To their credit I did get this message from them today:

    We reviewed the ad you reported and found that it goes against 
    our Advertising Standards. We let the advertiser know that we 
    removed the ad, but not who reported it.

    Thank you for letting us know. Reports like yours help us to 
    improve the integrity and relevance of advertising on Facebook.

Ads on the FB & goog network (this includes phys.org btw) are NOT paper tigers, in the sense that

  they are a reliable anti-signal

As an example of the last one, I just learnt about an ISO standard.. )

YMMV depending on how much the network knows [it doesn't know] about you ofc ;)