Facebook Increasingly Evaluating, Rejecting Misleading Performance Ads

Facebook is making new efforts to ensure that performance advertisers' content accurately reflects what each ad is about. Facebook has ramped up its part-automated and part-human evaluation efforts to reject inaccurate ads over the last two weeks, according to ClickZ. The issue is that some direct-response advertisers will use ad content that purports to be targeted, but without using Facebook's specific targeting filters. An ad saying "37 and male in Los Angeles?" for example, is not being allowed if the ad does not actually target Facebook users who are 37 years old, male, and self-designated as being Los Angeles. Lead-generation campaigns for financial services and higher education are apparently seeing click-through drops as a result of this creative not being accepted. Some incentivized ads, like "Get A Free Laptop!", are also not being allowed if the ad takes at least several pages to explain the details of how the offered item can actually be obtained. While some marketers are complaining, Facebook's enforcement is not surprising. Ads that are deceivingly targeted, or do not clearly deliver on their promises are not valuable to users. Facebook needs to make sure third-party ads are high-quality to, if nothing else, make sure users have a reason to pay attention to them. Many deceptive ads have run as offers or banners within third-party applications on Facebook's platform over the years. To this end, Facebook has been refining its terms of service, and banning monetization companies and taking developers offline who don't comply. The evaluation systems described in the report appear to be new and Facebook hasn't responded to our requests for comment. However, the terms they enforce appear to date back at least as far as January 4, 2010, when the company last updated its advertising guidelines. One clause, 5a, specifically prohibits "false, misleading, fraudulent, or deceptive." advertising -- which squarely nails deceptive incentive ads. In terms of false targeting, though, the terms are not quite as clear. However, clause 7 -- especially a. -- seems close enough that no update to the terms is warranted. Here's the full thing: 7. Targeting a. Any targeting of ads based on a user attribute, such as age, gender, location, or interest, must be directly relevant to the offer, and cannot be done by a method inconsistent with privacy and data policies. b. Ads with adult themes, including contraception, sex education, and health conditions must be targeted to individuals at least 18 years old. Platform ads should do this via Demographic Restrictions, not by obtaining user data. c. Ads for dating sites, services, or related content must follow these targeting criteria (does not apply to ads on Facebook Platform): i. the Relationship Status targeting parameter must be utilized and set to Single; ii. the Sex targeting parameter must be utilized and a single value of Male or Female must be selected; iii. the Age targeting parameter must be utilized and the age range selected must start at least at 18 years old; iv. the Interested In targeting parameter must be utilized and a single value of either Men or Women must be selected. Some advertisers might be seeing a hit in terms of click-throughs and revenue, but Facebook is clearly trying to improve the user experience. The best advice for anyone seeing problems is to provide more obviously meaningful creative to users. [via CNET]

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Facebook Increasingly Evaluating, Rejecting Misleading Performance Ads

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