Should You Buy Likes and Comments for Your Meta Ads?

Some advertisers buy likes, reactions, and comments for their Facebook ads. They pay a service so a new ad looks popular before real people ever see it. Comments are often scripted—FAQ-style questions (“How fast is shipping?”) or fake testimonials, or both. Some people call this salting.

I wanted to know whether it’s worth it. Specifically: does the algorithm care, what might it actually do for the people who see the ad, and what are you risking? So I went through what Meta has written down and separated that from what it hasn’t.

More entries live in my Lab notebook.

Buying likes and comments for Facebook ads (what some call salting)

Salting means paying for engagement that doesn’t come from people who saw your ad and cared. It comes from accounts that were paid, or from bots.

Bought comments usually show up in two flavors. FAQ-style ones ask the question your ad wants answered in public so you can reply with the pitch. Testimonial-style ones claim someone had a great experience. Plenty of people mix the two.

This is different from paying Meta to show your post to real people via an engagement campaign—that’s the legitimate version of the same idea.

Does engagement help Facebook ads perform? What Meta actually documents

Meta does not document likes or comments as a direct input to ad delivery. Here’s what it does say, and where the documentation stops.

The auction is built around the action you optimize for

Documented

Meta shows the ad with the highest “total value,” which is your bid times the estimated action rate, plus ad quality. That estimated action rate is a per-person prediction of whether that person will do the thing you optimized for (a purchase, a lead, etc.). It is not a popularity contest.

Ad quality comes from people’s feedback—viewing or hiding an ad, plus assessments of low-quality attributes

Documented

That’s documented.

Whether the like count itself feeds delivery is not documented

Not documented

Meta never lists it as an input. That doesn’t prove the algorithm ignores it; it just means we don’t have it in writing. Any effect would be indirect: if real people respond better to an ad that already looks popular, the response rate goes up, and the auction rewards that. Possible chain of events, not a documented feature.

Engagement belongs to the post and carries over

Documented

Likes and comments stick to the post, not the individual ad. So every ad that uses the same existing post shows the same engagement. That’s why salting works mechanically—add it once and it shows up everywhere you reuse the post.

Quick version:

• YesDocumented: likes and comments belong to the post and carry over when you reuse it.
• UnclearNot documented: Meta never lists the like count as a delivery input.
• BannedPolicy risk: Meta’s spam policy bans buying, selling, or exchanging engagement.

Possible benefits (and why they’re guesses)

The possible upsides are about the people who see the ad, not a documented algorithm boost. Both of these are my inference.

Social proof to real viewers

Inference

A cold viewer might trust an ad more when it already has likes and comments than when it shows zero. That’s the whole reason people salt. Whether it actually changes how real people respond is not documented.

FAQ comments that answer objections

Inference

Planted FAQ comments let you answer common objections right under the ad. The catch is that the question was planted by a paid account or a bot.

The legitimate way to get the same effect

Documented

The legitimate way to get the same visible effect is documented: run a Meta engagement campaign on a post, then reuse that same post (by its post ID) in your conversion ads. The engagement carries over. An engagement campaign shows the post to people Meta thinks are most likely to like, share, or comment—which is not the same as people likely to buy.

Those real engagers are also reachable later via engagement custom audiences. And instead of planting questions, you can just answer the real ones people leave. Same visible answers, no fake accounts.

Risks of fake comments and likes

Buying engagement breaks Meta’s rules, and the fallout can reach past the ad itself.

Meta’s spam policy bans buying engagement

Policy risk

Meta’s spam policy bans buying, selling, or exchanging engagement such as likes and comments.

Fake accounts get removed, and their likes can disappear with them

Policy risk

Fake accounts get removed under the inauthentic behavior rules. My inference is that likes from those accounts can disappear with them, so you may end up paying for engagement that doesn’t stay.

Low-quality or violating ads can drag down your whole account

Policy risk

In certain instances, repeatedly running policy-violating or lower-quality ads can lead Meta’s systems to treat every ad from your Page, domain, or ad account as lower quality. The damage isn’t limited to the one ad you salted.

Fake engagers would pollute your audiences

Inference

Fake engagers would also end up in any engagement-based retargeting or lookalike audiences you build from that post. That’s my inference, not something Meta documents.

My take

I wouldn’t buy likes or comments for Meta ads. The delivery benefit isn’t documented, the social proof benefit is a guess, and the risks are written down in Meta’s own policies.

The benefits are guesses. The risks are written down.

If you want an ad to look like people care, get real people to care: run an engagement campaign on a post you plan to scale, reuse that post ID in your conversion ads, and answer the real questions in the comments. It’s slower. Every like belongs to someone who exists.

FAQ

Does buying likes help Facebook ads perform better?

Meta doesn’t document whether a post’s existing likes feed into delivery. The auction is built around the action you optimize for, and any effect from likes would be indirect through how real people respond. Buying them also breaks Meta’s spam policy.

Can you buy comments for Facebook ads?

Services sell them, but buying comments breaks Meta’s spam policy. The legitimate alternative is an engagement campaign on a post you reuse in your ads, plus answering real comments.

Can buying engagement hurt my Meta ad account?

It may. Buying engagement breaks the spam policy. Meta doesn’t say whether that alone tanks your account, but it does say that in certain instances, repeatedly running policy-violating or lower-quality ads may lead its systems to treat every ad from your Page, domain, or ad account as lower quality.

So, does buying engagement work on Meta ads?

Whether bought engagement helps Meta ads deliver better isn’t documented, so we’d have to test it. What is documented is that buying it breaks Meta’s spam policy and that fake accounts get removed under the inauthentic behavior rules.

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