Hello stranger!

Apologies for missing last Friday, I had to deal with a bit of an emergency (that’s how fresh this email comes from the content-oven) and couldn’t carve out time since to catch up.

I’m not the only one. Facebook is causing stomach ulcers in all directions right now – as many of you have also experienced. A problem has been slowly building which spiked considerably at the end of last week – a site-wide issue predominantly focused on ads pointing to Amazon UK (but other territories to a lesser extent also).

Not all authors are affected, but those that are were getting ads rejected for bizarre reasons like “link edit” issues, or “branded content,” or “circumventing systems,” and were often being told by Support staff that they needed Amazon’s permission to run ads to their books on Amazon.

Which is nonsense, of course.

But the issue is serious enough that I’m going to devote this week’s email to figuring out what’s really going on and some workarounds I’ve been using (and others it might be best to avoid).

My first recommendation: don’t panic.

I don’t think support staff are particularly well informed about this right now. If you have spent hours arguing with Facebook about this (like I did), then you have my sympathy. Support is being particularly useless and some authors are getting their accounts flagged, preventing them from making new ads to Amazon UK. Others are even getting suspended or banned permanently.

It’s incredibly frustrating, and I don’t want to sound like I’m minimizing here, but those cases are a minority and I suspect (and sincerely hope) they will get full account privileges restored soon.

I also believe this situation is temporary. We want to use Facebook Ads to advertise our books on Amazon. Facebook wants us to spend money on ads pointing at Amazon. And Amazon certainly wants all that highly targeted traffic of likely buyers – for free. Nobody wins from restricting that firehose of cash and readers so I think we can allay that fear, at least.

But what is really going on here? In the absence of any reliable information from Facebook, here’s what I think is happening.

Fake News & Facebook

One of the things that allowed fake news to spread so quickly on Facebook was the ability of posters and advertisers to edit the headline, summary, and accompanying image of links posted to the platform in a duplicitous way – and I’m sure you have noticed some restrictions on same over the last few years preventing you from doing handy things like using a nice image when posting Amazon links to your Facebook Page.

To prevent abuse, Facebook now has systems in place monitoring when headlines and summaries are edited and ads are monitored particularly closely. (For those getting the “Link Edit” rejections from Facebook, this is what it pertains to.)

Facebook also has systems in place to monitor how branded content is used – to prevent influencers from doing things like breaking FTC guidelines on disclosing when they are paid to rave about a product. (For those getting the “Branded Content” rejections, this is what Facebook thinks you are doing.)

And then Facebook has further systems to detect when advertisers are trying to skip or fool the anti-fraud or review systems. (For those getting “Circumventing Systems” rejections, Facebook thinks you are trying to do an end run around the review teams.)

You may also have noticed that you have an Ad Quality dashboard now which gives you an overview of what ads have been rejected, the status of any appeals (using that word loosely), and also a running total of your supposed infractions over the last six months.

None of these four systems are functioning correctly right now, and the problems seem to multiply when these systems interact with each other; lots and lots of innocent authors are getting burned.

Needless to say, the perma-inability of support to correctly identify issues around all this – or properly escalate anything – just makes everything worse.

My own experience will illustrate the cascading failures neatly:

• I had 20 ads rejected incorrectly for a Branded Content issue.
• It was really just 2 ads copied across a variety of ad sets pointing at different targets, but it counts as 20 rejections in Facebook’s system.
• 17 of those rejections were overturned on appeal, and 3 were not, even though they were identical to the rest.
• The running total of rejected ads over the last 6 months did not decrease after those 17 rejections were overturned.
• Speaking to support didn’t help with any of the above.
• Facebook’s system then went back and re-rejected some of the ads it had re-approved – this time for “Circumventing Systems.”
• Speaking to a supervisor didn’t help with any of the above – they insisted it was a branded content issue, when it clearly is nothing whatsoever to do with branded content, and then closed the ticket with the issue unresolved, despite my protests.

It’s a cascading failure of systems which then results in a much more serious problem – probably caused by the multiplying amount of rejections reaching a threshold – which is authors first getting flagged and prevented from making new ads to the same domain, and then ultimately getting suspended or banned.

And, of course, there is no way to mount a proper appeal, other than going through the same support channels which won’t engage on the issue at all other than to repeat canned responses which don’t actually pertain to what is going on.

How do you avoid this?

Facebook Workarounds

There are a few workarounds in circulation. None are ideal. Some might make things worse. Obviously, I can’t guarantee anything here will work for you, but these are your options:

1. Don’t insert anything in the Headline/Summary section when building ads. As one of the primary anti-fraud systems causing this mess is that which looks at what Facebook calls “link edits” (your regular book hawking ads are what Facebook calls image link ads, and making changes to the default info that is pulled through from the site are thus “link edits”). Leaving the standard gubbins that gets pulled in from Amazon is not ideal but will probably get your ads through review unscathed. This is probably the lowest risk option – just note that it can affect the performance of your ads quite a bit.
2. Use an alternative linking structure for Amazon UK. Generally, it is best to use the most unadorned link possible when running ads to Amazon: amazon.co.uk/dp/ASIN – where you replace “ASIN” with the actual ASIN of your book, of course. But there are actually several different ways to link to books on Amazon, and switching this up will probably get you through the review process also, and get around any account flagging if you are running into that. For example amazon.co.uk/gp/product/ASIN is one form that was working for me. I think this is pretty low risk also, but I can’t help noting the irony that you are, kind of, circumventing Facebook systems here and arguably guilty of what Facebook was, originally, falsely accusing you of – but there you go. No one gets out of 2020 with clean hands! All joking aside, I think this is pretty safe too. It’s not foolproof though and hasn’t worked for some. I’ve also seen Facebook retroactively reject a handful of ads with this link structure, so keep that in mind, especially if you are wary of accruing too many rejections.
3. Use redirects. This might get a strong reaction, but I think this workaround is riskier. I will fully admit here that I’m not 100% clear on Facebook’s policy on redirects – let me say that upfront. But I think this entire episode shows that it’s not just about Facebook’s policy, but also what might be misconstrued as a breach of that policy by either Facebook’s anti-fraud systems or frontline support staff dealing with all this. If you are using redirects to get around those systems or skip the review process, could Facebook come back and hit you with a sanction for circumventing systems or something of that ilk? Would it be viewed more seriously than #2 above? Maybe… and maybe. I really don’t know, but my own take is there’s a little more risk with this approach. YMMV.
4. Link to your site instead. This option is zero risk in terms of Facebook sanctions, but high risk in terms of ad profitability. Remember that you will have to convert readers twice – once on your site, and once again at Amazon. Even if the conversion rates on your site are truly excellent (and they won’t be for most people), the extra step might drive your ads into the red. I suggest this is only an option for expert users with stellar websites. Even then, be careful with this approach and be conservative with your budgets until you are sure the two-step process is ultimately converting.

I don’t like being overly dependent on anything, whether that’s Facebook or Amazon or my mailing list, and always like to have a back-up plan if the worst happens, or something breaks.

If you lean heavily on Facebook Ads to support your launches or promotions, having that option closed off, even temporarily, can really suck. But disaster can be averted with a solid Plan B. For me, I always make sure I have some audience spare somewhere like BookBub Ads, which I can “cash in” if an emergency hits. (And if it doesn’t, I’ll hit it on my last day anyway.) Other alternatives might be to try and scale up Amazon Ads, do a re-send to your list, or cash in a favor with a friend who might be able to squeeze you into one of their own sends.

Tech companies generally do a poor job of handling fraud, foisting poorly designed systems upon us which can have a terrible affect on honest users trying to run their business. 

With an election coming in the US, and lockdowns impacting everyone’s ability to function normally, I can see more issues like this cropping up over the next few months, rather than less.

Hope for the best… but plan for the worst.

I’ll be back next week with Part 2 of Rocket Fuel - my guide to launching books in this mixed-up crazy world.

Dave

P.S. Hold music this week is Sweet & Dandy. RIP Toots.