For years the advice to every med spa and aesthetic clinic was the same: never put a before-and-after in a paid ad, it will be rejected. That advice is now out of date, and the clinics still following it are leaving their best evidence in a folder.
What actually changed
On 22 July 2026 Meta rewrote its health and wellness advertising standards. The old system judged an ad by what appeared in it. A side-by-side photo, a weight-loss product, a supplement bottle: rejected, often regardless of context.
The new system judges the claim rather than the object. The same photograph can be perfectly acceptable or a violation depending entirely on the words next to it.
For a clinic this is the difference between having no usable proof and having your strongest proof back.
What is still not allowed
The line that has not moved, and never will, is negative self-perception. You cannot make somebody feel bad about their face or body in order to sell them a treatment. That covers more than the obvious cases.
Copy that addresses the reader's body directly is still a violation. "Do you struggle with", "are you unhappy with", "tired of your" — all of it fails, no matter how gentle the tone.
Close-up shots isolating a body part, guaranteed outcomes, miracle framing and skin-lightening claims all remain prohibited. So does any result you cannot substantiate.
Why this matters more in Switzerland
Swiss patients research heavily before booking anything medical, and they are sceptical of claims by default. A clinic that says "natural results" without showing any is asking for a level of trust that most people will not extend to a stranger.
The clinics that do well here are the ones that show the work and let the viewer decide. That was hard to do in paid media under the old rules. It is now possible again.
How we would use it
Show the result, describe the procedure. Not the person's flaw. "Three sessions, six weeks apart, no downtime" is a factual description of what you did. "Fixing tired-looking skin" is a judgement about the viewer.
Keep the two images in the same conditions. Same light, same angle, same distance, no makeup change between them. This is good practice regardless of policy, and it is what a sceptical Swiss patient is checking for anyway.
Let the practitioner speak. A thirty-second clip of the person who performed the treatment explaining what it does and who it is not suitable for outperforms almost any static creative, and it sits well outside the risky categories.
Say who it is not for. Naming who should not book is the fastest credibility signal available to a clinic, and almost nobody uses it.
Test before you scale
Enforcement is automated and it reads your images, your copy and your landing page together. An ad can pass while the page it points to fails. Run a small budget first and watch for delivery problems rather than assuming approval means safety.
Policies also move. This one changed in July and it may change again. Check Meta's current advertising standards before you build a campaign around any of it, including this article.
The short version
You can probably show your work again. You still cannot make anyone feel worse about themselves to do it. For a good clinic that is not a restriction, it is just a description of how to advertise decently.
Based on Meta's health and wellness advertising standards as revised 22 July 2026. Platform policy changes frequently. Verify against Meta's official Advertising Standards before running a campaign.