Your Checklist to Run Political Ads on Meta

Running paid political ads on social media isn’t a one and done process — many platforms such as Meta (Facebook and Instagram) and Google require advertisers to complete a lengthy verification process. 

In 2018, Meta launched this policy in an effort to bring more transparency to political advertising on their platforms. The steps have changed cycle-over-cycle, and are a common roadblock for campaigns launching a paid social media program. Through our work with local, state and national races navigating this process, our team developed a quick checklist covering the tips and tricks to getting an account ready to run on Meta:

Step One: Personal Verification

Any group or person running social, political, and issue based ads requires a verified human to manage the Facebook Ad Account. This process entails ID verification — where Meta will require Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) enabled, photo identification documents, proof of physical address, and a notarized statement in order to confirm this person’s identity. This process can take anywhere from 2 to 3 weeks. Because of the variable timelines, we recommend adding this process to the top of your campaign launch “to-do” list to get ahead of any issues.

Step Two: Setting Up Your Facebook Page

The next crucial step is proper set up of the Facebook Page for disclaimer creation. Ads can only be run from Pages, not personal profiles, so it is important to create your campaign’s official Facebook Page — such as “Sarah for Springville School Board.”

Step Three: Facebook Page Disclaimer

In the Page settings, verified Facebook profiles can create disclaimers in order to verify your campaign with Meta. This process entails a few important pieces of information:

1. EIN number – you’ll be asked to please provide the EIN Form that was assigned to your campaign by the IRS
2. A physical address
3. The campaign’s website URL (for example: sarahforschoolboard.com)
4. An email that matches the website URL (for example: [email protected])
5. A phone number where Meta will send the security codes

With this information, you can submit a disclaimer for review — this process can take up to a couple of days. If the disclaimer is declined, your campaign will need to submit another disclaimer for review with updated information.

It’s also important to note that the address, email and phone number will be available in Meta’s public archive — so please only use contact information that you are comfortable sharing publicly.

Step Four: Disclaimer Approval

Once Meta approves the disclaimer, your Page is ready to run social, political, and issue based ads. You can run these types of ads on Instagram as well.

Troubleshooting Tips and Tricks

Meta has changed the process of disclaimers and identify verification many times since the program’s launch. Unfortunately, that means it isn’t difficult to encounter roadblocks during this process. Our team aggregated additional resources that are helpful when encountering issues:

• Social Checklist For Campaigns: As social media platforms continuously update their page and disclaimer set-up processes, the SpeakEasy team created a checklist to help get you started across your social media programs.
• Meta’s GPA Support Portal for Concierge Help: Contact Meta directly for advertiser page-level support questions.
• Meta’s Election FAQ Page: A useful hub for frequently asked questions surrounding disclaimers and advertiser verification. 

If your campaign hasn’t been able to successfully run ads on Meta platforms, consider scheduling a call with someone here at SpeakEasy. We’ll help you troubleshoot and offer our tailored best practices: