"Bro! Nothing's launching," "All creatives are getting rejected, even the ones with kittens," "Agents company are flying in for company verifications," "Facebook is going crazy." These are the kind of phrases flooding the affiliates chats in recent weeks. The community is on the brink, waiting for the next Zuckerberg social media storm. People are wondering how long Facebook will be acting up, when it will end, and what to do while the platform is in turmoil.
Hello there! Today, we want to discuss Facebook storms, understand what they are, when they began, how they end, and if they ever really do end. We'll gather opinions from webmasters on whether it's worth running campaigns during a storm or better to wait it out. We'll also describe the experiences of fellow webmasters who are testing alternative traffic sources during these storms. But let's start with the history of the issue. It's going to be interesting and informative. Let's dive in!
“Getting traffic from Facebook by M. Zuckerberg"
Everything changed after the 2016 U.S. presidential elections. Donald Trump's victory was negatively perceived by a portion of American society. Dissatisfied with the election results, the electorate began a witch hunt. Supporters of Hillary Clinton were targeted, and major media outlets were criticized for portraying the election winner in a more favorable light.
Political controversies did not spare Facebook. The social media faced a barrage of criticism for not removing fake accounts that posted political calls to vote. Thanks to precise targeting, advertisements were streamed from these accounts to specific social groups to influence public opinion. In essence, these were the first elections where the technology of manipulation using the largest social network was employed.
“Great job Mark!”
Under the threat of a potential ban on the social network in the United States, Zuckerberg had to take drastic measures to monitor and control advertising during elections. The task was to teach artificial intelligence, in collaboration with human moderators, to detect fake accounts and ban them. Mark allocated 40,000 people to work on this.
“New measures to curb manipulative campaigns”
It tightened the screws completely, and all subsequent elections, not only in the United States but also in many other countries around the world, were accompanied by storms. During their conduct, all accounts were affected, and no advertising campaigns could be approved. The social network started to operate on the principle of "we'll clear out everyone, and those who are not bots can recover their accounts." They also adopted an approach where if advertising was launched by an individual rather than a company, it was better to stop it.
In the next screenshot, it is shown that, for example, even for the elections in Kenya, Facebook was prepared (read: it was a nightmare for WEBs). Naturally, many webmasters do not follow the political agenda of African states, so these storms seem sudden and unrelated to them.
“How Meta is preparing for elections in Kenya”
Election-related storms typically last from a few weeks to 1-2 months. Then Facebook eases up, and the main reason for this is, as always, money.
Nevertheless, the social network is required to monitor the number of "fake" accounts and regulate their volume ahead of significant political events. Facebook improved its algorithms and introduced additional authentication for profiles intending to promote political advertising. This created a mechanism for controlling political agitation. In theory, all fake accounts that AI had learned to detect could be removed. However, this did not happen, which once again confirms the social network's lenient approach to shadow affiliates.
This raises the question: "Why does Zuckerberg torment webmasters by creating storms when he knows that webmasters generate a significant portion of his profits?" There are several answers to this question.
Firstly, openly admitting that affiliates are profitable is not possible. Given that there are certain formal community rules, it is necessary to demonstratively combat their violations.
Secondly, the principle of "better safe than sorry" is at work. It is more prudent to forgo a few percentage points of profit by eliminating all fake accounts before the elections than having to justify actions to the U.S. authorities later on.
Furthermore, Meta's founder has chosen a strategy of natural selection, implementing it according to the Pareto principle. Most of the small webmasters who generate 20% of the social network's profit from promoting shadow offers will drop out. They will form a stable public opinion that it's impossible to run prohibited content on Facebook. Those who can find ways to bypass restrictions and launch ad campaigns will unequivocally be in the minority. They will remain quiet about what they manage to promote but will scale their businesses and generate the remaining 80% of the "shadow" profit for the social network.
As a result of the periodic tightening of the screws, there is significantly less straightforward advertising with creatives on Facebook. Affiliates are adopting increasingly sophisticated approaches to hide the meaning they put into their creatives from the ever-present AI. In this context, "Mark and Co." cannot be accused of not combating shadow offers.
“Shadow niche is dead”
The bombshell effect of Facebook's storms always comes as a surprise. Imagine the average webmaster who has found a combo and is quietly running it. Suddenly, their accounts start getting flagged for risk payment, or they can't get their creatives approved. What does the webmaster do? They reach out to chat groups. There, they find others facing the same issues, and together they start blowing up the problem like, "It's all over!"
If you look at the issue of storms in historical retrospective, comparing, for example, the 2020 U.S. presidential election and the 2022 Senate election, the effects were entirely different. In the latter case, Facebook allowed gambling and shadow-market offers to run without significant issues, while nothing could be launched before the presidential election. Perhaps the different approach to pressuring the promotion of shadow topics can be explained by the importance of these political events. Whether this theory holds true or not can only be confirmed or refuted by Facebook's actions leading up to the 2024 elections.
The social network is in a perpetual battle against pioneers, with varying success. Each year, opponents of the free-ride scheme claim that the pioneers are dead. Meanwhile, those who run pioneer schemes argue the opposite – they claim to be successfully exploiting Facebook. Such pioneers' success is debatable. Today, the use of avatar accounts enables an average of $8 in spend from the social network. Given these relatively minor budget losses, Facebook is unlikely to go after every webmaster just to defeat pioneers.
To be fair, it's worth mentioning that running campaigns from trusted accounts and well-warmed avatar accounts has become impossible, partly due to Facebook's efforts against pioneers. This was the result of one of the storms that has long passed but left a lasting impact.
By mid-2021, Facebook started storming again, resulting in the fan pages being taken down. The problem was not resolved quickly and did not immediately become public knowledge. Webmasters intentionally triggered the suspension of the account's advertising activities, went through it using fake documents, and then started running campaigns. Accounts after such manipulations lasted quite a while, and given the empty auction, they provided excellent ROI.
In 2022, accounts started getting flagged for risk payment. By the end of the year, it seemed like the social network had eased up, but at the beginning of 2023, the issue with risk payments returned.
Transitioning to agency accounts greatly simplified operations for the team, eliminating the need to maintain and administer a farming department. The number of accounts each buyer had to work with also decreased due to the increased total spend. This allowed them to work without assistants who prepared accounts for launch. The only drawback of using "agency accounts" is the fact that part of the spend needs to be given to the service.
"Agency accounts are a great option if your ROI allows you to cover the commission. However, you should understand that they almost never allow you to bill on high amounts. I'm not talking about the first bill; I'm referring to when an account scales to $400 and above. On regular accounts, if the advertising is no longer highly profitable, you can bill a source for, say, $400. With agency accounts, you won't be able to 'extra earn' like that," the team lead shared from his experience.
“Taking out the first bill. We’re after you”
The team didn't find a universal solution to prevent risk payments. Periodically, media buyers use the following methods to reduce the number of "drops":
Currency and payment methods matching the ad account's geo location are also essential for successful launches. This may involve additional expenses, but according to media buyers' experience, they pay off by increasing the number of accounts going through the approval process. When it comes to proxies, it's better not to cut costs – high-quality mobile proxies are preferable to universal ones priced at $2-3 per month.
Many webmasters claim that when there is a lull in U.S. political life, farm accounts from this country work well. The approval rate for ad campaigns from these accounts may not exceed 50-60%, but they are excellent for card linking.
"For card linking, we don't use billing. A higher percentage of successful linkings occurs when you do it through Fan Page. We simply go to the fan page, find any post, click Boost/Promote, and a card linking window pops up at the bottom of the page," a webmaster shared about their card linking method.
"During a Facebook storm, we don't launch anything—owners don't see the point in pouring a budget when everything is rejected. It's also not worth diving into other sources because without expertise in them, there's nothing to do, and good specialists are already working in other teams," shared a media buyer from one of the St. Petersburg affiliates teams.
Another group of affiliate marketers takes a different approach. They use the time when Facebook is storming to test other sources. The owners of such teams believe that allocating resources for experiments when FB allows campaigns is impractical. However, when Zuckerberg's platform is down, it's the perfect time to focus on things they didn't have time for before.
"Our team was formed in 2019, we started with Facebook, and there was no expertise in other sources. We began running campaigns there, and it happened that we saw good returns relatively quickly. The storm before the elections was a shock to us. The first thought was to disband, but then we pulled ourselves together and started looking for solutions. In the end, we found people to run gambling with Google and sweepstakes with push. When FB eased up, we returned to native traffic, but with a completely different team. That storm helped us diversify income sources and we came out of it with a small decline. Each subsequent storm also opened up new opportunities for us, and we grew in profitability in a circle. Probably, we just didn't want to sit without money, so we found ways to make money while FB didn't allow it," shared the co-founder of a Ukrainian affiliates team.
We do not have statistics on how well rental services handle this issue. In affiliates chats, some claim that RDP accounts do not get suspended for business verification, making them a viable option for running campaigns during the current storm.
The second issue during the current storm is the rejection of all creatives. At the time of writing this article, there isn't a definitive solution. However, it's important to note that there are rarely situations without a solution. If you face these challenges, feel free to reach out to us, and we will surely come up with strategies to help your creatives get through Facebook's moderation process.
Hello there! Today, we want to discuss Facebook storms, understand what they are, when they began, how they end, and if they ever really do end. We'll gather opinions from webmasters on whether it's worth running campaigns during a storm or better to wait it out. We'll also describe the experiences of fellow webmasters who are testing alternative traffic sources during these storms. But let's start with the history of the issue. It's going to be interesting and informative. Let's dive in!
“Getting traffic from Facebook by M. Zuckerberg"
How It All Began, or "Vote or Don't Vote, You'll Still Get Banned"
In the distant year 2016, you could launch almost anything on Facebook. Weight loss offers easily passed even the most stringent creative restrictions, and dating offers brought webmasters massive profits, without much concern for cloaking links or preparing a batch of accounts for uploads. In general, it was a time when those in the know accumulated significant capital through traffic reselling.Everything changed after the 2016 U.S. presidential elections. Donald Trump's victory was negatively perceived by a portion of American society. Dissatisfied with the election results, the electorate began a witch hunt. Supporters of Hillary Clinton were targeted, and major media outlets were criticized for portraying the election winner in a more favorable light.
Political controversies did not spare Facebook. The social media faced a barrage of criticism for not removing fake accounts that posted political calls to vote. Thanks to precise targeting, advertisements were streamed from these accounts to specific social groups to influence public opinion. In essence, these were the first elections where the technology of manipulation using the largest social network was employed.
“Great job Mark!”
Under the threat of a potential ban on the social network in the United States, Zuckerberg had to take drastic measures to monitor and control advertising during elections. The task was to teach artificial intelligence, in collaboration with human moderators, to detect fake accounts and ban them. Mark allocated 40,000 people to work on this.
Affiliate marketing is DEAD?
On the social network's website, it is extensively described that Facebook has taken a comprehensive approach to combat election manipulation.
“New measures to curb manipulative campaigns”
It tightened the screws completely, and all subsequent elections, not only in the United States but also in many other countries around the world, were accompanied by storms. During their conduct, all accounts were affected, and no advertising campaigns could be approved. The social network started to operate on the principle of "we'll clear out everyone, and those who are not bots can recover their accounts." They also adopted an approach where if advertising was launched by an individual rather than a company, it was better to stop it.
In the next screenshot, it is shown that, for example, even for the elections in Kenya, Facebook was prepared (read: it was a nightmare for WEBs). Naturally, many webmasters do not follow the political agenda of African states, so these storms seem sudden and unrelated to them.
“How Meta is preparing for elections in Kenya”
Election-related storms typically last from a few weeks to 1-2 months. Then Facebook eases up, and the main reason for this is, as always, money.
Money prevail over evil
In 2016, technically, the social network was capable of permanently banning and preventing "suspicious" accounts from operating. However, the financial statistics during the initial storms showed a significant drop in Facebook's revenues during periods of mass bans of accounts and advertising campaigns. Mark Zuckerberg's desire to earn money triumphed in the fight against fake accounts.Nevertheless, the social network is required to monitor the number of "fake" accounts and regulate their volume ahead of significant political events. Facebook improved its algorithms and introduced additional authentication for profiles intending to promote political advertising. This created a mechanism for controlling political agitation. In theory, all fake accounts that AI had learned to detect could be removed. However, this did not happen, which once again confirms the social network's lenient approach to shadow affiliates.
This raises the question: "Why does Zuckerberg torment webmasters by creating storms when he knows that webmasters generate a significant portion of his profits?" There are several answers to this question.
Firstly, openly admitting that affiliates are profitable is not possible. Given that there are certain formal community rules, it is necessary to demonstratively combat their violations.
Secondly, the principle of "better safe than sorry" is at work. It is more prudent to forgo a few percentage points of profit by eliminating all fake accounts before the elections than having to justify actions to the U.S. authorities later on.
Furthermore, Meta's founder has chosen a strategy of natural selection, implementing it according to the Pareto principle. Most of the small webmasters who generate 20% of the social network's profit from promoting shadow offers will drop out. They will form a stable public opinion that it's impossible to run prohibited content on Facebook. Those who can find ways to bypass restrictions and launch ad campaigns will unequivocally be in the minority. They will remain quiet about what they manage to promote but will scale their businesses and generate the remaining 80% of the "shadow" profit for the social network.
As a result of the periodic tightening of the screws, there is significantly less straightforward advertising with creatives on Facebook. Affiliates are adopting increasingly sophisticated approaches to hide the meaning they put into their creatives from the ever-present AI. In this context, "Mark and Co." cannot be accused of not combating shadow offers.
“Shadow niche is dead”
It's storming mildly... but that's not certain.
Since the first storm, each subsequent one appears even more intense. The rule "Fear makes the eyes big" applies here. In reality, each new storm has almost nothing in common with the previous one. Essentially, these are different technical iterations that the social network implements to roll out the latest updates. A side effect of such updates is the "Nothing's launching" effect.The bombshell effect of Facebook's storms always comes as a surprise. Imagine the average webmaster who has found a combo and is quietly running it. Suddenly, their accounts start getting flagged for risk payment, or they can't get their creatives approved. What does the webmaster do? They reach out to chat groups. There, they find others facing the same issues, and together they start blowing up the problem like, "It's all over!"
If you look at the issue of storms in historical retrospective, comparing, for example, the 2020 U.S. presidential election and the 2022 Senate election, the effects were entirely different. In the latter case, Facebook allowed gambling and shadow-market offers to run without significant issues, while nothing could be launched before the presidential election. Perhaps the different approach to pressuring the promotion of shadow topics can be explained by the importance of these political events. Whether this theory holds true or not can only be confirmed or refuted by Facebook's actions leading up to the 2024 elections.
The First billing scammers are to blame for everything
There is an opinion within the affiliates’ community that Facebook storms are happening because of webmasters who take advantage of the credit they are given and then throw away their accounts after they've been flagged. However, this is only partially true. As we've already noted, the reason for the storms lies in the need to implement platform updates.The social network is in a perpetual battle against pioneers, with varying success. Each year, opponents of the free-ride scheme claim that the pioneers are dead. Meanwhile, those who run pioneer schemes argue the opposite – they claim to be successfully exploiting Facebook. Such pioneers' success is debatable. Today, the use of avatar accounts enables an average of $8 in spend from the social network. Given these relatively minor budget losses, Facebook is unlikely to go after every webmaster just to defeat pioneers.
To be fair, it's worth mentioning that running campaigns from trusted accounts and well-warmed avatar accounts has become impossible, partly due to Facebook's efforts against pioneers. This was the result of one of the storms that has long passed but left a lasting impact.
The end or not the end?
The consequences of Facebook storms are often irreversible. The strategy of "wait and launch the same combo a month later" rarely works. Typically, webmasters seek new approaches for running campaigns, and the line between "I found a new combo" and "Facebook eased up" is often blurred.
What happened in the last few years?
The most severe and prolonged storms began occurring in 2020. Accounts started going into Policy mode en masse, and launching anything became nearly impossible. The way out of this situation was to use Business Manager for campaigns.By mid-2021, Facebook started storming again, resulting in the fan pages being taken down. The problem was not resolved quickly and did not immediately become public knowledge. Webmasters intentionally triggered the suspension of the account's advertising activities, went through it using fake documents, and then started running campaigns. Accounts after such manipulations lasted quite a while, and given the empty auction, they provided excellent ROI.
In 2022, accounts started getting flagged for risk payment. By the end of the year, it seemed like the social network had eased up, but at the beginning of 2023, the issue with risk payments returned.
What is happening today? Colleagues' experiences
Currently, Facebook is experiencing storms as well. Webmasters primarily complain about issues with launching any creatives. Many are also facing problems where agency accounts are being sent for business verification or accounts are flagged for risk payments. Webmasters are also expressing concerns about a decrease in the number of successful ad launches on Facebook. Below, we'll discuss how teams are weathering the storm and the actions they are taking to avoid profit losses.Agency accounts rule
The team lead of an affiliates team shared that after they started running campaigns from agency accounts, they were able to significantly increase the total spend on each account. While their own farming accounts allowed them to scale to $1,000-$2,000, using agency accounts increased this amount to $8,000-$10,000. Additionally, agency accounts had a much higher success rate for ad launches.Transitioning to agency accounts greatly simplified operations for the team, eliminating the need to maintain and administer a farming department. The number of accounts each buyer had to work with also decreased due to the increased total spend. This allowed them to work without assistants who prepared accounts for launch. The only drawback of using "agency accounts" is the fact that part of the spend needs to be given to the service.
"Agency accounts are a great option if your ROI allows you to cover the commission. However, you should understand that they almost never allow you to bill on high amounts. I'm not talking about the first bill; I'm referring to when an account scales to $400 and above. On regular accounts, if the advertising is no longer highly profitable, you can bill a source for, say, $400. With agency accounts, you won't be able to 'extra earn' like that," the team lead shared from his experience.
“Taking out the first bill. We’re after you”
About the increase in the percentage of successful launches
The head of the media buying department of another affiliates team shared that as a result of several recent Facebook storms, there was a sharp decline in campaign launches. The team's efforts were focused on understanding why accounts were being flagged for risk payments and fixing the issue. In the end, they concluded that the primary reason for these "risks" was related to payments and proxies.The team didn't find a universal solution to prevent risk payments. Periodically, media buyers use the following methods to reduce the number of "drops":
- Changing payment methods and proxies. The team works with multiple services and periodically randomly links different payment methods and proxies.
- Mixing card attachment methods - either before launching or after the campaign is created and launched.
- Using various methods to attach cards when launching campaigns - through Fan Page, Facebook Helper, the "Support" button in billing, Business Manager.
Currency and payment methods matching the ad account's geo location are also essential for successful launches. This may involve additional expenses, but according to media buyers' experience, they pay off by increasing the number of accounts going through the approval process. When it comes to proxies, it's better not to cut costs – high-quality mobile proxies are preferable to universal ones priced at $2-3 per month.
Many webmasters claim that when there is a lull in U.S. political life, farm accounts from this country work well. The approval rate for ad campaigns from these accounts may not exceed 50-60%, but they are excellent for card linking.
"For card linking, we don't use billing. A higher percentage of successful linkings occurs when you do it through Fan Page. We simply go to the fan page, find any post, click Boost/Promote, and a card linking window pops up at the bottom of the page," a webmaster shared about their card linking method.
Risks in rentals
Many webmasters mistakenly believe that a trusted rental account guarantees a successful launch. This is not the case, as rental accounts are governed by the same Facebook rules as autorun accounts. Therefore, it is also very easy to encounter risk payments on rentals. To prevent this from happening, you need to:- Farm the account for a week from the device you will use for running ads – it's enough to spend 15-20 minutes in the feed each day;
- Create a Fan Page;
- Join groups and show some light activity in them with comments and likes.
A Facebook storm is a tragedy for some teams and a business boost for others
Team leaders and media buyers we spoke to have polarized views on the impact of Facebook storms on the industry as a whole and their own teams in particular. Some claim that every new storm forces their team to downsize their buyers and endure a long period without profits. These individuals monitor affiliates' chats, and when there's information that "FB has eased up," they test new approaches in search of a profitable combination."During a Facebook storm, we don't launch anything—owners don't see the point in pouring a budget when everything is rejected. It's also not worth diving into other sources because without expertise in them, there's nothing to do, and good specialists are already working in other teams," shared a media buyer from one of the St. Petersburg affiliates teams.
Another group of affiliate marketers takes a different approach. They use the time when Facebook is storming to test other sources. The owners of such teams believe that allocating resources for experiments when FB allows campaigns is impractical. However, when Zuckerberg's platform is down, it's the perfect time to focus on things they didn't have time for before.
"Our team was formed in 2019, we started with Facebook, and there was no expertise in other sources. We began running campaigns there, and it happened that we saw good returns relatively quickly. The storm before the elections was a shock to us. The first thought was to disband, but then we pulled ourselves together and started looking for solutions. In the end, we found people to run gambling with Google and sweepstakes with push. When FB eased up, we returned to native traffic, but with a completely different team. That storm helped us diversify income sources and we came out of it with a small decline. Each subsequent storm also opened up new opportunities for us, and we grew in profitability in a circle. Probably, we just didn't want to sit without money, so we found ways to make money while FB didn't allow it," shared the co-founder of a Ukrainian affiliates team.
Conclusion
In conclusion, Facebook storms always have been and always will be a part of the affiliate marketing landscape. Each storm forces webmasters to adapt their strategies and find new ways to get shadow offers through moderation. As of today, the main issue arising after the recent storm is the account suspension for business verification on agent accounts.We do not have statistics on how well rental services handle this issue. In affiliates chats, some claim that RDP accounts do not get suspended for business verification, making them a viable option for running campaigns during the current storm.
The second issue during the current storm is the rejection of all creatives. At the time of writing this article, there isn't a definitive solution. However, it's important to note that there are rarely situations without a solution. If you face these challenges, feel free to reach out to us, and we will surely come up with strategies to help your creatives get through Facebook's moderation process.
