The word is officially out about my teammate, friend and media buying maestro, Caitlin Bergin. She is the face and brain behind Strong Brand Social’s Paid Social Bootcamp and regularly spends time inside our members-only Facebook group answering questions about paid ads. By far the most frequently asked question Caitlin receives is:

My Facebook ad account got shut down. Help me! Caitlin, can you hear me? What do I do now?

So I picked Caitlin’s brain and today would like to share a few resources and immediate next steps you can take when your ad account gets shut down. We recommend bookmarking this page so that when it does happen, you’ll have a quick, direct link ready to go.

1. DON’T PANIC.

Stay calm and do not panic. Ad accounts get disabled all the time. Ads get turned off for dozens of reasons. (Sh)It happens. This is your reminder to take a deep breath — or seven — and continue. Feel better? The truth is, more often than not, ads and ad accounts get wrongfully disabled and can be remedied in just a few clicks. Once they’re re-reviewed, they can be re-approved. With that said, here’s what you can do to assess what might actually be going on with your account…

2. Take Smart Steps to Assess Your Disabled Ad Account

This is where you dig into why your ads have been disabled. Is it your creative that’s being flagged? Is your copy violating the rules? Is your landing page link broken? Or maybe it has nothing to do with the ad content itself, but you’ve simply hit your ad spending limit and need to raise it on the backend. Or maybe you forgot to update your credit card number after it got renewed last week. Making sure the big things are in order is going to be your fastest route to a quick fix and getting your ads back in line for review.

Here are a few extremely helpful links directly from Facebook that can immediately help:

• Personal Account Disabled – This form is for people who can’t log into their accounts.
• Request Review of Restricted Ad Account – If your ad account was disabled because it didn’t comply with our Advertising Policies or other standards, you can request a review if you believe it shouldn’t be disabled.
• Request Review of Restricted Business Account – If your business account was restricted from advertising because it didn’t comply with our Advertising Policies or other standards, you can request a review if you believe it shouldn’t be restricted.
• Additionally, we’d suggest a semi-regular review of the official Facebook Advertising Policy that includes a detailed explanation of the ad review process with examples of prohibited and restricted content.

3. Fix Your Mistakes and Re-Submit The Ad For Review

If you do come across an issue or an accidental violation as you assess your account, simply fix it and re-submit the ad for review. Anything that you find that looks like a “smoking gun,” simply adjust the ad and re-submit it per usual.

An example of this could be for someone running a campaign for wine: Oops! You accidentally forgot to set the audience age limit to be 21+ because you were using a Lookalike Audience. Updating the age limit is a simple fix and ad resubmission can happen immediately after. 

The main thing here is to submit your ads for review and… wait. Don’t try to rush the Facebook process. Our recommendation? Walk away from the account until you have a notification saying your ads have been reviewed. The Facebook ad review people will tell you when they’ve made their decision and it’s best not to just sit, wallow and wait. Remember: DON’T PANIC!
And lastly, here’s a pro tip so that even if your ads do get shut down in the future, you’ll be ready.

4. Create a Backup Ad Account with a Seperate Pixel

Set up another ad account with a separate pixel and attach it to your site so that you have a backup ad account. Once you’ve created the secondary account and the pixel is properly installed, you can run small campaigns out of it to help season the pixel and show Facebook that you’re a reliable account. Do this now so that down the line you won’t have to scramble.

And that’s about it, folks. Remember these things so that when the moment comes and your ad account gets disabled, you’ll be ready to smartly assess exactly what’s wrong and know what to do to get your ads back up fast. Bookmark this page so you’ll have it handy and remember: sharing is caring. Don’t be shy about sharing this article with your fellow media buyers when you see someone waving the white flag of ad account shutdown!

If you’re looking for even more actionable insights on the fundamentals of the Facebook and Instagram ad platform, how to set up audiences, run campaigns for greater results and more, check out the power-packed Paid Social Bootcamp today to get your ad accounts trending in the right direction.

In your corner,

Katie