We’re an online dating platform by the name QuackQuack.in and Facebook does not allow us to run ads. But others are easily running ads on Facebook. Can anyone help?
The whole story:
We had been advertising on Facebook since the time we launched in 2010. However, when they changed their policy for dating ads, all our ads got disapproved around Feb, 2014. We thought that since we were banned, all others were banned too. Also, all the disapproved ads came with a standard message “you must have prior authorization from Facebook to buy dating ads on Facebook. We aren’t accepting new partners at this time, but we expect to open applications for new advertisers.” We thought we’d get to know about this when the applications open.
However, after a few months I saw ads of Shaadi.com, BharatMatrimony.com and few other international dating sites flashing on my newsfeed and we immediately setup some ands and saw they were getting disapproved again with the very same reasons! Not only this, there were some new entrants in this space who were advertising freely while all our ads were getting rejected.
Here’s what I did later:
- Contacted Facebook Ads support via their support center and even after asking hardcore questions about our ads and why competitor ads were approved, they had robotic answers in their replies. It did not work out.
- I tried contacting Facebook Ads team in Mumbai to setup a dedicated account, but they shut the phone outright.
- I tried getting in touch with someone from Facebook Ads team via a friend and they politely refused to entertain us.
We recently created some Facebook page engagement and Facebook page likes ads (We did not bow down!) and it got approved. However, when we created more ads for Facebook page likes, they got disapproved for the same reason. This gravely showing inconsistency in approving ads. I guess someone down there really hates us!
Below are some screenshots of the apps / sites running ads on Facebook. I have a dozen more screenshots available of other apps / sites:
I wonder how are other’s ads approved. Is there any soul out there who can help us?
Our Social media page links:
Facebook: www.facebook.com/quackquack.in
Twitter: @quackquackin
asha chaudhry
hi ravi,
will ping all of our digital media experts on this one. we have quite a few other dating platform rodinhooders around – use the search engine – perhaps someone would help?
https://www.therodinhoods.com/forum/topics/how-quora-and-women-empowerment-talk-inspired-us-to-create-vee
https://www.therodinhoods.com/forum/topics/experience-the-new-age-of-social-love-be-in-love
am really really intrigued about the name. what’s the story behind it?
Ravi Mittal
Hey Asha,
Thanks a ton – again for all the help!
We did go to the extent of getting in touch with the founder of the Dating app – Thrill and discussed with him. They were running ads on very low budgets and probably they went undetected. I guess the new apps have new Facebook pages and they too are going undetected (my best guess!).
Frankly, ‘QuackQuack’ was launched when Twitter was getting famous. We wanted to have a quirky name which would be unconventional and yet easy to remember. And as our creative head said then “The calling of every bird species in the world is unique and cannot be understood by another species. In the same way the search for a partner with a unique set of characteristics should be answered by another person searching exactly for the same set! So your ‘quack-quack’ will get you only a ‘quack-quack’ in return, and not a ‘croak-croak’ or a ‘caw-caw’. Hence the name QuackQuack.in!” 🙂
Alok Rodinhood Kejriwal
I will write to someone in facebook 🙂
Ravi Mittal
Thanks a lot Alok. I hope things work out properly this time with Facebook! 🙂
Ishani
You should try engaging influencers from http://www.fromote.com. They will spread awareness about your product on social media and you will get much better RoI as compared to ads and most importantly you will be able to reach the RIGHT target audience on facebook / twitter etc.
For Rodinhooders we are offering a $10 credit, refer to my post at: https://www.therodinhoods.com/forum/topics/how-startups-are-using-influencers-to-fromote-on-social-media-10
Cheers!
Ishani
Vishal Balani
Hi Ravi,
With regards to facebook advertisements getting rejected, three quick points to focus at.
1. What type of advertisements you are trying to do on facebook, does it include text like eg: are you single? or find a female friend or anything where the imagery being used for ads are not proper(shouldn’t be appealing at all), if such text or images are used then ads will be rejected.
2. Secondly, there is one post on your page which connects to Suicide : https://www.facebook.com/QuackQuack.in/photos/a.255161581173135.619… (It says suicide is legal – I’m ready to fall in love. Its a negative promotion for facebook and they crawl all the pages before having an advertisement approved. Please make sure all your posts doesn’t speak about any controversial topics and even on the website.
3. Please follow this link : https://www.facebook.com/help/143949649021372#Dating this may help you in getting the right kind of dating advertisements structured and approvals on such will be easy.
Will also recommend, all previous posts which are related to point 2, please delete them.
Best,
Vishal
Ravi Mittal
Hi Vishal,
1. Our issue with Facebook is more complex that regular ads. Our ads do comply with their guidelines and we do not do any kind of sleazy stuff. Nada 🙂
2. Some of our ads after that post were approved. However, later, they disapproved ads in a row! I really suppose the issue is not with a series of previous posts but our account on the whole.
3. We’ve already spent USD 9000 upwards on Facebook earlier, so we did run good amount of ads on Facebook. Here is a simple sponsored story ad which was declined today. Now, this ad wasn’t even directed to our website! See screenshot
Yatin Mulay
AFAIK, the moratorium on relatively smaller/niche dating site/app ads is a policy decision. It’s not the question of whether you’ve spent $9K or 90K in legacy campaigns, FB has reportedly declined niche dating players with $500K spends too.
However, apparently all the big fishes like IAC owned brands (match, chemistry, okcupid, etc) & leaders in individual demographies ( eg: shaadi, bharatmatrimony,etc in india ) are still allowed to advertise.
Unfair? Yes, but that’s part & parcel of the battle. IMO, your only hope would be to explore the personal networking route with the higher ups at FB India to get on the approved dating advertisers list.
Hope you are leveraging POF & Reddit ads in the meantime? I see a lot of targeted subreddits with compelling eCPM .. All the Best.
Ravi Mittal
Hi Yatin,
Thanks for the valuable inputs. All you’ve said is absolutely correct.
I, however, do not understand a few things:
We do targetted advertising via Adwords and other Indian ad networks. Pof is also among them. Need to check on reddit. Our main aim of using Facebook ads was to engage the audience socially with our content.
Yatin Mulay
I wish i knew the answer Ravi but i don’t. Personally i don’t think they’ll dial down the hawkish algo filters at least till Valentine’s day for this niche!
Alok Rodinhood Kejriwal
No reply from facebook yet.
Ravi Mittal
🙁 Will however wait and watch for a few days if they reply back to you.
The only alternative for us would be to promote from a new Facebook page and Ads account and see if it works out!
Thanks for all the efforts Alok sir! 🙂
asha chaudhry
hey ravi, did this get solved?
Ravi Mittal
Hi Asha,
It didn’t! No response from anyone 🙁
sagar
Hi Ravi,
Were you able to get around this? We are also a relatively new dating application called Twango. We are also amidst the same issue wherein all the ads we run get disapproved without any specific reason being given. Desperately waiting for a solution