Facebook Authorization for Political Advertising traps?
If you are working on any sort of political campaign, organization, or even issue campaign you should get your Facebook page authorized ASAP before you get caught in the trap and can’t post or run and advertisement. Yes even just boost a post.
But… even if you are political campaign adjacent as in you do print mailings, digital work, operate fields campaigns, or even just reference political campaigns you should get authorized now.
Big picture I support their steps to make money in politics and foreign interference harder 100%. If you are working on any political campaign or messaging campaign you should get authorized ASAP. It can take weeks to get verified.
That means it can weeks until you can run ANY ads until verification is finalized.
I found myself and www.facebook.com/TheDigitalPlan unable to advertise the upcoming launch of the 2nd edition of the book trapped in a catch 22 limbo. If you read their own language it states pretty clearly
New: Political Ad Authorization in the U.S.
Authorization is only required for Pages running political ads targeting the U.S. You must have a U.S. address to proceed.
Here is what is covered and you should read: https://www.facebook.com/business/help/1838453822893854
But as you’ll see in the chat with Facebook there was no reasoning with them that The Digital Plan doesn’t actually run political ads in any way. That referencing the process of democracy is different than advocating for an issue or a candidate. I certainly contemplated just reaching out to folks I know who work at Facebook but I decided for now to try the process and see what happens to share the experience. Here is the conversation (you’ll have to excuse my poor grammar when time quickly in chat):
From there we got to I had to authorize it and felt like I hit a wall of circular logic. You’ll need to head to the admin side of your page:
CLICK: Settings
CLICK: Authorizations on the left
AUTHORIZE: For this you or another admin will need to be willing to fill out a form to update your home address and provide your drivers license.
Simple take aways:
If you are a political campaign get Facebook Authorization for Political Advertising ASAP.
If you do any sort of advocacy you should probably do this ASAP.
If your business or nonprofit references campaigns or elections even if you do not do advocacy or direct voter engagement I would suggest you get the authorization before you find yourself in the Facebook Authorization for Political Advertising traps.
