All advertisers are required to follow Meta's Advertising Standards, which Meta designed to help protect people from poor experiences and support meaningful connections between people and businesses across their technologies. For example, Meta doesn't want ads that use profanity, show excessive nudity or include misinformation.
Their policies apply to paid advertising through Meta's ad platform, including Facebook, Messenger, Instagram and the Meta Audience Network. For a full list of Meta's Advertising Policies, you can visit Meta's Advertising Standards.
In the Meta Business Help Centre, they provide additional information on some of Meta's advertising policies. See below for their list of articles:
Personal attributes: Meta's advertising policy prohibiting ads that contain personal attributes, including information on avoiding assumptions about someone's personal attributes in your ads.
Sensational content: Meta's advertising policy prohibiting sensational content, including information on avoiding shocking, sensational, inflammatory or excessively violent content in your ads.
COVID-19: Meta's advertising policies related to COVID-19, including what types of products and content are temporarily restricted or prohibited.
Cryptocurrency products and services: Meta's advertising policy for cryptocurrency products and services, including information about eligibility to run ads about cryptocurrency.
Dating: Meta's advertising policy for ads about dating services.
Drug and alcohol addiction treatment: Meta's advertising policy for drug and alcohol addiction treatment, including information about how to apply to run these types of ads.
Online gaming and gambling: Meta's advertising policy for online gambling and gaming, including information about how to apply to run these types of ads.
Personal health and appearance: Meta's advertising policy prohibiting ads that generate a negative self perception or imply unrealistic or unexpected results.
Social issues, elections or politics: Meta's advertising policy for ads about social issues, elections or politics.
Alcohol: Meta's advertising policy on the promotion of alcohol.
Advertisers can run ads that promote or reference alcohol as long as they:
Follow the targeting requirements for the location of the audience
Don't target people under the age of 19 in Canada or under 21 in the United States.
Under this policy, alcohol ads are ads that promote or depict alcohol products or alcohol consumption, including, but not limited to:
Venues and events in which the primary business model depends on alcohol sales
Availability of alcohol sales
Depiction of alcohol consumption
Promotion of alcohol brands
Recipes for alcoholic drinks
Note that Meta allows the following:
Ads that promote non-alcoholic drinks
Ads that promote news or educational materials that reference or depict alcohol
Targeting requirements
As global alcohol laws vary, advertisers will need to make sure that they comply with the applicable targeting requirements:
Additional policies that may apply to your ad
When advertisers use different products across Meta's family of apps and services, additional policies may also apply, including:
Facebook: Ads that run on Facebook must follow Facebook's Community Standards, which apply to all content on Facebook.
Instagram: Ads that run on Instagram must follow Instagram's Community Guidelines, which apply to all content on Instagram.
Commerce: Advertisers may run certain types of ads, such as ads with product tags or boosted Marketplace listings, or use catalogues to upload products for use on commerce surfaces, which are subject to Meta's Commerce Policies.
Pages and events: Advertisers may promote Pages or events, which are subject to the applicable Pages, Groups and Events policies.
Messenger: Advertisers sending sponsored messages via Messenger or starting automated conversations from ads that click to Messenger must comply with Meta's Developer Policies.
Branded content: Ads may include branded content; these are subject to Meta's Branded Content Policies.