Facebook Ad Review Delay Due To Coronavirus - What Should You do?

Hello there! We hope you're doing well with this Coronavirus situation, things are going pretty wild everywhere in the world.

It's not only the physical shops and stores that are having a hard time but also marketers are facing some problems.
To be more specific, Facebook advertising has become a little more "hard" sue to coronavirus. Facebook ad reviews delay due to coronavirus and this is the topic, I'd like to talk about today.

Everyone who has tried to run some ads on Facebook has probably seen a warning which says:

"Expect Delays Due to Coronavirus. Due to coronavirus (COVID-19), it may take us more time to review ads. Ad delivery may also be delayed."

This happens because Facebook had shut down its offices and asked staff to work from home during the COVID-19 outbreak, and that means that many contract workers who weren't able to work away from the office are simply not working, so Facebook's capacity has been reduced in many areas.

As Facebook, mostly, uses contractors for content moderation, the company has warned earlier in the week that this could possibly lead to some delays and errors as it depends more on automated systems to detect and remove rule violating posts.

Facebook ads are also managed by contractors, which also means that there will be some delays in ad approvals, and incorrectly rejected ads due to the machines stepping in.

"We use a combination of people and technology to review ads on Facebook and Instagram, and our automated systems already play a big role in that process. Now with a reduced and remote workforce, we’re relying on automated technology even more." 

"Well, what should I do?" You may wonder... 

Let's see our options. According to the Facebook Help Center, two ways to prevent delays in ad review time are:

• Only change the budget or start/end date for an existing ad so it doesn’t trigger a new review.
• If your ads are performing well, consider extending the delivery period for those ads instead of creating new ads.

Both of the recommended practices involve already existing ads, so Facebook itself recommends to not create new ads because it's sure that they'll have a significant delay - even for weeks! 

What other people do right now, though? We've got some facts for you here: 

• Brands have dramatically changed their images in their social media ads in the past weeks amid the growth of the COVID-19 pandemic. Videos and Images of people washing their hands and faces have surged by almost 600%  according to a study by Pattern89.
• The use of "cleanliness" has only been increasing since the Coronavirus outbreak begun. Including not only images and videos about staying safe and clean but with images of people touching their faces, sneezing, coughing, etc, etc. The same study has found a dramatic rise of the "face-mask emoji" in headlines.
• As more countries getting in lockdown state and social distancing becomes a prescribed norm, ads have shown a significant drop of the term "human connection" and in travel-related images. 

These 3 things are the current trends on Facebook advertising these days - if we can call them like that.

According to our team, the best way to use paid advertisement is to take a break from Facebook ads and utilize the other social media platforms, such as Twitter, LinkedIn, Quora, Reddit, even on Youtube. Star with a small budget and see which platform works better for you and your brand, or your clients' brands. Test them out, after all, testing is a vital part for marketers.

Maybe now is the time to try something new and see how it will go. There are a lot of options here for you, there's no need to get desperate because Facebook ads are having some issues right now.