Can You Advertise At-Home Lab Tests (STI, Hormone, Microbiome) on Meta and Google?

What this means for you

• Meta: target 18 and over, keep the focus on health, and never imply the viewer has an infection, symptom or condition.
• Google: STI and fertility testing can run in the US. HIV home tests must be FDA approved. Sexual and intimate health are sensitive, so no remarketing or customer lists.
• Microsoft: only at-home tests approved by local market regulators, and every health ad targets 18 and over.
• Say FDA approved, cleared or authorized only if FDA's databases list your exact test that way.
• Keep pixels and tags off results pages, where every page view is health information.

MedScale Health, a paid acquisition agency for telehealth brands and clinics, plans launches for at-home testing brands: STI panels, hormone and fertility tests, and gut or vaginal microbiome kits. This page sets out what Meta, Google and Microsoft allow for test kits, and the claim line that decides whether an ad survives review. Nothing here describes what any test can detect; that belongs to the test's labeling and your clinical team. This page is marketing guidance, not medical or legal advice. Platform policies change, so check the sources listed at the end before acting on a specific rule.

Meta

Meta requires ads that promote health products and services to target people at least 18 years old. Its Adult Products and Reproductive Health section lets advertisers promote sexual and reproductive health and wellness products or services, as long as the focus is on health and the medical efficacy of the product or service, not sexual pleasure or enhancement, and the ads target people 18 or older. A test kit ad should look like a health product ad: the kit, the sample, the lab, the turnaround.

The rule that rejects most test ads is personal attributes. Meta's standard says ads must not assert or imply a person's physical or mental health, including medical conditions, and must not imply knowledge of the viewer's medical information. Its examples accept "New diabetes treatment available" and reject "Do you have diabetes?". For a test brand, "Private STI testing, results online" describes the product, while "Worried you caught something?" implies the viewer's health. Keep symptom questions out of the ad entirely.

Meta's Health and Wellness policy also bars claims to cure, heal or eliminate a fixed list of diseases that includes herpes and HIV. A test that bundles treatment must not drift into a cure claim, and if the follow-up treatment is a prescription drug, Meta's Drugs and Pharmaceuticals policy applies: LegitScript certification and Meta's authorization before the drug is named.

Google

Google's Birth control, fertility, and testing policy names STI testing and fertility testing among its examples and bans them only in the locations it lists; the United States is not one of them. HIV home tests have their own rule. Google doesn't allow them in most locations, and in the United States advertisers may promote HIV home tests that are FDA approved.

Targeting is the second limit. Google's Health in personalized advertising policy defines Health to include sexual health, treatments for sexually transmitted diseases, and health issues associated with intimate body parts or functions, including genital health. In these categories you can use predefined Google audiences but not advertiser-curated ones such as Customer Match, your data segments or lookalike segments. Search campaigns on test keywords are the backbone.

If a positive result leads to an online consultation and a prescription, the landing page brings Google's Prescription drug services policy into play. Google says it errs on the side of caution with landing pages that link or refer to content that appears to facilitate online prescribing, and telemedicine providers must be certified before those ads serve.

Microsoft Advertising

Microsoft's Healthcare and Pharmaceutical policy, updated October 5, 2026, is the most explicit: only at-home tests approved by local market regulators are allowed. Its list includes general wellness tests such as food sensitivity, disease-specific tests such as an A1C test, sexually transmitted disease tests including HIV, and family planning and reproductive health tests such as fertility, pregnancy and post-menopause tests. All health ads must target users 18 and over, and ads and landing pages must not misrepresent regulatory approval.

The FDA claim line

FDA keeps a database of the home and lab tests it has approved or cleared, and an over-the-counter test database. Its consumer guidance says that if the database finds no record of a test, the test may not be regulated by FDA. Laboratory developed tests sit in a separate history: FDA's May 2024 rule treating them as devices was vacated by a federal district court on March 31, 2025, and FDA reverted the regulation on September 19, 2025.

The advertising rule that follows is simple. Use the words FDA approved, cleared or authorized only when FDA's database shows that status for your exact test, and say what it covers. Microsoft bars statements that misrepresent regulatory approval and writes its test rule around approval, Google allows HIV home tests in the US only when FDA approved, and FTC staff guidance says claims about health-related products need competent and reliable scientific evidence. We hold accuracy figures in ads to the same standard.

Tracking stays off results pages

Results pages, account pages and order histories show what a person was tested for. MedScale keeps ad pixels and tags off them, counts orders as neutral events server-side, and sends no test types, names or emails to any ad platform.

What MedScale does

MedScale Health builds test-kit campaigns with adults-only targeting, product-first creative that implies nothing about the viewer, keyword-led Google Search, and claims checked against FDA's databases before launch. MedScale tracks server-side under a BAA with neutral event names, and no names, emails, phone numbers, IP addresses or browser IDs go to any ad platform. No cost per order is promised. Book the free growth audit at medscale.health/audit for a written plan.