Fertility startups are struggling to reach women in need of reproductive health services on TikTok.

U.K.-based startup Hertility provides at-home hormone tests to help women assess their risk of fertility decline and make informed decisions about whether to consider treatment like IVF or egg-freezing. It wants to advertise its services on TikTok, which women use at higher rates than men. But it can’t.

That's because Hertility ads that mention its diagnostic tests have been blocked by the platform. TikTok spokesperson Ben Rathe says it’s because the company prohibits advertising about fertility treatments and IVF care—something not stated publicly or explicitly in TikTok's healthcare advertising policy—but Hertility doesn’t offer those. TikTok also offered a number of other reasons for the blocks: that Hertility offers medical appointments through its website (something not necessarily mentioned in its ads), or that an ad featured pharmaceutical content (when the company doesn’t sell prescription drugs).

When Hertility has managed to get an ad on TikTok, it's been forced to water down its promotional language to the point that it’s no longer even clear what the company does. The company spent two years trying to find a way to market itself on the platform. But in the end, it’s just giving up.

“We are literally hitting our heads against a brick wall,” said Dr. Helen O’Neill, a Hertility cofounder and molecular geneticist who’s spent more than a decade researching infertility and embryonic development.

“We're not trying to sell anyone egg-freezing or IVF; we're trying to actually help them get on an IVF journey if they need to sooner,” O’Neill said. But the platform “blocks people from even just getting answers, even though [people] sell all sorts of untoward things on TikTok.”

Previously, Hertility’s ads had also been blocked by Meta. But the Instagram and Facebook parent updated its policies to allow ads that promote sexual health, wellness and reproductive products and services—including IVF—as long as the users targeted are over 18, and the focus is on health and medical efficacy rather than sexual pleasure or enhancement, according to Meta spokesperson Daniel Roberts.

“What this leads to more broadly is also that it negates normalizing conversations around sexual and reproductive health.”

“I'm sad to say that it has something to do with the fact that anything involving women's health becomes territorial,” O’Neill added. “We see it now with IVF and egg-freezing—that even the smallest bit of insight into women's health will soon become under attack.”

Hertility isn’t the only fertility company that has struggled to advertise on social........

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