The death of Facebook’s 20% text rule

In the past, to use an image in Facebook ads, it had to pass the vigorous 20% text rule. This meant that if the banner was made up of more than 20% text, it would not be approved. This was Facebook’s way of making sure ad copy was confined to the text and heading, keeping banners image focused and of high-quality.

Today I went to use the grid tool, which helped you check whether your image would be approved or not, however, I couldn’t find it. And this is when I discovered Facebook’s policies have changed… dun-dun-dun!

Now, images must have as little text as possible. It means that the more text these images have, the more the reach of the ad will be limited.

An email to Greg, our Facebook contact, confirmed this. He said:

The text policy has changed slightly in that your ads won’t be disapproved for having over 20% text anymore, instead the ad will be approved but if an ad has a lot of text in it then it will be penalized on the delivery front so the reach will be limited.

 

Going forward, I imagine it will help with relevancy, making ads look more streamlined within the news feed and less intrusive for users.

More info can be found here