How to Moderate Comments on Instagram Ads

Method 1: Set up Hidden Words on the account running the ads

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This is the closest Instagram has to an ad comment filter, and it is not one. Hidden Words is a setting on your account, with no version of it inside a campaign, an ad set, or an ad. You turn it on once, in the app, on the account whose name appears on the ad.

1. 1Open the app on the account your ads run fromYour ads carry an Instagram account's name and picture. That account needs this setting, not whichever one you are logged into. Go to its profile, tap the menu icon, then Settings and activity.
2. 2Find Hidden WordsScroll to the section about how other people can interact with you and tap Hidden Words. If you looked in Ads Manager or Meta Business Suite, that is why you found nothing. There is no ad level copy of it.
3. 3Turn on Hide commentsSwitch on Hide comments. Without this master switch your word list does nothing, which is the most common reason someone thinks their filter is broken.
4. 4Tap Manage custom words and phrasesThis is your own list, the one you write and can see. Type the words, phrases, and emojis you want hidden, with a comma between each one. Any language works, because Instagram matches the characters you typed rather than reading the comment.
5. 5Save, then check under a live adSaving is not proof. Open a running ad through Ads Manager and see whether anything on your list is still sitting there in public. Method 2 is how you find it.

Method 2: Find the comments under your ads in the first place

Here is the part that catches people out. Organic comments sit under your posts, where you look anyway. Ad comments may sit under something that is not on your profile at all, so nobody scrolls past them by accident. They are only found on purpose.

1. 1Open Ads Manager and go to the Ads tabNot campaigns and not ad sets. Comments live on the ad itself, the level where an actual post exists for someone to comment on.
2. 2Tick the ad and click EditTick the box next to the ad, then click Edit under its name. A preview opens on the right.
3. 3Choose Instagram post with commentsAbove the preview, open the drop down and under See post choose Instagram post with comments. This opens the real post with its real comment section, the only place some of these comments exist. Hide, delete, or reply from there as you would anywhere else.
4. 4Repeat for every adThere is no combined view. Ten live ads is ten trips through this menu, and the same ten tomorrow, because the ads keep running while you sleep.

Method 3: Use the comment controls that do live at the ad level

There are real controls in Ads Manager, worth knowing precisely because there are so few. None filter by word. They decide whether commenting happens at all.

1. 1Turn commenting off on a single adFrom the same editing panel you can turn commenting off. This hides the current comments and removes the ability to leave new ones. Turning it back on restores them.
2. 2Restrict comments across an ad setAn option covering feed ads in an ad set lets you choose between everyone commenting or nobody commenting. It is a switch rather than a filter.

Where Instagram's ad comment tools stop

Everything above is free and worth doing this afternoon. It also has one shape, and once you see it you cannot unsee it: the filtering happens on your account, the money is spent on your campaigns, and nothing joins the two.

• One word list for an account, no control for a campaign

  You cannot give a launch a stricter list than an evergreen ad, or filter one campaign's words and not another's. There is one list, on the account, and every ad you run is stuck with it, whatever it costs per click.

• Meta does not tell you what applies to ads

  Whether Hidden Words filters ad comments is something Meta does not say clearly, and the wording that exists is written about Facebook Pages. You are left running a filter you cannot confirm is running, and the only way to check is to read the comments yourself.

• A word list only catches the words you thought of

  It is a snapshot of the spam you have already seen. The scam that appears next Tuesday uses a word that is not on your list, and it keeps working until you notice it, open the app, and add it. The list is always one incident behind.

• Nothing here reads meaning

  "Amazing product, message me and I will double your money" has no profanity and no banned word. It reads as a compliment to every filter Instagram has. The stranger you paid to reach reads it as a scam, because it is.

• No visibility while the money is going out

  Seeing what is under the ad you are paying for right now means opening Ads Manager, picking an ad, and clicking into a preview. One ad at a time, while it has been running since 2am.

None of this makes Instagram's tools bad. It makes them what they are: account settings, on a platform where the spending happens somewhere else.

When it does not work

• Why is my word list not hiding anything under my ads?

  Check the Hide comments switch first, because the list does nothing without it. Then check you set it up on the account whose name is on the ad, which catches out anyone running more than one. Then check the comment truly contains your word rather than something close. If all three are right and it is still public, you have found the limit of what Meta confirms about ads.

• Why can I not find the comments on an ad I am running?

  You are probably at the campaign or ad set level, where no post exists. Go to the Ads tab, tick the ad, click Edit, then use the drop down above the preview and choose Instagram post with comments under See post. If the ad was never published to your profile, that preview is the only route to those comments.

• Why did Instagram hide a comment from a real customer on my ad?

  Usually a short word on your list living inside a longer innocent one, or advanced filtering reaching into words that are not offensive in context. Open your hidden comments, unhide it, and take the word out. Under an ad this matters more than usual, because the comment you hid was a stranger publicly vouching for you.