My Facebook Ad Account Was Disabled on My First Ad

To preface this post, I will say with 100% certainty that my ad did not violate any policies. It was only a Facebook post linking to an article I wrote about how to say hello and goodbye in Korean.

I've run ads similar to this in the past under a Business Manager account of another company, and there was no issue whatsoever.

I also have a privacy policy in my website, as well as in the Facebook page the ad is run from, and everything is up to snuff in terms of content. This is how the post I'm attempting to boost looks:

I intended for this post to be somewhat of a warmup ad, as I just wanted to share something simple and easy for engagement for a start, since I'm using a new Business Manager and a new Ad account.

The Facebook Page where I'm running the ad though, is not new—it's been around for at least 5 years, and although the page hasn't been very well nurtured, there shouldn't have been a problem to run ads using it.

Remember to Verify Your Domain and Business First

Granted, I recently moved the page from my personal Facebook account to a new Business Manager account.

My biggest suspicion in why my Ad account was disabled minutes after I attempted to run my first ad using it was that both my domain and business were not verified at the time. 

Even so, because verification wasn't a hard requirement, my ads didn't violate any policies and my ad account shouldn't have been disabled, especially since I was able to verify both my domain and business shortly after.

Still, if you are about to run a Facebook ad, perhaps you might want to make sure that you verify your domain and business information beforehand to minimize the risk of getting your Ad account disabled. It's hard to know what exactly causes an Ad account to be disabled even when things seem proper, but I believe you should cover your bases as well as you can, which is what I should've done a tiny bit better.

Would my Ad account still be disabled if I took more precautions? Well, maybe it will, maybe it won't. It's the Facebook algorithm, so who knows.

In any case, here are the 3 things I did after receiving a notification that my Facebook account has been disabled.

1. I requested a review, but this was a mistake. I should have verified my domain and business first.

Shortly after my Ad account was disabled, I requested a review by clicking on the Request review button on the right hand side. 

There are 3 options that will show upon clicking this button:

• I'm not sure which policy was violated.
• I think there was unauthorized use of my ad account.
• Another reason: [this option allows you to type into a text box to make your case]

After clicking on the Request review button, I selected the first option where it says "I'm not sure which policy was violated", but this was a mistake when I highly suspected that the reason why my account was disabled was because my domain and business weren't verified yet.

2. I verified my domain and business.

I should have verified my domain and business first, and then request a review by selecting the third option: "Another reason" to explain that I have now verified both of them.

• Here is a tutorial from Facebook on how to verify a domain. I was able to verify mine within minutes after copying the necessary codes into my website.
  
  
• And here is a tutorial from Facebook on how to verify a business. In my case, I submitted my company incorporation document on a Friday evening and it was verified 2–3 days later.

3. I also Googled for solutions.

I then went on a Googling spree on how I could have my ad account reinstated, and I notice some Facebook Ad account owners have the option to chat or email a representative in Meta Business Help Center, but I'm not getting the option. Here are some of the links I've tried:

• https://www.facebook.com/business/help
• https://www.facebook.com/business/help/support
• https://www.facebook.com/business/resource

Some have said that you would need to spend some amount of money first for the chat or email option to be available, but since my account was disabled before I was even allowed to spend money, I keep running in circles.

Every other link I clicked on the Business Help Center about disabled ad account eventually leads back to Account Quality, which shows that my account is still in review even though Request review page states that I would receive a notification within 48 hours after submitting the request. It's been almost a week now and there's no updates yet.

Next: Send an Ad Payments Inquiry

I stumbled across this form: Disabled Payments & Ads Manager Form, which seems promising, but somehow it's not listing out the Ad accounts I have, which meant I couldn't submit it. You can try to see if this form works for you!

In my case, I notice the link at the bottom that says: If you are unable to submit this form please click here. So I did, which brings me to a Payments Support form.

Today is a Friday, so I'm going to wait until early next week to act on this. But I've played around with this form and I decided that this is what I'm going to do next:

In this Payments Support form, I'm going to click on Ads, select my Ad account in question, select I have a question about payment > None of the above, and send the following message: 

Fingers crossed it will work—but for now, I'm going to unwind a little for the weekend... 

Update: Replying to Facebook Ads Payments Team

It's Monday today. I submitted the Ads Payments Inquiry Form and I was almost instantly greeted with an auto-reply that says it seemed like I have contacted the incorrect team.

They also sent me an email saying the same thing, but now there is an option for me to reply, and the reply-to email appears to be attached to a case that would likely be reviewed by a human. So I replied to the email with the message I sent in the form earlier.

Let the waiting games begin.