Rules to Remember About Facebook Political Ads

Facebook recently implemented an authorization process for page admins and advertisers in the U.S. who run political ads. While this process appears to only affect a fraction of ad accounts, many advertisers have seen their non-political ads be tagged as containing political content.  This occurrence has led to confusion surrounding this process, so let’s demystify the authorization process and clarify what Facebook considers a political ad.  

Who needs to complete this process?

This process is for any advertisers who reside in the U.S. and plan to target the U.S. with ads that contain political content. This means anyone who manages a brand that could possibly post something that can be interpreted as political in nature. Every person who touches that brand in admin and advertiser roles should be authorized. To learn if you should get authorized, click here.

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What is being classified as political?

According to Facebook, ads will be deemed political when they have any of the following characteristics: 

  • Related to, created by, or run on behalf on someone running for public office, a former candidate for public office, political party, political action committee. 
  • Related to elections, referendums, any election information campaigns, and even ads just encouraging people to vote.  
  • If the ad is regulated as political advertising. 
  • If the ad relates to an issue that is deemed a “national legislative issue of public importance” by Facebook. 

Many non-political ad accounts have begun seeing their ads deemed political by Facebook due to the “national legislative issue of public importance” criteria. This category is quite broad reaching and vague, with Facebook stating that this category includes topics related to abortion, budgets, civil rights, crime, the economy, education, energy, the environment, foreign policy, government reform, guns, health, immigration, military, poverty, social security, taxes, terrorism, and values. To read more about Facebook’s rules regarding content, click here.

What do you need to be authorized?

This authorization process requires verification of identity, location, ad accounts that will be used to run political ads, and disclose who is paying for that ad. This identity confirmation process requires a US driver’s license or passport, a US residential mailing address, and the last 4 digits of the Social Security number. To get started with the authorization process, click here.

What is different about political ads?

The new political ads will all include disclaimers that will disclose the source of funding behind the ad. Additionally, all ads deemed political will be added to a searchable archive available to everyone. It will provide information on duration the ad ran, impressions, spend, demographic information, and locations for each ad in the archive. To learn more about the changes to these ads, click here.  

Political content is not the only area of Facebook ads that are seeing changes recently. Facebook has been making a lot of updates to their ads like algorithm changes, and adding functionality to their canvas and dynamic ads. If you are interested in learning more about changes on Facebook, visit our blog to learn more. If you want to learn more about how Ignite can help your company, contact us.



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