You launched an ad on Facebook or Instagram, and under it someone writes: “Scammers, took the money, no product.” No reply. A week later there are ten comments like that. The ad is the same, the budget is the same, but there are fewer leads. Here is why comments under an ad are part of the ad, what practitioners and Meta itself say about it, and how to get things in order without panic.
We checked the facts against Meta’s help pages and open sources on 27 October 2026. Menu names depend on the interface version and the country, so where we could not confirm a name in your language, the English one is given in brackets next to it.
1. People read the comments before they click
An ad in the feed is an ordinary post with a button. Likes and comments are visible under it, and a person who hesitates often looks there first. It is the same as reading reviews before buying from someone else’s shop. If instead of replies there is abuse and complaints with no reaction at all, the conclusion is simple: these people like taking money and not answering.
Hence the practical rule: the comment thread is a shop window, not a back office. Whoever does not look at it pays for impressions while their own window scares the buyer away.
2. How much it costs: where the sources disagree
It matters here not to invent numbers, because there are none. We will say plainly what we found.
Practitioners say negativity makes results more expensive. Our agency’s knowledge base holds a retelling of a test that circulates among marketers: the same post, one with about 50 negative comments and one without, a budget of around a thousand dollars, the US, an app-install ad. The post without negativity delivered cheaper results at almost the same cost per thousand impressions (CPM). But we could not find the year of the test or the original source on the web, so we do not quote its result figures: it is one sample, not about Ukraine and not about leads.
Practitioners themselves do not agree. Some say an impression costs the same and the result gets more expensive, because people see the negativity and click less. Others think complaints raise the price of the impression itself: Meta takes into account how people react to an ad, including whether they hide it with the “Hide ad” button. Third-party blogs from 2025–2026 describe this as the ad’s “quality score”.
What Meta writes. Its help page “About ad relevance diagnostics” says that ad diagnostics (three rankings: quality, engagement, conversion) are not inputs to the ad auction and are shown only for ads with at least 500 impressions. So these rankings are a hint for analysis, not a lever for “tuning” the price. The text of the help page opened only partly for us, so check it yourself. Meta does not give an official figure for “how much a negative comment costs”.
The conclusion without varnish: negativity most likely takes your money not through the auction but through people. Complaints with no answer scare customers off, and the same ad then brings fewer enquiries. But how much can only be measured on your own ad.
3. What to do: reply and delete differently
There are two opinions here too. Some practitioners advise cleaning out negativity completely. Others: answer genuine complaints and delete only spam and trolls. We are closer to the second camp, and here is why: when you hide everything, the thread looks artificially clean, and a genuine complaint that you wiped can move to reviews or other people’s groups, where you can no longer reply.
An example reply to a genuine complaint: “Sorry it turned out this way. Send us your order number in a private message, we will sort it out today and come back here with the result.” No excuses and no template, but a concrete step and a deadline. For someone reading the thread from the side, that weighs more than any discount.
A simple order of action:
- A genuine complaint. A person bought and is unhappy. Reply calmly and to the point, without the “thanks for your feedback” template. Say what you will do and offer to continue in private messages. Everyone reading the thread sees it, and they are the ones who decide whether to trust you.
- Spam and bots. Links to other sites, competitors’ ads, meaningless strings of characters. Delete without mercy.
- Trolls and insults. Obscenities, personal abuse. Delete.
- Fair criticism that you can turn to your advantage. Do not delete. A reply works better than silence.
On “hide” versus “delete”: hiding, according to third-party guides from 2026, leaves the comment visible to its author (some descriptions add their friends), while deleting removes it for everyone. We did not open Meta’s help page on this, so check how it works on your page before you rely on “hide”.
4. Where to find the comments under the ad itself
This is the easy part. There are two routes, and you can follow both yourself in a few minutes.
Through Ads Manager (Meta’s ad account)
Open Ads Manager, go to the ad level and pick the ad. Above the ad preview find the menu with preview options. It has a “See post” section, and in it “Facebook post with comments” or “Instagram post with comments” (these are the names in Meta’s English help page). The post opens with its comments: you can like, reply, hide or report them.
Two caveats. Menu names can differ by interface language, so go by the English words. Meta’s help page also says the feature is being rolled out gradually and not in all regions. If you do not have the item, use the second route.
Through Business Suite
In Meta Business Suite (Meta’s free service for managing a page and its messages) open the “Inbox”, choose “Comments” and, if such a filter exists, keep only those that relate to ads (“Ads”). Third-party guides from 2026 warn that there can be delays here and not every ad comment shows up at once, so Ads Manager is more reliable while a campaign is running.
From our practice
This is our recommendation, not a statistic: while the ad is running, look at the comments every few days, and the day after launching a new ad. It is far cheaper to stop negativity at the third comment than at the thirtieth. And separately check whether the person writing under your ad is actually waiting for an answer from you: a customer whose order is late.
If your ad has already been rejected or is not working as expected, also see 5 small things that make Meta reject your ad. How we run Meta advertising is described in the Meta Ads section.
Summary
- Comments under an ad are part of the ad: people read them before they click.
- Nobody has measured exactly what negativity costs: practitioners disagree (a pricier result or pricier impressions), and Meta writes that ad diagnostics are not an auction input.
- Answer a genuine complaint calmly and to the point. Delete spam and trolls. Do not clean out everything.
- To find the comments: Ads Manager, the ad, “See post”, or Business Suite.
- Look at the comments regularly, not when they have already piled up.
Want a free audit of your Google Ads account? Send us a request: we’ll look at your account and tell you what counts as a lead there and whether it matches real calls.