Facebook Hates Affiliates…And Me

by Bryn Youngblut on February 8, 2010

I’ll admit I have had problems in the past with certain things I was running on Facebook but let’s be honest, it was the wild west back then and basically anything went.

It’s being almost a year now since I have run anything non compliant on Facebook and still my accounts get disabled. I realize it’s obvious why, because of my past with them.

Here is what I don’t understand, I have accounts running fully compliant, all approved and non cloaked through ads for months with no problems. Not only that but the account was under a different name with their credit card. The only thing that could link me to the account would be if they compared IP addresses, but let’s face it people login to Facebook accounts all over the place, and I have friends who login at my place all the time and have never had an issue.

The funny thing is they aren’t even banning the accounts for any type of compliance issue with my ads, since all are clean. After a couple months they just simply disable the login so it can’t continue to be used.

What I want to know is why?

I realize I made some mistakes back in the day, but if Facebook would just listen to me and let me prove I won’t fuck up again we all can continue to make a lot of money without any issues. You can assign someone to watch over my account 24/7 if you want, I don’t care. It will save you’re employees time disabling my accounts.

Regardless of all this, I know Facebooks primary objective is user experience and they make enough money as it is too give two shits about someone like me who would spend 50k+ a day with them if they let me.

For now it looks like I will have to continue surfing under the radar until I can convince someone over there too give my original account a second chance.

P.S  – Affiliates@facebook.com just proves how much Facebook doesn’t care about affiliates – no more personal touch?

P.P.S – Lame.

/rant

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{ 15 comments… read them below or add one }

1 Finch February 8, 2010 at 3:55 pm

Are you hosting the pages on the same server as your account that got banned?

I’d use a fresh IP to access the account and make sure any pages are hosted on a fresh server with private domain registration.

When I first got axed on Google, I pretty much became a new person. Haven’t had any problems with the account being re-banned. I’m not sure what measures Facebook has in place, but when they treat affiliates like this, it’s fair game to fuck with them.

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Bryn Youngblut Reply:

Yeah I did after the first time, always logged in only on a proxy, new everything, they eventually axe the account because they somehow realize it’s not a real person. Even when I interact on it, add random people, etc. I mean it’s pretty easy I have multiple accounts on the go right now but I would just like to make mine and Facebooks life easier by just using my original account and proving to them I won’t push the boundaries again.

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Tracy Reply:

Have you continually contacted them and informed them of this and have you been allowed back on yet since I am posting so late in the game – just curious really.

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2 MisterD February 8, 2010 at 4:08 pm

i’ve been getting screwed over by FB lately as well. not to the extreme of disabling my account, but they’ve been jacking with my shit so much that i can’t make a decent run for any given campaigns.

FB seems to be following Google’s example by screwing over affiliates for no given reason. the hard part is abandoning them with the sheer amount of traffic they have available. it’s a hate-love relationship…

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3 Khoa February 8, 2010 at 4:22 pm

Hey Bryn, same crap happens to me. I was cloaking rebills many months before, but have yet to run anything shady since. I’ve had like a total of 8 accounts with FB…the last 3 ran fully compliant, no cloaking or anything. A couple of disapprovals here and there, but for very minor things that shouldn’t get me banned for (things like saying include download in your ad copy, which I happily fixed). They banned me out of thin air…no warning or anything, I sent an email, received a canned email saying I violated their terms with my gaming offer. Oh well, there’s tons and tons of money to be made in other traffic sources, which is what I’m learning now.

Time to pass the frustration onto someone else!

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4 newjersey February 8, 2010 at 4:38 pm

the past 2 months they have been making it really hard for affiliates.

Account manager is useless too. All he says is “Anything i can do to help scale your campaigns?” or “Oh you should try to run other niches besides dating”. Great advice.

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5 Tom | Build That List February 8, 2010 at 4:44 pm

That is stupid. You can really tell the intergrity of a company by how the treat and respond to the little people.

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6 matthew berman February 8, 2010 at 4:52 pm

if you are spending any type of volume with facebook, you should have a personal account manager…and you shouldn’t have having these problems. i can try to contact someone at fb for you if you want. let me know.

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Bryn Youngblut Reply:

I have had them in the past, if you know anyone higher up that can make decisions that would be cool.

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Justin Reply:

I’ll email you some contact info, however after a week of stringing me along and assuring me he could get me back on he finally told me that I was “blacklisted” and couldn’t help. 🙁

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7 xentech February 9, 2010 at 4:29 am

Why does so much of what you post, either here or on WF, contain a thinly veiled brag?

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Bryn Youngblut Reply:

It’s not a brag, it’s the simple truth and my point is so hopefully someone at Facebook will notice.

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Cash37 Reply:

Why do you care what he spends?

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xentech Reply:

I don’t see how what I said indicates that I care. I was just asking why so many of his posts that I read contain a brag.

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8 m navarini February 9, 2010 at 6:45 pm

i have a contact at fb you can talk to.

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9 Snoop February 9, 2010 at 6:58 pm

I’ve had no luck with FB lately. Personally, their entire advertising process is a joke. They are the absolute worst when it comes to Ad approval consistency, even worse than POF. I’ve pretty much given up on FB for the time being. Just a waste of time, even with the sweet FB Ad launching program. Guess FB hates money.

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10 xyr February 10, 2010 at 7:16 am

$50k a day?….wow. I haven’t been able to spend more than $500/day so far.

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11 Georgie February 10, 2010 at 9:59 am

If your proxy is just a http proxy in firefox or chrome, it migh not work as facebook uses flash to determine your real IP, flash can access low level tcp/ip connections. you can check this yourself if you want to view ads in different countries, a http proxy doesnt work. you need a proper vpn which routes your whole PC connection through a proxy, not just the browser.

This is just what I found when viewing different geo-targeted facebook ads, mightn’t affect the actual ads interface. And my account was never banned so I’ve never tried this. Just throwing it out there.

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12 Rj February 18, 2010 at 4:56 am

Why don’t you form a business where you live or the states and name the business something like Jim Barbuski or something that sounds like a name.

Then when you setup a bank etc you can setup a greendot or similar card and the name will be the business name, so when you use FB they will see the info matches up.

Also check out removing your flash cookies it’s done via the following URL because these are the puppies that track the best (but you might know this already and if you do sorry about telling you something you know)

http://www.macromedia.com/support/documentation/en/flashplayer/help/settings_manager06.html

Good luck, im sure you can utilize a way around and then hit FB hard.

🙂

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13 tom - marketing tips February 20, 2010 at 4:45 am

Interesting point, I must say I haven´t experienced any problems with Facebook.I can imagine why they don´t like marketing people too much because they are a site where people can connect.I guess marketing is not their “cup of tea” and are trying to get marketing people out.The same thing is with other social sites, you cannot do direct marketing on those sites either.

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Garrett Reply:

Facebook should have thought twice about opening a fucking ad platform then.

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14 Anton February 25, 2010 at 1:06 pm

Hi Bryn,

I came across your post randomly and I must say it talks exactly about the issue I am currently faced with. I had a few bingo ads approved on Facebook, however after I made a small change in the URL of the ad (adding a tracker) they pulled one of them down and left the other one alone. Does this mean it slipped under the radar or am I still at risk of having it removed. Do you know what their account review policies are like?

Kind Regards,

Anton

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15 vanessa schultz March 25, 2010 at 1:57 am

Good to know that I am not alone. facebook is cracing down on those “bogus” marketers and it is affecting the business of those legit ones!

http://newsletters.loungelizard.com/aug2009_libation/

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