Facebook seems to be a little worried about the abundance of fake and/or misleading adverts on its platform.
These adverts usually occur when a scammer takes over someone’s Facebook account and pays for a lot of adverts using the stolen account.
Those adverts can be anything, but are typically for:
- Fake products
- Real products but of very poor quality
- A pop-up business that will disappear before customers have time to complain
- Scam pages that pretend to be government or FBI or major retailers but simply steal the users confidential information
- Clickbait pages
Facebook say the problem is ‘low quality’ adverts and they give three examples:
- Engagement Bait
These are your typical ‘like and share’ posts, re-purposed as adverts. Facebook does not like them as they can show false popularity.
- Withholding Information
Adverts designed to make people click by using clickbait are also disliked as they are fake content.
- Sensationalized Language
Adverts which use exaggerated headlines or lead to content not matching the headline are poor. The use of superlatives is fine where they are justified by the content.
Facebook says it will penalise anyone who infringes the rules.
Penalties
Facebook say that adverts considered to be low-quality will see reduced distribution in the advert auction, or will be disapproved.
Multiple adverts marked as low-quality may impact the performance of all adverts from that advertiser.
If you are running a Facebook campaign and use what Facebook consider to be low quality adverts then your campaign will likely cost more and perform worse than if you create better more honest adverts.
If you have any experiences with Facebook scams and problems do let me know, by email.
