Prohibited means do not buy the domain and ‘see’
Meta’s prohibited financial products list exists because these offers are frequently sold with misleading tactics. Payday loans, paycheck advances, bail bonds, loans due in 90 days or less, penny auctions, binary options, initial coin offerings, and contracts for difference are named. If that is the product, Facebook and Instagram ads are the wrong channel. Full stop.
Restricted is a different bucket
Insurance, mortgages, longer-term loans, investment products, and credit-card applications may run with verification, licenses, and — in some regions — special ad categories and disclosures. Meta may review authorization. That is not a loophole for a CFD shop rebranded as ‘education’.
Landing pages and cloaking
An ad about a newsletter that lands on an ICO is an ICO ad. Meta and the FTC both care about the claim the person actually receives. Cloaking the destination for the reviewer is how you lose the account, not how you ‘scale’.
What to do instead if you are adjacent
Tax software for traders, licensed brokerage in allowed products, or a media site that does not solicit trades can sometimes run. Adjacent is not a costume. Legal review first, creatives second.
A kill-list for the media buyer
If the brief contains these words, stop.
- Profit promises, risk-free, get rich
- ICO, IDOs, token pre-sale
- CFD, binary, 90-day loan, payday
- Celebrity endorsement you do not have in writing
- Landing page owned by an unlicensed offshore entity
Studio boundary
Kiwi will not build a funnel whose only job is to evade this list. We will build a legitimate site or product under a written proposal. Related: custom website design and development.
Frequently asked questions
Can we advertise a CFD app as a ‘demo’?
Meta prohibits CFD trading ads. A demo that exists to fund a CFD account is still the product. Do not dress it up.
Are ICOs banned on Google too?
Yes. Google’s crypto policy also prohibits ICO pre-sales and public offerings. Two walls, same answer.
What about a news article that mentions an ICO?
Editorial news can be allowed in some crypto-education exceptions. An ad whose job is to solicit the ICO is not a news article. Intent and destination decide.
Will an appeal work?
Not if the product is on the prohibited list. Appeals are for misclassification, not for rewriting the standard.
Sources
- Meta Advertising Standards — Prohibited financial products
- Meta Transparency Center — Financial and insurance products
- U.S. FTC — Truth in advertising
Figures cited above are drawn from the linked publications and are the responsibility of their sources; we date and scope them rather than presenting them as universal guarantees.