How to spot a potential problem ad on Facebook Ads

By | April 25, 2024

I frequently get ads from ‘gurus’ who invite members to join a group on LINE or Whatsapp or even on Messenger to share their ‘moneyspinners’. In this case, I’m going to bet the group is on LINE or WA, not FB.

Such a page has ONE follower and directs to a form. Of course, the reason the account has one follower is that it is probably new. So I think it will get disabled quickly. So the advertiser is probably making new accounts to offset the deletions.

It’s quite clear that this is a problem post. IRL, this person pictured is a prominent stock investor with published books. How likely is it that he only has one follower? ONE! Probably this image of him is used without permission.

Also, if you look at the promises the page makes, you’ll realize that this is impossible to do. 10 minutes a week investing? Give me a break!

So digging a little further, here is the page creation information. There is no archive of the old page. I’m not about to dig further.

This ad, and many investment ads like it, has significant red flags that suggest your money would not be well looked after. There are no shortcuts to investing.

Unfortunately, if I report a page for such issues on Facebook… all I will get is…

If I could block FB ads properly, I would. But unfortunately, FB sees me as a mark. And so does this advertiser.

Clicking the “Why I am seeing this ad” yields no answer as it usually confirms that I’m a human and that I’m over 18. LOL!

After the UK’s scandal with prominent investor talents like Martin Lewis’ where his image and likeness were used to defraud people of their lifetime investments, you’d think that FB would be stricter in monitoring investment related ads…

But no! Why? Because there’s really no incentive for FB to do so, since it affects a cashcow for them. In fact, that’s a disincentive for FB even when it’s obvious.

So the real way to hurt the advertisers like this is to click on ads and make sure they pay for them. However, that will only hurt in the future as FB will think you are genuinely interested in them. Sad to say, the ONLY solution is to not use FB.