Have you ever been denied by a social media platform because your content wasn’t “suitable” for their platform? Well, that’s precisely what happened to me when I tried to advertise my app, abpoll, on Snapchat. Even though my content followed their guidelines, they still refused to post my ad because it included a sign-up button.

A couple of weeks ago, I emailed a creator (@internetgav) looking to hire them to make a promotional video for my app abpoll.com, and after one week, he created and posted the video on TikTok. The video was amazing; on the first day of the initial post, we had over 1000 votes on abpoll, which is 1/4 of our targeted monthly quota.

I initially wanted to use the video for other marketing mediums where I thought it would perform great, like Snapchat, Instagram, TikTok, and more. I soon enough logged into the ads managers and uploaded the video in hopes of using it as an ad for abpoll.

All the other advertising mediums accepted the ad except for Snapchat. Snapchat literally couldn’t budge on that video. They flagged the ad simply because I asked the users to sign up to post posts. How else can a social network or community advertise without having a login or sign-up button?

The hypocrisy of this platform is beyond me; they actively advertise their platform elsewhere while knowing that you can’t use Snapchat without an account. At least on abpoll, you can vote without an account, and you don’t need to download anything on your device.