Meta doesn't have a great track record with ads focused on women's health. Last month, Mashable reported that Meta rejected sex toy brand Unbound's ads until they altered them to be men-focused. Now, startup Daye tells Mashable that the tech giant has rejected ads for period care products, claiming they're "adult" or "political" content.
Daye is a gynecological health platform that creates medical devices and services. The startup recently launched a tampon-based STI testing kit in the UK, with plans to launch in the U.S. and EU.
Period care products rejected as 'adult' content
Since May 2020, Daye has been submitting ads to Meta for things such as pads, a book called Vagina Matters, and articles about gynecological conditions like bacterial vaginosis. Meta rejects these ads on an ongoing basis, Daye founder and CEO Valentina Milanova told Mashable.
"Everything from menstruation to menopause gets placed in either the adult content category or the political content category," Milanova said. When ads get banned, Milanova said the quality of the Daye account is downgraded, thus engagement on the account dips.
"We're penalized and we can't reach as many people as we would have otherwise," Milanova said. Further, brands invest in Meta's generative AI ad tools (which determine who your ads get shown to) — but when ads are banned or taken down, the learnings from those tools are wiped away. Advertising on Meta becomes more expensive once ads are banned, too; Milanova said the cost increased five-fold.
Milanova said Meta won't assign an account manager unless a brand spends $200,000 or more a month on ads. "There is no human in the loop," she said, "We don't have an account manager." Bots reject the ads, and there's no human to intercede.
Advertisers can run ads on Meta that promote sexual health, wellness, and reproductive products and services — but as a global company, it needs to account for the wide array of people who see ads to avoid potential negative experiences, according to a Meta spokesperson. Its Adult Products or Services Ads Policy places restrictions on these ads, including the requirement to target audiences 18 and older.
Daye wants to use anatomically-correct terms for their products — such as vaginal canal, of which doesn't really have a cutesy euthamistic version. When their ads are rejected with medically-correct terms, Daye tries using euphemisms, but Milanova said their message is lost when that happens.
"We need to use this word in order to describe where the tampon goes, we can't just say 'put it down there,'" Milanova said, referring to "vaginal canal." "This further exacerbates the rules and stigmas around gynocological health and it also prevents education from reaching people that might not otherwise know enough about their physiology."
As of this year, only 18 U.S. states require sex education to be medically accurate, according to the research and policy organization Guttmacher Institute. And pelvic pain doctor Dr. Sonia Bahlani told Mashable back in 2021 that pelvic health isn't taught in general medical residency — so doctors may not even be well-versed in this area, either.
"What makes it really frustrating is that products that are related to male health, like erectile dysfunction products are totally free to advertise," Milanova continued, "and they can talk about penises and they can talk about erectile dysfunction. But as soon as you know something gets mentioned about gynecological health and it gets categorized as adult content or political content."
This is evidenced by Unbound's own campaign earlier this fall; when they created ads to target men's sexual performance, Meta approved them.
Lack of funding for female-founded companies
Ad rejection exacerbates the fundraising issues that female founders and women's health companies face. From 2011 to 2020, only three percent of digital health venture capital deals in the U.S. went towards women's health companies, according to seed fund RockHealth. In 2022, only 2.1 percent of total capital invested in venture-backed startups went to those solely started by women, Pitchbook reported.
This lack of funding extends to the public sector, too. Science journal Nature found that women's health research lacks funding for conditions that affect women more than men (the Biden administration has acknowledged this gap and launched an initiative on women's health research this month).
"It's hard as it is to fundraise," Milanova said. "It's even harder when investors know that you can't advertise your products on the… typically-used scalable marketing channels a lot of other companies rely on."
"We're not able to grow at the rate at which we want to grow. And…more importantly, we're not able to reach the people who need access to our products and services," she continued. "It just adds to the many hurdles that gynecological health companies already have to overcome."
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Meta recognizes that not all menstrual health content falls under adult products and services, the spokesperson told Mashable. It changed its policy in October 2022 to reflect this. In practice, however, this is an ongoing problem that the Center for Intimacy Justice — which Daye is a part of — is fighting against. In June, the Center filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) requesting that the FTC take action against Meta for this systematic rejection of women's-focused health ads.
The result of this complaint is yet to be seen. For now, Milanova said Daye will continue to engage with Meta and other tech companies like Google and Amazon, as well as investing in its community. Milanova warned, however, that this treatment of women's health and female-founded companies in general may have consequences.
"There's going to be larger repercussions that we're not currently aware of as a result of these economic penalties that female founders and gynecological health companies are currently subjected to," she said.
UPDATE: Nov. 27, 2023, 1:56 p.m. EST The screenshot of the rejected ad for 'Vagina Matters' has been updated to show the book cover.
