Facebook ads have quite a bit of appeal. These ads can feature your business on a social media platform that hosts millions of users every single day. When you place a Facebook ad that features your product or service, you should be able to reach more people than ever before, right?
The process of setting up a Facebook ad can be fairly straightforward, but to get the biggest “bang for your buck” you need to go deeper and drill into the detailed setup. This is where the “good stuff” is and yet also where some of the complexity can lie.
The guidelines, rules, regulations and chance of rejection for an Ad is quite high with Facebook so much so that many advertisers give up before they have an ad live. If you create an ad but forget one requirement the ad is going to be rejected.
One of the rules that is frequently forgotten is the 20% text rule. This rule has been the bane of many ad creators. Facebook would reject all ads that had more than 20% ratio of text on the image.
BREAKING….Recently, however, the 20% rule was changed! (But not completely discarded)
Until recently, Facebook had an established rule that text could not make up over 20% of the image you use for your Facebook ad. This rule resulted in high ad rejection rates. The ad creator had a grid tool that let you see the area of your image your text covered. This tool was not well liked because if you had text in any portion of a grid box, that counted as the whole box and towards your 20% max text. So often ad creators and designers had to finesse images and make multiple adjustments to work within the grid system.
This may not seem like a big deal, however, businesses that had pre-made images of products, with text found it problematic. For example, text on their shirt or coffee mug in the image engages the 20% rule.
Chances are, these businesses and marketers will be happy with the recent changes!
Facebook has made some helpful changes to the 20% rule. The former grid tool, which was helpful for many people, is now gone, and even if you wanted to use it, you can’t. Instead, Facebook offers a guideline that is a bit vague regarding text overlay.
Rather than have a “yes, the image/text ratio works,” or “no, it doesn’t work,” your image will now be classified into one of four areas based on the amount of text overlay present:
Keep in mind that all of the following will count as text on your ad image:
The good news is that Facebook ads are not limited to the amount of text on their ad images any longer. However, the rules related to text and ads are a bit vague, making it a bit more difficult to create an ad with superior visibility. The more text, the lower the visibility and reach Facebook will give to the ad! And they make the decision. It’s not a clear process a marketer can follow to ensure maximum reach other than to keep text at a minimum under the old 20% marker really.
For small business owners who need assistance with their digital marketing, this news is helpful and beneficial, but not a homerun. It’s an improvement in my opinion, to assist and can help marketers achieve greater success in the world of Facebook advertising with more ease of getting ads published.
Need help with your digital marketing or Facebook Ads? Contact Digital Hill, we’re happy to answer your questions.
