I don’t really ‘get’ Facebook. Maybe that is because I am 42 years old and I am not supposed to. But I do get the advertising potential. Facebook have cunningly extracted detailed demographic data from their customers and are using this to offer highly targeted advertising to businesses. For example, Facebook currently has 32,080 females, aged 25-40, with a college education, in the USA who are engaged. These are the sort of people I would love to advertise my seating planner software to. But Facebook doesn’t want my money. A quick read through the Facebook advertising guidelines reveals:
No ad is permitted to contain or link, whether directly or indirectly, to a site that contains software downloads, freeware, or shareware.
This might possibly be due to worries about malware, but that seems to be covered by other clauses. Maybe they just want to keep their customers on the Facebook site, so they can click more ads? But, aren’t most URLs going to indirectly link to sites containing software downloads if you keep following links?
Then you might need to create a content-only website about “tricks and tips organizing receptions and weddings” that happens to be heavily sponsored by PerfectPlanTable. :-)
But it would still fall foul of their ‘indirect’ links rule if it had any links to my site. And it wouldn’t be much use if it didn’t.
It’s odd, but I wouldn’t worry about it too much.
Advertising is a buyer’s market. There are a million other places that will happily accept your ads.
The rules have been updated to target the kinds of downloads they intend; advertising your products should be fine.