Reefer Madness...Or, Everything We Currently Know About Advertising CBD Products on Facebook

Update: September 17, 2019

Great news! The term "Topical CBD" is currently being allowed in ads. Stay tuned for more updates as they happen.

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It's 4:20pm on September 10, 2019 and here's what we know, today, about running ads for products containing CBD, cannaboids, hemp oil, or any other by-product of cannabis on Facebook.

This blog post will be updated as new information becomes available, so check back when you've got questions!

Facebook's CBD Ad Policy: Clear as Mud

So, Facebook will let you advertise CBD products now? Great! Let's start running ads! Oh, what do you mean they've never actually said in their Terms of Service that CBD products were banned?

How do I know what I can write? How do I know what will get my ad account shut down? What will actually get posted and not pulled down after a week?! AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH, it's enough to drive you crazy!

Hey, we get it! We're the agency running these ads for real CBD clients, day in and day out, and we've had accounts flagged, ads pulled after they were already spending, and landing pages rejected for a single word buried three paragraphs down. Facebook isn't publishing a rulebook, so we built one ourselves through trial, error, and more than a few frustrating calls with Facebook support. Here's what we know and our pro-tips for advertising products made with CBD:

What We've Learned (The Hard Way)

Tread carefully with landing pages. Look at the guidelines for Misleading or False Content and Personal Health. Make sure that any claims your product makes are reasonable and can be supported. We've watched otherwise-clean ads get rejected because the landing page still had the word "Pain" in an old testimonial. As always, that word is a big red flag for Facebook, so be cautious with pain relief claims anywhere in the funnel, not just the ad itself.

Edible products are more sensitive than topical products. The best practice for edible products is to advertise information about product benefits ONLY and send traffic to an educational page. Any ask for a purchase in the ad copy or first landing page seems to be cause for rejection -- we've had entire accounts flagged for review because one edible ad asked "Shop Now" instead of "Learn More."

The Forbidden Words List

Dirty words: words that seem to be triggering rejection include:

CBD (although as of 9/17/19 "Topical CBD" is being allowed)

Hemp

Cannabis

Anything with "Cannabinoid" in it

THC (even if you're saying the product doesn't have it)

Marijuana

Full-spectrum

So What CAN You Actually Say?

So what CAN you talk about in your ads? This is where the real craft comes in -- when you can't say the one word that explains what your product actually does, your headline has to do the heavy lifting instead of leaning on the ingredient name. We've had to rebuild entire ad concepts around benefit language alone, and honestly, some of them outperformed the CBD-forward versions once we cleaned them up.

Product features (except, you know, for the key CBD ingredient)

Ethical sourcing of ingredients or green production methods

Focus on Quality & Efficacy

Brand positioning messages (as long as, again, you don't mention CBD)

Product experience (taste, feel, smell, etc)

Other reasons people would feel good about buying (or using) that product or shopping with you.

If you're running these ads for a client and you're the one fielding the panicked "why did our account get shut down" call, remember: half of managing a CBD account is managing the client's nerves as much as the algorithm, because Facebook's opacity will test everyone's patience, not just yours.

Got a hot tip for advertising CBD products (or how NOT to advertise them), comment below, we'll take all the help we can get!