Advertising stops, a notice appears in your account, and the wording explains almost nothing. Before anything else, one reassurance: this is a documented process with a documented route out, and the most common cause is dull rather than sinister.
What Meta actually calls this
You will find articles setting out a tidy glossary of six different states. Restricted means this, disabled means that, permanently disabled means the other. Do not trust it, because Meta does not maintain that taxonomy. Its umbrella term is advertising restrictions, and when describing an ad account it writes that if restricted, your ad account, its ads and some of its advertising assets are disabled. The two words describe the same event rather than two severity levels.
What Meta does publish is clear and more useful. There are two routes by which a restriction arrives, which Meta calls advertising restrictions for policy violations and advertising restrictions for unusual activity. And there are four things a restriction can land on: your business portfolio, your ad account, your Page, or the personal profile of the person doing the advertising.
Which one has been hit matters more than the vocabulary, because it decides what still works. Meta documents that if a personal profile is restricted from advertising, that person cannot advertise or create new ads, and that any ad accounts where they are the only attached user may also be disabled, while other members of the business portfolio, ad account or Page may still be able to advertise. So if you have a colleague who is an admin, check whether they can still work before concluding that everything is gone.
Two naming notes, so you search for the right thing. Meta says business portfolio, not Business Manager. And personal profile, not personal account.
Where the appeal actually happens now
Almost every guide will send you to Account Quality. That product has been renamed Meta Business Support Home, which is why the instructions feel wrong when you follow them. The old address still resolves to the new product, so you can reach it either way, but you will not see a screen labelled Account Quality.
Meta's own documented path is to open Business Support Home, choose the account status overview in the left menu, select the restricted account, and then find the section called What you can do, where Request review sits. Meta describes that screen under slightly different names on different pages of its own help centre, so if the label does not match exactly, look for the account status listing rather than assuming you are in the wrong place.
One requirement that stops people cold: Meta states that to request a review you must be an admin on the account. If you are not, the button will not help you and you need whoever is.
How long it takes, and how many attempts you get
Meta does publish a timeline, which is worth knowing because plenty of articles claim it does not. Its wording is that it will review your account to see whether the restrictions should apply, that the review is typically completed in 48 hours, and that it may take longer in some cases. The word typically is doing real work and we are not going to remove it for you.
Do not confuse that figure with the other one you will see. Meta says most individual ads are reviewed within 24 hours. That is ad review, a different process from an account restriction review.
On how many attempts you get, Meta says there is a limited number of times you can request a review and does not publish the number. If an article tells you that you get one appeal, or three, that number was invented. Meta also states that once the review is completed, the decision is final.
And then a sentence worth quoting exactly, because the opposite is repeated everywhere as a warning: requesting another review of our decision will not hurt your standing with our company in any way. Fear of damaging your account by appealing again is not something Meta supports. It says the reverse.
The clock that actually ends things
There are two separate timers here and confusing them causes real panic.
The first is the review decision, which is final for that review. The second is a six-month window. Meta publishes that if an ad account is disabled for a policy violation and remains ineligible for reinstatement for six months, any unused prepaid services may be forfeited where the law allows, and that after that period the account cannot be reinstated. It adds that in certain circumstances it reserves the right to disable an account permanently before those six months are up.
So a declined review is not the end of the account, and the six months is the thing to watch. Note also that Meta does not show you a status labelled permanently disabled. The concept exists in its documentation as an account that cannot be reinstated, which is a different thing from a label you will read on screen.
The causes Meta itself names
Worth separating what Meta documents from what practitioners guess at. Meta names these situations: the advertiser does not follow its Community Standards, Advertising Standards, Commerce Policies or other terms; Meta suspects the portfolio or its assets have been compromised or hacked; the advertiser does not meet Meta's two-factor authentication requirements; and Meta notices unusual payment or account activity, high rates of failed payments, or disputed payments.
On content, Meta gives examples rather than a list, naming ads containing shocking, sensational or excessively violent content, certain adult content, and profanity, and stating that the list is not comprehensive.
The cause we see most often is the least dramatic one, and it has its own documentation. Meta states that when the payment method you are using fails, your ads are paused and your ad account is disabled until you pay the amount due. That is not an enforcement action against your business, it is an unpaid balance, and the fix is the balance. Meta adds that once you have paid or added sufficient funds, it will resume active or scheduled ads and will attempt to make up for lost time to meet your original campaign dates and budgets.
This matters particularly for Nigerian advertisers running on prepaid funding. Meta documents that if an ad account is set up for available funds only rather than automatic billing, delivery will be disrupted when the available funds are insufficient. An account funded by naira card or bank transfer runs dry rather than failing a charge, and the result looks the same from the outside.
The move that makes it permanent
If your account is gone, the tempting response is to open a new one and carry on. Understand what Meta publishes about that before you do.
Meta states that any attempt to evade its review process or other enforcement actions is not allowed, and that if it finds an advertiser doing this, it may apply restrictions to their business portfolio, ad account, Page or user account. The example it gives is attempting to create new ad accounts or other business assets with the intent to repeat violations after existing accounts were disabled for an initial violation.
Read the intent clause, because it is the whole claim. Meta has not published a rule that opening another ad account is automatically a violation. What it has published is a policy about repeating the behaviour that caused the first problem. A business that fixes what went wrong is in a different position from one that starts again and does the same thing.
Two related points. Meta states that where a business asset is found in close connection with a network of accounts or entities that violate or evade its policies, it may restrict that portfolio, ad account or Page, so borrowing somebody else's account carries their history with it. And under the unusual activity route, one of the restrictions Meta lists is loss of the ability to create new ad accounts, which means the option may simply not be there.
What to do, in order
First, check whether you owe money. If a payment failed or your available funds ran out, this is a billing matter and not an enforcement matter, and settling it restores the account.
Second, work out which asset was restricted, because that tells you whether a colleague can keep things running while you sort it out.
Third, if it is an enforcement restriction, request the review from Business Support Home as an admin, once, properly. Do not fire off several. Meta gives you a limited and unpublished number of attempts, so treat each one as the only one.
Fourth, fix the thing that caused it before you ask to come back. A review that succeeds only puts you back where you were.
Finally, one detail that catches people out after a successful review. Meta states that ads running before the restriction will not be automatically restarted, and that you will need to turn them on in Ads Manager yourself. Getting the account back does not get the campaigns back. Go and switch them on.