Who Checks These Facebook Ads Anyway?

We saw this ad earlier today, and thought to ourselves “hang on, how did an ad like that get through the Facebook approval process?”

Just in case you haven’t placed a Facebook ad before, heres how it works. In simple terms  – you create your ad, add your image, choose the specifications of your ads and overall campaign (how much you want to spend per day, how much you want to bid per click max etc.) and submit your ad. After that point, the ad goes off to a virtual waiting room to be approved by Facebook. As this can take anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours, the advertiser just needs to sit and wait patiently for the ad to be given the “okay” – at which point, Facebook sends you an email to tell you. Happy days.

So what are Facebook looking for when they vet an ad? Have a look at their advertiser T&C’s to see for yourself. When we saw that ad, we thought we would have another look too. Does this ad actually go against any of Facebook’s guidelines for advertisers?

Well, Facebook say that the ads “must not offend users”. Surely Facebook have a filter for ads with content likely to offend – so how would an ad with “God” in the title get through that? The image is another classic – straight from Shutterstock, with the watermark still in tact! The content of the ad also consists of just one word – “community”. Regardless of the nature of the page it is promoting (which, is verrrry likely to offend! I am not keen on it myself), the ad itself is a beaut.

We will be keeping an eye out for amusing and strange ads on Facebook from now on