Has Facebook Finally Removed The 20% Rule?

[box]UPDATE: We have contacted Facebook about this and the company confirmed that the 20% rule has been amended. See their statement below.[/box]

There will be cries of joy from social media marketers! It seems that Facebook has finally removed the 20% rule for ads. No more rejected creatives because there’s too much text on them. Amazing, right?

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The 20% rule was added years ago, to safeguard the quality of the user experience and the look and feel of our timelines. The truth is that it worked. By stopping businesses from using images with too much text on ads, Facebook forced them to be more creative, and our timelines have been thankful.

But the other truth is that it also has been nightmare for social media marketers who too often saw numerous ads being rejected because they just had that little bit too much text. Some brands could not even advertise because their own logo was text. Something had to be done, right?

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Well it has changed. Maybe the rule has not been totally removed, but it has been made much more flexible. The new rule will not stop you from using any image, no matter the amount of text on it. On the contrary, it will let you use it for ads, but Facebook will warn you that the more text on your image, the less reach you are likely to achieve with the same budget:

And once your ad is approved, you will, again, be notified of the limited reach it might get:

That is simply because, although you are now allowed to use images with more than 20% text, Facebook will penalise you for doing so.

In fact you ad can now fall into 1 of 4 categories:

1. Image text: OK – you ad image contains little or no text
2. Image text: Low – your ad’s reach may be slightly limited
3. Image text: Medium – your ad’s reach may be limited
4. Image text: High – you may not reach your audience

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A Facebook spokesperson confirmed:

[quote]To help advertisers achieve their business goals while providing people with an enjoyable experience on Facebook, we’ve had a policy limiting excessive text (more than 20%) on images in ads. We’re always looking for ways to improve the experience for people and advertisers, which is why we’re testing a new solution that will allow ads with text to run, but based on the amount of text in an ad’s image, the ad won’t reach as many people. We will continue to monitor how this test impacts advertisers as well as people and will iterate to ensure we are creating the best possible experience.[/quote]

For more information on how the new “flexible” rule works and some visual examples, check out this help page on Facebook (and a screen capture here if you cannot see this help page from your location.)