Solved: Ads Rejected for Unacceptable Business Practices

Hi there,

Thanks for reaching out! It sounds incredibly frustrating, and honestly, you're not alone. We see this kind of thing happen all the time, even with ads that were running perfectly fine just the day before. It's one of the most annoying parts of advertising on Meta.

I'm happy to give you some of my initial thoughts and guidance. The short answer is that you've likely fallen foul of Meta's automated review system, which can be ridiculously sensitive and inconsistent. It's often not about your business being dodgy, but about a single word or phrase in your ad or even on your website that a bot has decided it doesn't like. Let's get into what's probably going on and how you can fix it.

Let's first understand what's likely happening...

First off, you need to understand that a human probably hasn't even seen your ad. Meta reviews millions of ads every single day. They rely on an army of AI bots to do the initial screening, and these bots are... well, they're not the sharpest tools in the shed. They operate on a set of rules and keyword flags, and they have absolutely zero context for your business or your previous ad's success.

The fact that the exact same ad was approved before means very little. Meta is constantly updating its algorithm and enforcement policies, often without telling anyone. What was perfectly acceptable last Tuesday can become a policy violation by Wednesday morning. It's a moving target, and it's designed to be that way. They'd rather have a high number of 'false positives' (rejecting good ads) than let a single bad ad slip through that could cause them legal trouble or bad PR.

The "Unacceptable Business Practices" policy is their go-to, catch-all reason for rejection. It's intentionally vague so they can apply it to almost anything they don't like. Tbh, it's less about your actual business practices and more about the *language* you use to promote it. They are hyper-sensitive to anything that could be perceived as:

• Misleading Claims: Promising specific outcomes, especially in areas like finance, health, or "get rich quick" schemes. Even something innocent like "Guaranteed to make you smile!" could be flagged by an overzealous bot.
• High-Pressure Tactics: Using excessive urgency or making people feel bad to force a sale.
• Circumventing Systems: This is a big one. It can include anything from trying to hide text in images to having a landing page that's just a wall of text with an email capture and no real substance or navigation.
• Poor User Experience: This is crucial and often overlooked. The bot will follow the link in your ad and scan your website. If your site is slow, has aggressive pop-ups, broken links, or very little content, it can trigger a rejection.

I remember one client we worked with, they were in the prize draw niche, and their ads kept getting rejected. It took us ages to figure it out. The problem wasn't the ad; it was a single sentence on their landing page that said something like "a risk-free way to win". The bot saw "risk-free" and immediately flagged it under their financial services policy, even though it had nothing to do with finance. We changed it to "a fun way to win," and the ads were approved instantly. It can be that sensitive and, frankly, that stupid.

The key takeaway here is to stop thinking about it logically from a human perspective. You're not trying to convince a person; you're trying to satisfy a deeply flawed, keyword-scanning robot that has a very strict, secret list of naughty words. Your job is to figure out what those words are in your specific case.

We'll need to look at your ad copy with a magnifying glass...

Since the copy is often the primary culprit, let's start there. The slightest hint of an over-promise can get you in trouble. This is especially true if you're in a sensitive category like health, wellness, finance, business opportunities, or personal coaching. The bot is trained to look for patterns that resemble scams, even if you are completely legitimate.

You need to scrub your ad copy—headline, main text, and even the text on your image or video—for anything that could be remotely misinterpreted. Think less like a marketer and more like a corporate lawyer trying to avoid a lawsuit. Here’s a breakdown of common trigger phrases and what you might use instead. This isnt an exhaustive list by any means, but it should give you a good idea of the mindset you need to adopt.

The general rule is to shift from making promises to offering guidance. Instead of selling the destination ("You WILL make £10k"), you sell the map ("Learn the strategies that could help you grow"). It's a subtle but critical difference. You have to tone down the marketing hype and focus on clear, honest descriptions of what you offer. It feels less powerful from a copywriting perspective, but it's what gets past the bots. You can always get more aggressive with your copy on your landing page, although as we'll see, even that has its limits.

I'd say the problem might not even be in the ad...

This is the part that catches 90% of people out. They spend hours tweaking their ad copy, swapping images, and getting more and more frustrated, when the problem was never the ad itself. It was the website they were linking to.

Meta's bots don't just review your ad; they crawl your destination URL.

They are looking for a trustworthy, functional, and transparent user experience. If your landing page looks even slightly suspicious, they will reject your ad under the "Unacceptable Business Practices" policy, because they assume you are trying to mislead users with a bait-and-switch. Your ad might be perfect, but if it leads to a sketchy-looking page, it's game over.

Here’s a checklist of things the bot is almost certainly looking for on your website:

• Complete Legal Information: Does your website have an easily accessible Privacy Policy, Terms of Service, and contact information? This includes a business address and a phone number or email. A lack of this information is a massive red flag and suggests you're not a real business.
• Functionality: Are there broken links? Does the page load incredibly slowly? Are there any scripts that seem buggy? A non-functional website provides a bad user experience, and Meta will penalise you for it.
• Aggressive Pop-ups: Exit-intent pop-ups or pop-ups that appear the second a user lands on the page are often flagged. They see it as obstructing the content the user clicked to see.
• "Thin" Content: If your landing page is just a single headline, a video, and an email opt-in form with no other information or navigation, it might be seen as a low-quality "squeeze page" designed only to harvest data. You need some substance.
• Inconsistent Messaging: Does the promise on your ad match the content on your landing page? If your ad talks about selling handmade jewellery, but the landing page is all about a business coaching course, that's a classic bait-and-switch that will get you an instant rejection.
• The Same Trigger Words: And of course, all the risky keywords we just talked about apply to your landing page too. The bot will scan the text on your page for the same promises and guarantees.

This is where a structured diagnostic approach is so important. You have to isolate the variables. To help with this, I've mapped out the typical process we'd follow to diagnose a persistent ad rejection. It's about checking each component in a logical order.

Following this process helps you figure out if the core problem lies with the words in your ad, the content of your landing page, or something more fundamental about your ad account itself. If a completely bland ad linking to your homepage still gets rejected, you might have a bigger issue with your account's history or trust score with Meta, which is a whole other conversation.

You probably should avoid the 'boost post' button...

Now for a bit of tough love. The fact you mentioned you "boosted the same exact post" tells me you're likely using the blue "Boost Post" button on your Facebook page. While Meta pushes this as an easy way to advertise, it's essentially a superseeded, simplified tool designed for complete beginners. If you're serious about getting results and avoiding these kinds of headaches, you need to stop using it and start using the proper Facebook Ads Manager.

Think of it like this: the "Boost Post" button is like cooking a meal in a microwave. It's fast, it's easy, and it gets the job done on a very basic level. Ads Manager, on the other hand, is like a full professional kitchen. It's more complex, has a steeper learning curve, but it gives you total control over every single ingredient and technique, allowing you to create a much better result.

Relying on the boost button puts you at a massive disadvantage. Here's a comparison of what you're missing out on:

When you boost a post, you're typically optimising for 'Post Engagement' (likes, comments, shares). This tells Meta's algorithm to find people who like to click 'like'. These people are often not the same people who like to click 'buy'. In Ads Manager, you can choose a 'Conversions' or 'Leads' objective, and the algorithm will specifically seek out users within your target audience who have a history of making purchases or filling out forms. This alone can make a monumental difference to your results.

More importantly in your case, Ads Manager gives you a much clearer diagnostic environment. You can duplicate ads easily, change one variable at a time, and see exactly what is causing the rejection without affecting your organic page post. It's time to leave the boost button behind.

You'll need a systematic approach to get back on track...

Alright, let's put this all together into an actionable plan. Don't just randomly change things and hope for the best. That's a recipe for more frustration. You need to be methodical. Here’s the step-by-step process I would recommend:

1. Create a "Control" Ad: Go into Ads Manager. Create a brand new campaign with a 'Traffic' objective. For the ad creative, use a simple, inoffensive image (like a picture of your office or a generic stock photo related to your industry). For the copy, write something incredibly bland and safe. For example: "Learn more about our services. We help businesses in [your industry]. Visit our website to find out more." No promises, no hype, no questions, no 'you'.
2. Link to a "Safe" Page: For the destination URL of this control ad, don't link to your main landing page. Link directly to your website's 'About Us' or 'Contact Us' page. These pages are usually simple and unlikely to contain any problematic marketing language.
3. Submit and Wait: Run this ad with a very small budget (£5/day is fine). The goal here isn't to get results; it's purely to see if it gets approved.
   • If it's approved: Fantastic! This tells you that your ad account and domain are generally in good standing. The problem is 100% with your original ad copy or landing page.
   • If it's rejected: This is more serious. It could mean your ad account or even your entire domain has been flagged by Meta. At this point, you'd need to contact support and prepare for a potentially long process of trying to get it cleared.
4. Introduce Variables One by One: Assuming your control ad was approved, now you start testing. Duplicate the approved 'control' ad set. Keep everything the same, but change one thing.
   • Test the Landing Page: Change the URL from the 'About Us' page to your original landing page. If this new ad gets rejected, you've found your culprit. The problem is on your website.
   • Test the Ad Copy: If the landing page test was approved, go back to the original control ad. Duplicate it again, but this time, keep the safe 'About Us' link and introduce your original ad's headline. If it gets rejected, the problem is the headline. If not, duplicate it again and add the main body text, and so on.

This process is tedious, I wont lie. But it's the only way to definitively find the needle in the haystack that's causing the bot to reject your ad. To help you pre-empt some of these issues, I've built a small interactive tool below. It's a simple 'Ad Copy Risk Calculator'. Go through and check the boxes that apply to the copy you're trying to run, and it'll give you a rough idea of how likely it is to be flagged by the automated systems.

By now, I hope you have a much clearer picture of what's going on. It's not arbitrary, even though it feels that way. It's a rigid, automated system that you have to learn to work with. I've detailed my main recommendations for you below in a more condensed format for you to follow.

As you can see, successfully navigating Meta's ad policies can feel like a full-time job. It requires patience, a deep understanding of their ever-changing rules, and a methodical approach to testing. It's often a process of trial and error that can burn through time and money with no guarantee of success, which is incredibly frustrating when you're just trying to grow your business.

This is where expert help can make a real difference. An experienced eye can often spot the potential policy violations in your ads and on your landing page in minutes, not days. We've dealt with these kinds of rejections countless times across dozens of industries and have built up a strong intuition for what the review bots are looking for. We can help you restructure your campaigns, rewrite your copy to be compliant yet effective, and advise on landing page optimisations that not only get your ads approved but also improve your conversion rates.

If you'd rather focus on running your business than battling with Facebook's support bots, we offer a completely free, no-obligation initial consultation. We can take a quick look at your ad account and website together and give you some specific, actionable feedback on what we believe the issue is. It might save you a lot of time and headaches.

Regards,

Team @ Lukas Holschuh