5 BlackHat Advertising Mistakes That Cost Us Thousands (And How to Avoid Them)
Key Strategies and Lessons to Overcome the Biggest Challenges in Restricted Advertising
Running ads in black hat niches can feel like a constant uphill battle.
You spend days setting everything up—accounts, cloaking, creatives—burning through time, energy, and money. Then, just as things start looking good, it happens:
Your account gets banned. Everything stops. Thousands of dollars down the drain.
Frustrated, you look for someone to blame: the cloaker, the account vendor, the platform itself.
But here’s the truth we had to learn the hard way: the problem wasn’t them—it was us.
After 12 years in blackhat advertising, 0-Penny Ads has seen it all: massive wins, devastating losses, and lessons we never thought we’d learn.
These are the five biggest mistakes we’ve learned to avoid, so you don’t have to make them in 2025.
1. Relying Too Much on Agency Ad Accounts
Mistake: Believing agency accounts are the golden ticket to success.
Why It Hurts: You wait weeks to get set up, and pour money into campaigns, only to find your spend throttled or the account banned.
What 0-Penny Did: We use simpler business manager accounts bought online. While they aren’t perfect, they’re quicker to set up and less prone to Facebook’s increasingly strict monitoring compared to agency accounts.
2. Treating Cloakers Like Magic Bullets
Mistake: Assuming the cloaker is the problem when your campaigns fail.
Why It Hurts: You buy the most expensive cloaker, only to have your accounts flagged because the real issue was your profiles or setup.
What 0-Penny Ads Does Instead: We focus on layering, high-quality profiles, and evolving creative strategies that adapt to changing platform rules. Cloakers are part of the solution, but the real success comes from a thoughtful setup.
3. Failing to Prepare for Ban Waves
Mistake: Thinking your perfect setup is safe.
Why It Hurts: One ban wave later, you’ve lost everything—accounts, campaigns, and thousands in ad spend.
What 0-Penny Ads Does Instead: We ensure we’re always prepared with backup accounts, diversified setups, and recovery systems. Ban waves are inevitable, but having a plan in place means we can recover quickly and stay operational.