Facebook Ads: They’re No Fun

A while back I wrote about the new Facebook Ads platform and how I thought it was just fluff so that the company could claim that it had some income stream in order to raise more money from the big fish like Microsoft. After working with it since then, I have not yet been able to post a successful affiliate advertisement on the site.

Whenever I create a new ad, I end up with this message saying my ad was not approved:

• This ad has been disabled and should not be run again on the site under any circumstances. Unfortunately we cannot provide you with the specific violations that have been deemed abusive. Please review our Terms of Service and Advertising Guidelines if you have further questions.

I love the part where it says “Unfortunately we cannot provide you with the specific violations”. What this means to me is “We’re sorry, we don’t really have anyone looking at your ad but our algorithm didn’t like it for some reason. We really don’t know. Try again though, kthx!” If Facebook is serious about it’s super duper ad platform, I think it should want money from affiliates. The law of large numbers says that a little money * a lot of affiliates = a lot of money for FB.

So, Facebook, get your act together and make an advertising system that works, will ya? I’m trying to give you money but you won’t take it! What kind of business is that?