Setting Up Facebook Political Ads

I found the process of setting up Facebook ads for a Mayoral Candidate a bit cumbersome so I wanted to document the process to reference myself and hopefully help someone else in the process!

There are a total of 5 steps (not including the actual build-out of the ad or any Ads Manager setup). I've included detailed instructions for each step as well as helpful screenshots on what you need to accomplish before you begin creating ads on Facebook or Instagram regarding social issues, elections or politics .

Step 1: Confirm Your Identity

You have to confirm your identity through Facebook. To do this go to www.facebook.com/id, click “get started” in the box titled “Confirm your identity” and follow the instructions from there to run ads for social issues, elections or politics.

You will have to submit a photo of your ID and submit your mailing address. Facebook will then send a code in the mail to confirm your address. You’ll go to the same URL (www.facebook.com/id) to enter that code. Facebook will notify you that it will take up to 48 hours to confirm, however, in my particular case this process took a bit longer. I didn’t make it through the initial approval process and had to complete a document sent by Facebook and have it notarized. After submitting a copy of that document, it took 2 weeks before I was finally approved.

Step 2: Create a Disclaimer

I found the directions Facebook provided for this step a bit difficult to understand which is why I am documenting my process.

From your Facebook page, click on your profile photo in the upper right-hand corner and then navigate to "Settings & Privacy". From there, click "Settings". In the navigation on the left-hand side, click "New Pages Experience" and then "Issue, Electorial or Political Ads".

In my Mayoral candidate case, I selected "Employer identification number (EIN)" and followed the steps from there which, in my case, required a matching website and email domain, the EIN number, address, and phone number. Facebook also required that we sudmit a scan of the official document from the IRS or the business license. From there, a code was sent to the phone number we submitted AND to the email address. Upon entering those, we received the following...

And, so we wait up to 3 days for Facebook to review our information.

Step 3: Link an Ad Account

Facebook was quick on the approval of our disclaimer! In our case, it took less than 24 hours.

The next step after getting the Disclaimer approved was to "Link an ad account to the disclaimer". This step was also pretty easy and quick, as long as you already have an ad account set up through Facebook Ads Manager.

Under "Manage you disclaimers" there will be a button that says "Connect ad account" whereas in my case it currently says "Change ad account" because I already connected the account.

Step 4: Assign who is responsible for this page

I suggest that whoever went through the process of confirming their identity in the first step should be assigned responsibility for the page that will be running ads.

On the navigation on the left-hand side below the "Issue, Electoral or Political Ads" there is a button for "Page Transparency". This is where you will need to "Claim This Page".

If you need a refresher on how to get here, from your Facebook page, click on your profile photo in the upper right-hand corner and then navigate to "Settings & Privacy". From there, click "Settings". In the navigation on the left-hand side, click "New Pages Experience" and then "Page Transparency".

Step 5: Link Instagram Account

The final step of the process, if you'd like to run ads on Instagram is to link your Instagram account. To do this, from your Facebook page, click on your profile photo in the upper right-hand corner and then navigate to "Settings & Privacy". From there, click "Settings". In the navigation on the left-hand side, click "Linked Accounts" and then link your account there.

After you've completed that step, you will then want to go back to the "Issue, Electoral or Political Ads" tab and navigate to the bottom where there is a box titled "Run ads about social issues, elections or politics on Instagram". Follow the directions to submit for authorization.

After you have completed all the steps above, go into Ads Manager and follow the steps to create your ad!

I hope you find this article helpful. I know I found this process a bit challenging so my hope is that this article proves useful for anyone else trying to run ads on social issues, elections or politics on Facebook and Instagram.

Meta also offers a helpful step-by-step guide to navigate along with my process as well you can access it HERE.