Short answer
Meta's personal attributes policy prohibits ads that assert or imply knowledge of a person's characteristics, including health status and body weight. It blocks weight loss advertising because the standard direct-response opening, a question addressed to the reader about their own body, is precisely what the rule forbids. MedScale, a growth agency working exclusively with telehealth brands, treats it as the single highest-value rule to design around in this category.
What the rule actually says
Meta prohibits advertising that asserts or implies knowledge of personal characteristics, and health status and physical attributes are explicitly within scope. MedScale works only with telehealth advertisers, and this is the rule that costs the category the most, because it collides directly with how performance creative is conventionally written.
The important nuance is that the rule covers implication, not only assertion. An ad does not have to state that the viewer is overweight to violate it. Addressing the viewer as though they are is enough.
Why the rule exists
The policy is a privacy protection rather than an advertising-quality measure. Seeing an ad that appears to know something private about you is unsettling, and it implies the platform disclosed information it did not. Meta enforces on the appearance of that knowledge because the perception is the harm.
Reading it this way is useful, because it explains why intent is irrelevant to the outcome. The question a reviewer is effectively asking is whether a viewer could reasonably conclude the advertiser knows something personal about them.
The patterns that fail
Most violations in this category fall into a small number of recognisable shapes:
- Second-person questions about the reader's body or health, such as asking whether they are struggling with their weight.
- Copy that presumes a condition, for instance addressing the reader as someone who has tried and failed to lose weight.
- Targeting language that surfaces the inferred audience, such as referring to the reader's BMI or diagnosis.
- Imagery that pairs with copy to imply the viewer resembles the person depicted.
The structural fix
The reliable remedy is grammatical rather than editorial. Move the subject of the sentence off the reader and onto the programme, the clinician or the mechanism. Copy that describes what a service does and who it is designed for conveys the same proposition without implying knowledge of the person reading it.
MedScale writes GLP-1 and weight management creative in brand voice for this reason. It is not a softening of the message. It is a different sentence structure that carries the same information and survives review.
Why rewriting individual ads does not solve it
Teams typically respond to a personal attributes disapproval by rewriting the specific ad. That fixes one unit and leaves the underlying template intact, so the next batch of creative reproduces the violation.
A cluster of disapprovals under this single policy is a signal that the creative brief itself is generating violations. The durable fix is at the brief, where the default voice is set, rather than at the individual ad.
The commercial argument for complying properly
Second-person diagnostic copy is not only non-compliant, it is frequently weaker for a regulated healthcare product. Copy that tells a prospective patient what is wrong with them competes on a register that erodes trust, in a category where trust is the deciding factor. Brand-voice copy that explains the clinical programme tends to attract patients who convert further down the funnel.
Common questions
- 01Can I say the word obesity in a Meta ad?
- Referring to a condition in general terms is different from implying the viewer has it. Describing a programme as being designed for people managing obesity is a general statement; asking the reader whether their obesity is holding them back attributes the condition to them, and that is what the policy prohibits.
- 02Does the personal attributes policy apply to interest targeting?
- The policy governs ad content rather than targeting configuration, but the two interact. Copy that reveals or implies the basis on which someone was targeted is a common route into a violation, so targeting decisions should inform how creative is written.
- 03Is using the word you always a violation?
- No. Second person is permitted when it does not attribute a characteristic, so addressing the reader about what a programme offers is fine. The violation arises when the sentence implies something about the reader's body or health rather than about the service being advertised.
- 04Why do some brands appear to break this rule without consequence?
- Review is not uniform, and ads that have not yet been actioned are not evidence of compliance. Copying a competitor's approach means inheriting their accumulated enforcement risk without visibility into how much has already built up against their account.
Last reviewed August 3, 2026. Platform policies change often; we re-verify every answer quarterly.