Advertising Policies

Our Advertising Policies provide guidance on what types of ad content are allowed. When advertisers place an order, each ad is reviewed against these policies. If you think your ad was mistakenly disapproved, you can request a review of the decision in Account Quality.

To help you build a compliant and user-friendly ads experience we've highlighted some common areas of confusion. Click the links below to learn more about each policy:

• Personal attributes
• Sexually suggestive content
• Facebook and Instagram brand usage in ads

Ads must not violate our Community Standards. Ads on Instagram must not violate the Instagram Community Guidelines.

Ads must not constitute, facilitate, or promote illegal products, services or activities. Ads targeted to minors must not promote products, services, or content that are inappropriate, illegal, or unsafe, or that exploit, mislead, or exert undue pressure on the age groups targeted.

Ads must not discriminate or encourage discrimination against people based on personal attributes such as race, ethnicity, color, national origin, religion, age, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, family status, disability, medical or genetic condition.

Ads must not promote the sale or use of tobacco products and related paraphernalia. Advertisements must not promote electronic cigarettes, vaporizers, or any other products that simulate smoking.

Ads must not promote the sale or use of illicit or recreational drugs, or other unsafe substances, products or supplements, as determined by Meta in its sole discretion.

Ads must not promote the sale or use of weapons, ammunition, or explosives. This includes ads for weapon modification accessories.

Ads must not promote the sale or use of adult products or services. Ads promoting sexual and reproductive health products or services, like contraception and family planning must be targeted to people 18 years or older and must not focus on sexual pleasure.

Ads must not contain adult content. This includes nudity, depictions of people in explicit or suggestive positions, or activities that are overly suggestive or sexually provocative.

Ads that assert or imply the ability to meet someone, connect with them or view content created by them must not be positioned in a sexual way or with an intent to sexualise the person featured in the ad.

Ads must not contain content that infringes upon or violates the rights of any third party, including copyright, trademark, privacy, publicity, or other personal or proprietary rights. To report content that you feel may infringe upon or violate your rights, please visit our Intellectual Property Help Center.

Ads must not contain shocking, sensational, or excessively violent content.

Ads must not contain content that asserts or implies personal attributes. This includes direct or indirect assertions or implications about a person’s race, ethnicity, religion, beliefs, age, sexual orientation or practices, gender identity, disability, physical or mental health (including medical condition), vulnerable financial status, voting status, membership in a trade union, criminal record, or name.

Meta prohibits ads that include content debunked by third-party fact checkers. Advertisers that repeatedly post information deemed to be false may have restrictions placed on their ability to advertise on Meta technologies. Find out more about our fact-checking program.

Meta also prohibits ads that include misinformation that violates our Community Standards.

Ads must not contain content that exploits crises or controversial political or social issues for commercial purposes.

Ads must not direct people to non-functional landing pages. This includes landing page content that interferes with a person’s ability to navigate away from the page.

Ads may not promote products or services that are designed to enable a user to engage in cheating or deceitful practices.

Ads must not contain profanity or bad grammar and punctuation. Symbols, numbers and letters must be used properly without the intention of circumventing our ad review process or other enforcement systems.

Ads must not contain images that portray nonexistent functionality. This includes imagery that replicates play buttons, notifications, or checkboxes, as well as ads containing features that do not work, such as multiple choice options in the ad creative itself.

Ad content must not imply or attempt to generate negative self-perception in order to promote diet, weight loss, or other health related products.

Ads may not promote payday loans, paycheck advances, bail bonds, or any short-term loans intended to cover someone's expenses until their next payday. Short term loan refers to a loan of 90 days or less.

Ads promoting income opportunities must fully describe the associated product or business model, and must not promote business models offering quick compensation for little investment, including multilevel marketing opportunities.

Ads may not promote penny auctions, bidding fee auctions, or other similar business models.

Ads must not contain deceptive, false, or misleading claims like those relating to the effectiveness or characteristics of a product or service, including misleading health, employment or weight-loss claims that set unrealistic expectations for users.

Ads must not contain content leading to external landing pages that provide an unexpected or disruptive experience. This includes misleading ad positioning, such as overly sensationalized headlines or prompts for users to inauthentically interact with the ad, and leading people to landing pages that contain minimal original content and a majority of unrelated or low quality ad content. For more information on what we consider low quality, visit our Business Help Center.

Ads must not contain spyware, malware, or any software that results in an unexpected or deceptive experience. This includes links to sites containing these products.

Ads must not promote products, services, schemes or offers using deceptive or misleading practices, including those meant to scam people out of money or personal information.

Ads must not use tactics intended to circumvent our ad review process or other enforcement systems. This includes techniques that attempt to disguise the ad's content or destination page.

Ads must not promote financial products and services that are frequently associated with misleading or deceptive promotional practices.

Ads must not promote the sale of human body parts or fluids.

Ads must not discourage people from vaccination or advocate against vaccines.

Ads must not contain praise, support, or representation of individuals or groups with ties to violence.

Ads that promote or reference alcohol must comply with all applicable local laws, required or established industry codes, guidelines, licenses and approvals, and include age and country targeting criteria consistent with Meta's targeting requirements and applicable local laws. Note that our policies prohibit ads promoting or referencing alcohol in some countries, including but not limited to: Afghanistan, Brunei, Bangladesh, Egypt, Gambia, Kuwait, Libya, Lithuania, Norway, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Thailand, Turkey, United Arab Emirates and Yemen.

Ads for dating services are only allowed with prior written permission. These must adhere to the dating targeting requirements and our dating ad guidelines. Details on the requirements for permission can be found here. In order to seek permission, please fill out this form to begin your application process.

Ads that promote online gambling, and gaming where anything of monetary value (including cash or digital/virtual currencies, e.g. bitcoin) is required to play and anything of monetary value forms part of the prize, are only allowed with our prior written permission. This includes games where purchases are required to continue game play and/or provide advantage in winning prizes, in cases where the prize is of monetary value. Authorized advertisers must follow all applicable laws, including targeting their ads in accordance with legal requirements. At a minimum, ads may not be targeted to people under 18 years of age.

Ads for online pharmacies are only permitted from advertisers with prior written permission. Meta requires online pharmacies who wish to run ads to be certified with LegitScript.

Ads that promote over-the-counter medicines must comply with all applicable local laws, required or established industry codes, guidelines, licenses and approvals, and include age and country targeting criteria consistent with applicable local laws.

Ads for subscription services, or that promote products or services that include negative options, automatic renewal, free-to-pay conversion billing products, or mobile marketing are subject to our subscription services requirements.

Ads promoting credit card applications, or financial services with accredited institutions must clearly provide sufficient disclosure regarding associated fees, including APR percentages, transaction fees, interest rates and the physical address of the entity offering the product within the ad's landing page. Ads promoting credit cards, loans or insurance services must be targeted to people 18 years or above. Ads promoting credit cards, loans or insurance services must not directly request the input of a person’s financial information, including credit card information.

Ads promoting branded content must tag the featured third party product, brand or business partner using the branded content tool. Branded content within ads is defined as a creator or publisher's content that features or is influenced by a business partner for an exchange of value. When promoting branded content integrations, advertisers must use the branded content tool (please learn more here on how to tag the featured third party product, brand or business partner).

Advertisers can run ads about social issues, elections or politics, provided the advertiser complies with all applicable laws and the authorization process required by Meta. Where appropriate, Meta may restrict issue, electoral or political ads. In addition, certain content related to elections may be prohibited in specific regions ahead of voting; click here for more.

If Meta's ad authorization process is available in your country, in addition to complying with the Community Standards and Advertising Policies, the disclaimer you submit for your ad about social issues, elections or politics must comply with the following guidelines. This information is provided by you during the ad authorization process and will be displayed on your ad’s header.

Ads may not promote cryptocurrency trading platforms, software and related services and products that enable monetization, reselling, swapping or staking of cryptocurrencies without prior written permission. To apply, please click here. For more information, see our Business Help Center.

Meta requires advertisers who wish to run addiction treatment ads targeting the USA to be certified with LegitScript, and apply to Meta for permission to advertise.

Addiction treatment ads include, but are not limited to: Clinical addiction treatment services or websites providing information about in-person treatment, online and in-person support groups, and crisis hotlines for those in recovery or who are seeking information about addiction treatment.

Advertisers can apply for certification with LegitScript here.

Ads for social casino games, which are online games that simulate casino gambling (e.g. poker, slots, roulette etc) where there is no opportunity to win money or money’s worth, are allowed only if they are targeted to people 18 years or older.

Ads may not promote prescription drugs without prior written permission.

Ads must not request account numbers, including frequent flyer numbers, loyalty card numbers, or cable or telephone account numbers without our prior permission.

Ads must not request information regarding criminal or arrest history without our prior permission.

Ads must not request financial information, including bank account numbers, bank routing numbers, credit or debit card numbers, credit scores, income, net worth or how much debt someone has without our prior permission.

Ads must not request government-issued identifiers, including Social Security numbers, passport numbers or driver's license numbers without our prior permission.

Ads must not request health information, including physical health, mental health, medical treatments, medical conditions or disabilities without our prior permission.

Ads must not request insurance information, including current insurance policy numbers, without our prior permission.

Ads must not request information regarding political affiliation.

Ads must not request information regarding race or ethnicity without our prior permission.

Ads must not request information regarding religion or philosophical beliefs without our prior permission.

Ads must not request information regarding sexual orientation or information about the sexual life of the individual, including what gender(s) the person prefers to date, without our prior permission.

Ads must not request the same or substantially similar information that you could use a Prefill Question to request.

Ads must not request information regarding trade Union membership status without our prior permission.

Ads must not request usernames or passwords, including usernames and passwords for existing and new accounts, without our prior permission. If you want to direct people to sign up for an account with your site or service, you should use the Clicks to Website or Website Conversions objective when you run your ads.

Ads must not imply an endorsement or partnership of any kind with any of Meta’s brands, or an endorsement by any other Meta brand, technology or program.

Ads linking to Facebook or Instagram content (including Pages, groups, events or sites that use Facebook Login) may make limited reference to “Facebook” or “Instagram” in ad text for the purpose of clarifying the destination of the ad.

All other ads and landing pages must not use our copyrights, trademarks, or any confusingly similar marks, except as expressly permitted by the Meta Brand Resource Center, or with our prior written permission.

When featuring the user interface (UI) of any Meta brands in an ad, it must accurately depict how the UI currently appears and functions in product. If an action or functionality depicted cannot happen in the current product or within the current UI then it cannot appear to happen in an ad.

Ensure any ad data collected, received or derived from your Facebook or Instagram ad (“Meta advertising data”) is only shared with someone acting on your behalf, such as your service provider. You are responsible for ensuring your service providers protect any Meta advertising data or any obtained from us, limit their use of all of that information, and keep it confidential and secure.

Don’t use Meta advertising data for any purpose (including retargeting, commingling data across multiple advertisers’ campaigns, or allowing piggybacking or redirecting with tags), except on an aggregate and anonymous basis (unless authorized by Meta) and only to assess the performance and effectiveness of your Meta advertising campaigns.

Don’t use Meta advertising data, including the targeting criteria for your ad, to build, append to, edit, influence, or augment user profiles, including profiles associated with any mobile device identifier or other unique identifier that identifies any particular user, browser, computer or device.

Don't transfer any Meta advertising data (including anonymous, aggregate, or derived data) to any ad network, ad exchange, data broker or other advertising or monetization related service.

The Advertising Policies apply to (1) ads and commercial content served by or purchased through Meta, on or off the Meta services, including ads purchased under AAAA/IAB Standard Terms and Conditions, (2) ads appearing within apps on Meta, and (3) ads on Instagram. Your use of Meta’s advertising products and services is part of “Meta” under Meta’s Statement of Rights and Responsibilities ( https://www.facebook.com/legal/terms, the “SRR”) and is subject to the SRR.You may be subject to additional terms or guidelines if you use Instagram or certain Meta advertising-related products or services.

Advertisers are responsible for understanding and complying with all applicable laws and regulations. Failure to comply may result in a variety of consequences, including the cancellation of ads you have placed and termination of your account.

We do not use sensitive personal data for ad targeting. Topics you choose for targeting your ad don't reflect the personal beliefs, characteristics or values of the people who use Facebook or Instagram

Once displayed, ads are public information. Ads may be re-shared and accessed outside of the targeted audience, including from the Facebook Page running the ads or within Meta Products. If users have interacted with your ad, your ad may remain on Meta products (for example, shared until the users delete it or visible to users through their account tools). If your ad is a political ad, it will be displayed in our Ad Library. This means that Meta may display (at no cost to you) and provide access to the ad content and creative, as well as information about the ad campaign (such as total spend and delivery data) for a period of seven (7) years from the completion of your order. Meta may disclose your advertising content, and all information associated with your advertising, to a governmental entity or body if Meta believes that disclosure would assist in a lawful investigation.

If you are managing ads on behalf of other advertisers, each advertiser or client must be managed through separate ad accounts. You must not change the advertiser or client associated with an established ad account; set up a new account. You are responsible for ensuring that each advertiser complies with these Advertising Policies.

As stated in our Community Standards, you must not sell, rent, buy or exchange site privileges, such as administrative access, for assets that belong to you or that you manage. Helping anyone evade or circumvent our enforcement of our policies or terms of service is also prohibited.

We reserve the right to reject, approve or remove any ad for any reason, in our sole discretion, including ads that negatively affect our relationship with our users or that promote content, services, or activities, contrary to our competitive position, interests, or advertising philosophy.

For policies that require prior written permission, Meta may grant these permissions.

These policies are subject to change at any time without notice.