A denial is rarely an accusation. Most are mechanical: something in the brief was not met, or the post could not be checked. Knowing the list means almost never seeing one.
The mechanical reasons
- →Posted on a platform the campaign does not count. The commonest denial by a distance.
- →Handle not tagged, when tagging was required.
- →Clip shorter than the stated minimum.
- →Account set to private, so the post cannot be verified at all.
- →Post deleted or made private after submission, which removes the evidence the earnings were based on.
- →Submitted after the campaign window closed.
The originality reasons
Campaign rules require the edit to be your own. Submitting the same clip twice from one account is blocked outright, and submitting someone else's edit — or your own from several accounts — breaches the terms and is caught when entries are reviewed. Re-uploading the source with no meaningful edit fails for the same reason: some campaigns require the clip to be genuinely cut and captioned rather than trimmed.
The verification reasons
Views have to look real. A clip reporting significant reach with almost no likes, or with none of its engagement growing while views spiked, gets held for review. So does an implausibly high like-rate, which points at bought likes rather than bought views. A hold is not a denial: genuine outliers are common, and it means a human look.
If your clip genuinely took off, that is usually resolved in your favour. What does not survive review is bought engagement, because the pattern is distinctive and consistent.
How to avoid all of it
- →Read the platform list before editing, not after.
- →Screenshot your view count at the moment you submit.
- →Leave the post up for at least the stated retention period.
- →Keep the account public and use it like a normal account.
- →Never buy views on a clip you intend to submit. It is the one unrecoverable mistake.
How verification actually reads your views
Verification is not a person deciding whether your clip deserves to earn. It is a set of ratio checks run against the post's public numbers, and the checks only switch on once a clip clears about a thousand views. Below that, the counts are too noisy to judge, so a small clip is never penalised on its ratios — it simply earns on the views it has.
At scale the signals are specific. Likes are expected to sit within a believable window: below roughly 0.2 percent of views, the reach looks inflated, because real audiences like more often than that; above roughly 35 percent, the likes look bought, because genuine clips almost never convert that hard. Comments carry their own floor — a clip reporting serious reach with essentially no comments draws a flag, since real reach pulls conversation with it. None of these on its own denies a clip; they add up into a score.
There is also a velocity check. If a clip's views suddenly jump to more than eight times its own trailing average while likes and comments stay flat, that pattern reads as purchased views rather than a breakout, because real virality lifts engagement at the same time it lifts views. A comment-quality pass adds one more read: generic, repetitive comments count for less than a real conversation.
Denied is not the same as in review
Two outcomes sit below a clean pass. A middling score sends the clip to review, where the numbers are looked at again rather than rejected — this is the default when there is simply not enough signal yet, and it protects a genuine early clip from an unfair no. Only a high score auto-denies. If your clip truly took off, a second snapshot usually shows engagement catching up to the view count, and that is what clears most honest breakouts on appeal.
Read the rules before you cut, and submit with confidence.
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