Advertising cars on Facebook and Instagram comes with rules. Some are Meta's own, some come from the law in Germany and Sweden, and many of them are easy to break without noticing. Here are the ones that cost dealers the most.
Price accuracy
The price in the ad has to match the price the buyer finds when they tap through. Meta compares catalog items with the pages they link to, and items whose details don't match can be rejected. More importantly, buyers notice: someone who sees 24,900 € in the ad and 25,900 € on your site starts the conversation with doubt. Keeping ads in sync with your listings is not only good service, it keeps your ads out of trouble.
Availability
A car advertised as available that turns out to be sold is a bad experience for the buyer and a problem in the catalog. Cars that have sold should leave the catalog and the ads as soon as possible. That is one reason LaLista re-reads every dealer's stock every night and removes sold cars overnight.
New, used or certified
Meta's vehicle catalog asks whether each car is new, used or certified pre-owned. A one-year-old demonstrator or an ex-demo car counts as used. Choose one value per car and keep it consistent with what your listing says.
Rules that differ by country
Some things that are fine in one country are not in another. In Germany, advertising for new passenger cars must include fuel or energy consumption and CO₂ figures under the Pkw-EnVKV. Claims about fuel economy, emissions and financing are regulated differently in each country. If you advertise in both Germany and Sweden, check the rules of each market rather than assuming they match.
Financing claims
"0% financing", "no credit check", "guaranteed approval", "low monthly payment": phrases like these trigger stricter review at Meta, and in both Germany and Sweden consumer credit law sets out what information an ad must include as soon as it mentions credit terms or monthly costs. If you really offer financing, you can advertise it, but with the required information. If you don't, don't suggest that you do. Misleading financing claims are among the quickest ways to have ads rejected.
Image rules
Meta no longer applies its old limit on text covering 20% of an image, but a clean picture with little text is still the easiest to read. Fake buttons or elements that look clickable but aren't are not allowed. Keep the picture to the car, the model and the price.
Comparisons with competitors
"Better than [competitor]" or "cheaper than the marketplace" is comparative advertising. In Germany (UWG) and Sweden (Marknadsföringslagen) it is only allowed if it is objective and verifiable, and Meta may also reject ads that disparage others. Stick to clear, positive claims about your own offer and your own cars.
Compliance is a daily habit, not a checklist
Every rule above is about keeping things right continuously, not about setting them up once. You don't get compliance right by reading a checklist; you get it right by building it into whatever produces your ads. When the ad is built from the listing and brought in line with it every night, the price in the ad is the price on your site, and sold cars don't linger.
That is how LaLista works: the price and model in each ad come from your own listing, a car without a valid price or photo isn't advertised, and every night the ads are brought in line with your stock. Building ads by hand in an ad manager, one campaign at a time, is how small mistakes slowly pile up. Whatever tool you use, make the discipline automatic.
