Facebook Ads 20% Text Rule Removed. What are the New Guidelines?

Facebook’s Ad rule has softened over the past years, but this week, they completely removed the 20% text rule.

Earlier, when media buyers ran ads on Facebook’s platforms, their artworks got approved initially due to automation and later got rejected often by Facebook for a lot of text. During this week, the media buyers noticed that their artworks are no longer getting rejected despite bearing more than 20% of texts.

The Change was First Noticed and then Documented

A few sources confirm that the 20% text rule for Facebook Ad images is now removed. The media buyers are getting direct communication from Facebook this week regarding this change.

Before receiving these official messages from Facebook, media buyers noticed that the text overlay tool page was redirecting to some other page. During this time, there was no Facebook documentation regarding the same, but it has been updated now in the past few days.

As always, Facebook still gives tips to the media buyers and advises them to keep the text on their image ad less than 20% for better reach:

“To create a better experience for viewers and advertisers, ads that appear on Facebook, Instagram, and the Audience Network are screened based on the amount of image text used in your ad. Based on this review, advertisements with a higher percentage of image text may not be shown. Please note that exceptions may apply to certain ad images. For example, exemptions apply to book covers, album covers and product images.”

What was the Purpose of “20% Rule”?

The purpose of this rule is to reduce the clumsiness in the Facebook News Feed. Earlier, along with multiple ad units and media options, the news feed was filled with texts and images. Adding further more texts on the images will only lead to making the post more cluttered and an unpleasant experience.

But, with every passing year, the platform has evolved so much that text in images are no longer a distraction. Also, they have been rolling out new ad formats that are flashier.

Earlier, users were able to easily create many photo experiences with their smartphones to include text, borders, emojis, etc. But text stood out as an anomaly and there is a suspicion that text on an image was intuitive enough to understand it as an ad. So, users tend to scroll right by it.

Ad images with more than 20% texts were rejected years ago, the rules have been softened to run these ads for a limited time. It was noticed by impression levels between no-text vs. low-text ad imagery, and then came the rating system called 20% Text Overlay Tool to warn advertisers.

One thing that highly frustrates the advertisers is, they were allowed to simply know if they were in violation and the verdict was not given ahead of time. After knowing this, the advertiser wouldn’t be able to run the ad.

With the release of Text Overlay Tool, the advertisers can upload the images they want to run the ad. The tool will check each image and give feedback immediately to the advertisers regarding their text situation.

Previous Exceptions to the 20% Rule

Earlier, there were certain situations where Facebook didn’t reject ads even though the images exceeded the 20% threshold.

Covers for things like books

Screenshots for things like apps and software

Infographics

Event posters

A product image where it sports a text label

Legal disclaimers

Cartoons or comics

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