatively easy, and while some complete overhauls are needed, it’s always worth it in the end to make sure it gets approved with the next submission so you can start running your campaigns—and seeing ROI—as soon as possible.

Pierre-Lou Dominjon leads the MakeMeReach division of Growmobile by Perion.