VietNamNet Bridge - The accounts of a number of professional marketing companies have been locked, causing harm to many advertisement campaigns, companies say.

Facebook has faced a lot of local criticism recently

Over the past two weeks, the advertisement community in Vietnam has undergone a so-called "Facebook storm".

“The number of reactions has dropped from VND200,000 to 3,000 for the same ad content. Most of the reactions are likes, not comments,” Minh Khai, the owner of an online fashion shop in Hanoi, said.

“I tried to slash the selling prices of products by 50 percent, but the ads still cannot reach the right targets,” he said.

Facebook has faced a lot of local criticism recently. It was accused of providing personal information of up to 50 millions users to UK-based data firm Cambridge Analytica.

Facebook’s move to shut down the application programming interface (API) in Vietnam has interrupted the business of a number of online shops.

The giant social network has been caught in many technical flaws, including the inability to display comments on ads.

“As a seller, I always look forward to comments from clients. The comments on Facebook have been hidden for the last several days,” said Kim Lien, the owner of a cosmetics shop in Tan Binh district.

“Facebook doesn’t have post-sale policies for ad buyers,” she complained.

In addition, Facebook has also been repeatedly criticized for blocking ad accounts of sellers for no reason. It said blocking was done because the users violated policies.

"Sometimes I do not know which regulations I have broken. The ads have run for several months, and then suddenly Facebook says the ads violate the rules," Nhan Nguyen, a Facebook advertisement service provider.

Marketing officers have to have many ad accounts in case any of their accounts are blocked. Nhan said that previously, the business manager account was capable of containing 2,500 ad accounts. But the figure has fallen to 10. 

"With media companies which act as agents for many customers, 10 accounts are of no help,” he said. “It seems that they (Facebook) got overloaded in approving ads.”

A man from a large media company in HCM City said that Facebook’s move of blocking ad accounts without prior notice shows its lack respect for users who bring it profit. 

Many brands and media agencies in Vietnam spend tens of billions of dong a month to run ads on Facebook.

Some Facebook users said it was difficult to contact Facebook’s support team.

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Kim Chi