Protect Your Facebook Ad Campaigns from Fraud
Starting an Ad campaign on Facebook? Don’t forget to enable Ad Campaign Anti-Fraud features for your Ad account. Ad account disabling is the worst thing that can happen to you during Ad campaigns, especially if it happens at the end of the Ad Campaign or even after its completion.
For those who are unfamiliar with how Ad Campaigns work here’s a small overview:
Ad accounts work like sub-accounts, they have separate funds, and since Facebook Ad campaigns run by default on the ad account credit system each campaign should be funded separately. You can choose automatic funding or manual funding/split test where you take 50% of credit from one campaign and 50% from another campaign. When you reach the $100 minimum threshold you can change your funding method to automatic. Ad account is a limited-duration entity it expires in 90 days unless you extend its lifetime by getting the Ad account re-activated. Ad account disablement happens when the Ad account has been inactive for 30 consecutive days. In that case, the Ad provider can disable your Ad account, this means all Ad Campaigns will stop running and their spend will be lost forever!
Since there are two ways of funding Ad campaigns and different types of Ad accounts (personal and manager) we can distinguish four types of Ad campaigns:
1/ Personal Ad campaign: It’s the most dangerous one because if your personal ad account gets disabled everything stops working so you should use one for testing purposes only or keep your funds low to avoid getting disabled.
2/ Manager Ad campaign: This type is funded by a manager Ad account and if that Ad account gets disabled, the Ad campaigns will continue to run as long as the associated Ad account credit is not exhausted.
3/ Automatic Ad campaign: This type is funded by an automatic Ad account and if that Ad account gets disabled, the Ad campaigns will continue to run as long as the associated Ad account credit is not exhausted.
4/ Manual Ad campaign: This type is funded by a manual split test where you take 50% of credit from one campaign and 50% from another campaign. If one of the two campaigns runs out of its credit, the Ad campaign stops running.
Enable anti-fraud protection on your Facebook Ads account to help protect your campaigns from being disabled by Ad providers. Ad Provider is a Facebook Ad management provider which includes AdEspresso, AdGear, AdButler, etc.
Ad account disablement happens when the Ad account has been inactive for 30 consecutive days. In that case, Ad provider can disable your Ad account, this means all Ad Campaigns will stop running and their spending will be lost forever!
To protect your ad campaign from such unfortunate events you should enable anti-fraud protection. To do it login to your Ads account via ads manager (https://www.facebook.com/ads/manage) and go to the Settings tab:
Here you select Anti-fraud features and click Save Changes:
Now let’s see what these options do for Ad campaigns.
Ad account disabling protection: Ad providers won’t be able to disable your Ad accounts.
Ad campaign Money Back Guarantee: The ad provider will credit you with 100% of your spending if it disables a part of or the whole Ad campaign.
Anti-fraud pause: This feature is designed to protect your Ad campaigns from being unintentionally paused by Facebook as a part of their security measures against click farms and other suspicious activities.
- Please remember that enabling anti-fraud features doesn’t guarantee complete protection from ad account disabling, this only helps reduce the risk of getting disabled.
- Also please note that these features are third-party apps integrated with Ads manager, so they may not work properly. Ad providers can disable them at any time.
- If the Ad provider disables one of the anti-fraud features you should contact them immediately and ask to reactivate the Ad account.
- Remember that Ad campaigns will continue to run as long as Ad account credit is not exhausted, so keep your funds low.
Ad Campaigns are full of risk, with Google AdWords being no exception. Advertisers face the constant threat of Ad Fraud, which is why AdWords comes with a number of Anti-Fraud features that you should be aware of and use to protect your Ad Campaigns.
Ad Fraud is surprisingly common; we’re not talking about little white lies told by an ambitious child here. Estimates suggest that advertisers lose out on $6.3 billion each year due to ad fraud (source). That’s a lot! And this figure doesn’t even include click spam, which could add another $1.9 million to the total (source). Advertisers should take steps to protect themselves from Ad Fraud.