This summer, I wrote a unique piece of sales copy for a client.
It was a video ad, telling a story over 3 or 4 minutes, using stock footage and text overlays. The goal was to have this run on Facebook and then link to an advertorial and then an order page.
The product in question was “eco-friendly bags” — basically, reusable produce bags to replace the ones you get at the store. People are crazy about the dangers of plastics these days, so I wrote up an inspirational story about how one brilliant inventor saw the need to help the planet and presto, eco-friendly bags.
Anyways, about a week ago, I remembered this project. And I followed up with the client to see how the video ad performed.
Here’s what he wrote back:
“We unfortunately ran into some issues with that product – Facebook now flags and doesn’t allow ads that address political or social issues. Since the ad talked about pollution / the environment it was, unfortunately, flagged.”
Wow. It didn’t even occur to me that talking about pollution or dead seagulls could be a compliance issue. Sure, I heard from many different sides that FB is cracking down on ads. This summer seemed to be the high point. Anything that looks ugly, scary, or is too full of hype couldn’t run. But I guess “social issue” ads became a problem also.
That’s rough. Things are getting really strict out there…
Or are they?
Because let me tell you a second FB ads story:
A few days ago, I saw an ad, written in English (I live in Croatia), featuring some Croatian celebrity, with a classic clickbait headline along the lines of, “He went on TV to reveal how anyone can make 54,319.44 Croatian Kuna in just minutes — and it’s got the National Bank terrified!” The actual advertorial page promoted some Bitcoin trading platform.
Several other versions of this ad, run by other FB pages, also appeared on my feed that same day, and for several days after. There were dozens of comments on each ad. Some were by people simply talking about the Croatian celebrity (“what does this moron know about making money”) while a few pointed out this is clearly a scam.
And here’s the staggering thing:
All of these ads had been running for several weeks. It got so bad that the Croatian celebrity gave a newspaper interview to explain he has nothing to do with this Bitcoin scam. Nonetheless, the ad continues to run, in various iterations, right there on Facebook.
I think this is a sign of things to come.
Over the past couple of years, Facebook has made a show at regulating ads. And it will probably continue to censor ads that push certain hot buttons or that target certain markets.
But the moment has passed. Nobody expects any integrity or accountability from Facebook any more. And at the same time, scammers as well as more legitimate businesses figured out how to run edgy FB ads, or downright duplicitous FB ads.
As this year wraps up and we enter the glorious 2020’s decade, I expect this will continue and intensify. And if I’m right, this means we’re all in for a wild show.