CBD Facebook Ads Policy – What Does It Say?

Advertising CBD or ingestible hemp is banned on Facebook. Advertisers are allowed to run ads for non-ingestible hemp. However, the ads cannot specifically feature those products. According to a Facebook Spokesperson, “Our policy remains the same: We don’t allow people to promote CBD or ingestible hemp on Facebook. The update to non-ingestible hemp was made months ago,” Under Facebook’s advertising policies, CBD is considered an “unsafe substance”. Facebook describes “unsafe substances” as the following, “Ads must not promote the sale or use of illicit or recreational drugs, or other unsafe substances, products, or supplements, as determined by Meta in its sole discretion.” Even though CBD is legal due to the 2018 farm bill which legalized hemp and CBD.

According to Federal Law, the FDA considers CBD a prescription drug when ingestible, which is believed to be why Facebook banned ingestible CBD from advertising on their platform. Promoting CBD violates Facebook’s community standards, page-specific policies, regulated goods policy, and advertising policies. According to a Facebook Spokesperson, hemp and CBD posts do not violate community guidelines if they are not paid promotion posts. You can post about CBD on your page, but you cannot pay to advertise CBD on Facebook.

CBD is allowed in a Facebook Ad as long as it is non-ingestible hemp that does not promote CBD products and the landing pages do not advertise CBD products. You could advertise a post talking about topical hemp without listing one of your business’s products, and the landing page could talk about topical hemp. Still, it cannot list your products for sale. If you are caught advertising ingestible CBD, your entire business account on Facebook will be permanently banned.

Do not believe us? Take it from Lacey Steffes, who founded and operates Spa Serenity out of Baraboo, Wisconsin, offering a range of CBD-infused treatments. She tried to publish an ad on Facebook featuring a marijuana leaf. The word “CBD” once published, her ad account was immediately terminated. She spent $42,000 over the past two years on Facebook ads for her small business, and they were her main source of leads and revenue. Her husband said she was devasted to the point that he had never witnessed before. As CBD booms Facebook is cracking down on CBD companies that circumvent their guidelines to generate revenue for their business.

Suppose you are one of the ballsy few willing to risk your business and ads account promoting CBD to the over 2 billion users of Facebook. In that case, there is a small chance it is possible. Although we must warn you that selling CBD on Facebook is a bit like winning the lottery, there is no logical reason why Facebook allows some ads and permanently bans others. The reason why is because Facebook uses an automatic moderating system that automatically flags and disables ad accounts that violate their guidelines. Then you have to go through a manual review which only approves some of the ad accounts.

Option #1: Focus on Non-Ingestible CBD

Facebook Spokesperson has responded in an email verifying that non-ingestible CBD is compliant with facebook’s policies on advertising as long as the ads do not directly market products that contain CBD. This means you could run an ad that talks about CBD topicals but cannot directly market the CBD topicals in the ad.

Option #2: Create a Facebook Ad Compliant Landing Page

Warning option #2 could permanently delete your marketing access to Facebook ads and cause long-term damage to your business. Using this option, you could create a CBD ads campaign and landing page compliant with Facebook’s ad policies and then submit it for approval. Once facebook’s ad policy approves the ad, you could directly change the landing page to promote your CBD products. The risk is that Facebook policy is to recrawl the ads after being approved to ensure no funny business is going on. Once the recrawl policy occurs, Facebook could realize that you have changed the landing page and disable your ads. In some extreme cases, Facebook may permanently suspend your account right then and there. Technically, the Facebook policy is to allow your ad account two strikes before a permanent ban. Many reports on Facebook violate their own rules and permanently ban accounts on their first strike.

Option #3: Run a Brand Awareness Campaign That Excludes CBD Product References

The third option is to run brand awareness campaigns that focus on the top of the funnel or the beginning of your customer’s journey. These could be ads that go to blog posts explaining what CBD is or how is CBD safe. There may be ads to sign up for your newsletter in other cases. Once you have these users in your funnel, you could begin the long term sales cycle of continuously educating your audience until they are ready to purchase your CBD. You cannot sell products or talk openly about your products during a brand awareness campaign. 

Here are some examples below:

Option #1 Example –

Option #2 Example –

Option #3 Example –

No, Facebook Marketplace does not allow users to sell CBD products under the Community Standard Guidelines. Ingestible supplements are prohibited from listing on Facebook Marketplace. Facebook says, “Listing may not promote the buying or selling of ingestible supplements.”

The Agriculture Improvement Act of 2018 allowed hemp-derived CBD to be introduced into interstate commerce, hemp production in all 50 states, and the removal of hemp’s 0.3% THC content from the Controlled Substances Act. However, the CBD Advertising Laws did not change the authority of the FDA to regulate products containing cannabis and cannabis-derived compounds under the Federal Food, Drug, Cosmetic Act (FD&C Act) and section 351 of the Public Health Service Act.

What does this mean for marketing and advertising CBD?

The FDA (Food and Drug Administration) requires the marketing of CBD products while making claims of therapeutic benefit or any other disease claim to be approved by the FDA before being sold. Specifically, cannabis and cannabis-derived products that claim in marketing and advertising materials that they could treat, diagnose, cure, mitigate, or prevent diseases such as cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, psychiatric disorders, and diabetes. To make these claims, they must first be approved by the FDA. CBD or THC cannot be added to food and then sold via interstate commerce. CBD and THC cannot be marketed or advertised as dietary supplements. The reason is that the FDA restricts any active ingredients in FDA-approved drugs to be sold via interstate commerce in food or marketed as dietary supplements under the FD&C act. The FDA will take enforcement action against companies that do not follow these rules and have sent warning letters in the past.

The FTC (Federal Trade Commission) recently launched CBDeceit to crack down on these companies that violate the FD&C Act. Since the launch of the CBDeceit operation, the FTC has cracked down on six CBD companies which have faced steep consequences for violating the FD&C Act.

There are exceptions to this rule. Suppose the products are derived from hemp but do not contain CBD or THC. In that case, they can be introduced to food via interstate commerce and marketed as a dietary supplement. Suppose brands desire to introduce their cannabis or cannabis-derived products to food via interstate commerce or as a dietary supplement. In that case, the FDA welcomes them to follow their process to approve these products.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the best free CBD marketing strategy to sell products directly to consumers online without making or taking phone calls is Search Engine Optimization (SEO). SEO is the process of optimizing your website on search engines like Google or Bing to show up as the top result when your customers search to purchase your products. These are called organic search results, and they receive more than 60% of all clicks. On average, paid advertising receives about 3% of all clicks from search engines. SEO is a completely legal and qualified marketing method for your CBD products that do not put your company at risk of being banned or shut down. However, there is a right way to do SEO that is safe for your brand. There is a wrong way to do SEO which could result in your business being permanently banned from Google.

For this reason, it is important to follow Google’s Guidelines and Terms of Service when doing SEO. This does not mean you cannot sell CBD products directly on your website. The exact opposite is true; you can directly promote CBD products for sale to consumers using SEO and your website on Google, Bing, and the other search engines.

What makes SEO the Best Free CBD Marketing Strategy?

SEO is the best CBD marketing and advertising strategy because it does not cost your company a dime in advertising costs. The organic results on search engines are earned. They cannot be paid for, which means that once you earn the top result, your website will continue to receive traffic indefinitely. The one downside of SEO is that it takes time, on average, at least six months to see fantastic results.

If you choose to pay a company to do SEO for your CBD website, it will cost money. Although if you stop paying the SEO company, your website will continue to receive traffic and leads that generate revenue for your CBD company. Unlike paid advertising, the traffic and revenue grind to a halt when you stop paying. SEO continues to generate traffic and revenue for your business if you stop paying an SEO company. This is why SEO has the highest return on investment out of any marketing and advertising tactics. If you are interested in learning more about how SEO increases revenue and market share for your company, then reach out for a free consultation.