..but not for reasons that you might suspect. According to an article in BuzzFeed, Facebook has taken down a slew of political ads from most of the leading Democratic candidates, and President Trump, for reasons that have some political observers shaking their collective heads.
The leading reason for taking down ads? Fake buttons. That’s right, building the appearance of an interactive button into your ad is grounds to have your ad “banned” by Facebook. And I have to say, as someone who has a personal vendetta against fake media player buttons (see below), this is a well deserved take-down.
Clicking on the Play button above doesn’t do anything (sorry to disappoint you) and if I were really sneaky I would have created a link to another website where I would have tried to sell you something.
But back to political ads…fake buttons is just the leading reason for being disqualified by Facebook. Other reasons include profanity, broken links (aka bad landing pages), and violating local disclosure rules.
The one thing that will not get your political ad banned from Facebook? Lying. That’s right, if your campaign makes a statement that doesn’t check out with reality…well, that’s left up to FB users to decide. So it’s on you to figure out who’s telling the truth. As they used to say in Ancient Rome, caveat emptor.
