Call it a Glitchmas miracle.
Maybe.
At long last, Meta appears to have resolved a glitch in its ad platform that prevented new financial services advertisers from running campaigns, according to three UK-based agencies, one affiliate network and two financial brand advertisers, all of whom spoke with AdExchanger on condition of anonymity.
But how big a deal was this?
Well, the UK recently expanded what types of companies and services are subject to financial services regulation. That bucket now includes financial advisors and investment firms, as well as mortgage companies, insurance providers, some residential and commercial housing advertisers, many auto dealerships and small, regional mobile services – all of which advertise financing offers and deals that are made on credit.
That means the issue on Meta’s platform affected a growing category of advertisers.
The background
Meta flags ad campaigns on its platform from new accounts attempting to run financial ads or promote financial services in the UK.
This is normal and not actually a problem. British advertisers must have a license from the FCA, a financial regulatory commission, to conduct any kind of advertising for financial services. These licenses are expensive, often costing thousands of pounds, and it is routine for platforms like Meta, Google, Bing and others to require one before these brands can advertise with them.
But from roughly the end of July to this week, due to a glitch in Meta’s backend, the ability to add a new FCA authorization within Meta Ads Manager either wasn’t available or wasn’t processing.
There was a period of time when Meta’s authorization form didn’t correctly request the FCA license number. Then, for almost a month, the correct form was listed in the Meta support pages, the three agency execs told AdExchanger, but a glitch prevented them from uploading the information.
Each of the three agency execs and the affiliate network said they’d communicated with between five to 10 Meta customer service reps, each of whom expressed amazement when the problem was demonstrated by a screenshare. The reps would go off promising to report back, and the service ticket would be marked as resolved within a day or two – but nothing would change.
The CEO of one agency that does lead generation and advertising for the mortgage industry said a friend at a major agency holding company brought him into a call with their account manager to inquire about the issue because, as a small agency, he’d been able unable to get in touch with a human. The holding company account rep seemed to be making some headway, or at least was reporting back, according to the CEO, until the rep changed jobs internally, and the thread was lost.
Another agency’s car dealership campaigns were being rejected because financing was part of the ad offer, and thus qualified as financial services. The agency has an FCA license, but since it couldn’t be uploaded the brand ended up removing all financing language and offers from the ad copy and metadata.
Campaign performance dropped, he said, but it was a functional workaround.
Bueller? Bueller?
What was particularly frustrating about the glitch to the UK advertisers was how little information they squeezed out of Meta. Some spent countless hours trying to reach Meta service reps, then explaining and reexplaining what they saw in the platform.
Also galling, although ultimately gratifying, is that the issue seems to have been a relatively easy fix. It appears to have been resolved over the weekend for some advertisers shortly after a reporter – this reporter, in fact – sent a note to Meta’s comms inquiring about the glitch.
According to a Meta spokesperson, the company “identified a technical issue that had previously impacted a small number of advertisers, and it has since been resolved.” The Meta spokesperson also told AdExchanger that “our tools are currently working as expected for businesses that are using this verification process.”
The fix was purportedly made before AdExchanger reached out about the issue on Friday.
Still, the agency and brand executives AdExchanger spoke to, who had been trying and failing to get approval for more than a dozen new accounts between them, said the problem had only partially resolved itself by Monday morning.
Some advertisers told AdExchanger they’ve had new advertising accounts for financial services approved for the first time since July, while others said they’re still unable to gain approval as a result of the bug.
Still bugging
But it wasn’t even clear that the issue was related to a bug until Meta confirmed that fact to AdExchanger on Monday.
In addition to the recently expanded financial services category under UK law, the FCA just this month gained new powers to regulate tech companies. With that in mind, multiple UK-based agency execs had previously speculated to AdExchanger that Meta might be reticent about new FCA sign-ups because of regulatory concerns.
Another agency leader theorized that the bug was due to Meta, which also recently made big changes Meta is making to how it categorizes and restricts financial services advertisers.
“Who knows what they’re doing on the backend that could be reverberating in some strange way for us,” she said.
Turns out it was just an error all along.
And the bug is fixed now … right? Sort of.
One agency leader, who was excited to see her accounts could upload the correct information to Meta for FCA licenses as of Monday, followed up with AdExchanger on Tuesday to say the Band-Aid seems to have fallen off. The ads are still being rejected, she said, although it could be that there’s a day or two before the verification takes.
Another buyer also said he seems to have successfully uploaded his FCA license numbers, but the actual account certifications haven’t come through, nor has any kind of affirmative note or receipt that Meta received the new FCA license for approval.
“I don’t want to get too excited,” he said. A month ago, it also looked like Meta was taking new FCA license numbers, but the bug was preventing that info from going through.
“Fingers crossed this time,” he said.
