This year we’ve noticed a massive increase with Catalog Products being flagged for Policy Violations on Facebook. When your Catalog Products are flagged by Facebook for a violation, it means that Facebook has determined that your Catalog Products violate Facebook’s advertising policies, making the product ineligible from displaying in ads that use the flagged Catalog Products. This includes Dynamic Retargeting ads and Dynamic Prospecting ads, two ad types that typically have a high conversion rate. The worst thing about these flagged policy violations is that your products likely don’t violate any policies at all! At Eboost, we have a regular process that we do to check for flagged products and to appeal the policy violations associated with the flagged products.
One of the biggest clues that your Catalog Products are being flagged and not being promoted in Dynamic Ads is a decreased conversion rate on Dynamic Ads. But you shouldn’t wait for a decreased conversion rate on dynamic ads to check for flagged Catalog Products! When you have a Facebook Product Catalog, Facebook uses AI software to scan the products, their landing pages, and the product images to ensure they meet Facebook’s policies. This AI software is usually a bit overzealous and flags products that don’t actually violate any Facebook policies. If that happens, you can chat with Facebook support in order to get a manual review, which means a human will review the flagged Catalog Products and then make a determination if the products actually violate Facebook’s policies.
Are you wondering how to check to see if your Catalog Products have been flagged for a policy violation?
Here’s how:
- First, make sure you have a Catalog set up on Facebook.
- Next, visit business.facebook.com/products (this opens your Catalog Manager) and select the catalog you’d like to review. Note: you’ll need to be logged in to your Facebook Business account and have the correct permissions to view the Catalog. Also, if you only have one catalog in your Ad Account, you may be taken directly to the Catalog’s detail page.
- If you have any products with policy violations, you should see a warning after clicking into your Catalog. Clicking this warning will take you to your Catalog Issues summary page:
- If you don’t see that warning, or if you’re looking for another way to see the flagged products: you’re in luck! On the left navigation column, tap/click “Catalog” to extend the menu options. Then, tap/click “Issues”:
- Either step #3 or step #4 will take you to your Catalog Issues summary page. That page looks like this:
- Next, you tap/click the “Review” button and a new window will open. This window will show all the Catalog products that are flagged for policy violations. Note: here you can also toggle on the left side panel, under “Issues” to see if there are any Catalog products with unmet data requirements:
- This next step might be useful, but if your products were flagged by accident and don’t actually violate any policies, it might not be that helpful. You can then click on any of the products with policies in order to see more details from Facebook about why they were flagged. This will pop up a new window that looks like this:
- In this window, you can then tap/click “Channels” which is where you’ll find information about why the product was flagged. If you see the reason listed as, “This item was disabled because it doesn’t comply with Facebook’s Advertising Policies. It can’t be used for ads,” then it’s a good indication that your product may have accidentally flagged by AI and you should follow up with chat support to see if the flag can be overturned.
So now that you know how to check for flagged Catalog policy violations, you’ll need to know how to contact Facebook support to request a manual review. This process is sometimes referred to as an appeal. You can either chat or email with a Facebook representative to help resolve this issue. If you have access to Facebook chat support, we recommend going that route.
The first step is to start a chat with Facebook support (you can find instructions on how to do that here). When you open the support ticket, you’ll see a screen that looks like this:
We recommend that you select “Ads.”
From there, you’ll see this screen:
And if chat support is enabled for you, you will see a “Chat with a representative” option.
If the chat wait time is long or if there is a long queue of people waiting for chat support, you will see an email option instead and the chat option will be greyed out:
If chat support isn’t available, we recommend checking back in 30-60 minutes instead of emailing, since we’ve found that chat support typically has a better turnaround time of resolving issues.
From there, you’ll see this form:
In this form, you’ll want to be sure to provide as much information as possible so your Facebook rep will be ready to go at the beginning of your chat.
Here’s a template of what we typically input for the Subject and Message fields:
Subject: Catalog Policy Violations
Message:
Hello,
Our client, (Client Name), has a number of catalog products that were flagged for policy violations. We do not believe they have violated any policies and would like to request a manual review.
Ad account ID: (Ad Account ID number)
Catalog ID: (Catalog ID number)
Please note: their Facebook page was not available as an option in the drop-down menu, so we have selected our agency’s Facebook page. Their Facebook page is: (Facebook Page Link)
Thank you
A few things to note with our template reply:
- You’ll need to have your client’s/your business’ Ad account ID and Catalog ID handy. We also recommend keeping the window that shows your catalog violations open (see #6 above), as Facebook support often asks for a screenshot and sometimes product IDs from products with policy violations.
- If you’ve been given Partner Access to your client’s Ad Account, their Facebook page likely won’t show up as an option in the drop-down menu of Facebook Pages. Only Facebook pages that you have Admin access to will display here, so we’ve made a note about that in our message on the chat support form.
After you submit the form, Facebook Messenger will open and you will be put into a queue for the next available representative. When a representative is available, the rep will ask you a series of questions and confirm the reason for your chat. Then, the rep will escalate the issue for further review and follow up via email. You will typically receive an email response in 24-48 business hours that either restores the catalog products or describes why the catalog products could not be restored (or a combination of both if some products were approved or some weren’t).
We’ve seen some incredibly benign items flagged for catalog policy violations, so don’t hesitate to appeal any policy violations with Facebook! After you’ve gone through the process once, it becomes muscle memory! We highly recommend adding at least a once-weekly check for policy violations on your catalog products into your regular campaign tasks, potentially more frequently if your catalog has many items or if your catalog has a history of frequent catalog violation flags.
Are you having trouble with the process of appealing Catalog Product violations or are you looking for help?
We can help! Reach out to us today.