The insurance ad compliance checklist: run this before every ad

Most rejected insurance ads fail one of a short list of checks — and so do most of the ads that get accounts restricted or draw a regulator's attention. Here is the list, in the order to run it, before any ad spends a dollar. Paste your copy into the free checker and it runs the copy checks for you in twenty seconds.

First, know which rulebooks you're checking against

Two rule sets bind every ad you run, and they fail differently. Meta's policies cost you an ad, then an account. Your state's advertising standards bind you, directly, as a licensed producer — truthful, not misleading in fact or by implication, and clear enough that nobody could be deceived by what's missing. Your carrier's advertising guide sits on top of both.

Every check below serves at least one of those three masters. Now the list.

✓ 1. No personal attributes — “you” + an attribute

The ad cannot assert or imply something about the reader: their age, health, financial situation, or status. Scan your copy for the word “you” and check what's attached to it.

✓ 2. No loose guarantee language

“Guaranteed acceptance,” “risk free,” “can't be turned down.” Permissible only when the product genuinely is guaranteed issue and you disclose it. Used loosely it is a misrepresentation — a state problem, not just a Meta one.

✓ 3. No rates, premiums, or carrier names in cold traffic

“$9.95 a month” turns a generic ad into a product illustration, with everything that implies about naming the insurer and substantiating the number. Keep the ad generic: no carrier, no rate, no specific policy feature. The product comes up on the call, where you're licensed.

✓ 4. No implied government affiliation

“Government-approved benefit.” “Federal program.” “State burial benefit.” Unless it is an actual named government program, delete the sentence. This one is hunted aggressively in final expense creative, and it is the fastest route to a regulator.

Those four are the copy flags — the full breakdown of each is in the rejection guide, and the checker tests all four plus a couple dozen finer-grained patterns. The next three checks are the ones no copy tool can run for you.

✓ 5. The special ad category is declared

Insurance falls under Meta's Financial Products and Services category, declared at campaign creation. Running insurance ads without it is a violation on its own — independent of anything in your copy — and it cannot be fixed after the campaign exists, only rebuilt. Details in the category guide.

✓ 6. The landing page passes the same checks as the ad

Enforcement — Meta's and your state's — looks past the ad to where it sends people. A compliant ad pointing at a page full of guarantee language is judged on both. Read the destination with the same four flags in mind: the form's consent language, the headlines, the claims. If a vendor built the page, read it twice.

✓ 7. The imagery isn't doing what the copy was told not to

Distressing imagery — caskets, headstones, grieving families — draws scrutiny in this category. So does get-rich-quick imagery: cash fans, luxury cars. And an image can imply what the copy carefully avoids saying — a government seal, a medical setting, a “$9.95” rendered in the graphic instead of the text. Check the image against the same four flags.

The habit that makes the checklist stick

Run it before the first submission, not after the first rejection. The reason is mechanical: rejections accumulate against the account, and a pile of them is the pattern that produces account-level restrictions — which cost weeks, not minutes. An agent who resubmits guesses all afternoon is building that record; an agent who checks first almost never starts it.

And keep what you checked. A folder — the ad, the date, the checker result, the landing page as it stood — costs nothing and answers questions later. You are the licensed producer; the record of what ran under your name is worth keeping like one.

The checklist is taught as a module, with the checker built in, on the free side of the community — no card, permanently.