Facebook Removes 20 Percent Text Rule for Social Media Advertising

In the ever-evolving landscape of social media advertising, Facebook removes the 20 percent rule which previously limited the amount of image text advertisers were able to use. 

The original purpose of the rule was to mitigate how much noise occurred for users in the Facebook News Feed, according to Search Engine Journal. When the 20 percent rule was in place, social media advertisers sometimes found that their ads would not be displayed and were often not notified. 

“Image text is any text that exists on your ad image or creative. It doesn’t include text outside of your image, like the body text of your ad,” according to Facebook. 

The 20 percent rule and image text restrictions from Facebook made it difficult for social media advertisers to meet image requirements and caused further issues when they regularly had to reformat their images.  

In addition to reformatting images, advertisers also had difficulty knowing exactly when they had exceeded 20 percent of the space allotted for text.

“At times, Facebook’s enforcement process in this respect has also been flawed, so it’ll be a relief to many to see those limits taken away,” according to Social Media Today.

Facebook previously deemed what would pass for under or over 20 percent through a 25-rectangle grid, according to Instapage. Advertisers found this tool flawed and quantified their image text based on position rather than the actual amount of text present.

Following the grid tool, Facebook released the Text Overlay Tool in another attempt to provide more concrete guidelines.

The Text Overlay Tool gave advertisers the ability to upload their images and receive immediate feedback on the amount of text present. Feedback was presented as a rating that ranged from “ok” to “high” but, information on exactly how often ads would be displayed as a result of their rating was not given. 

News revolving around the elimination of the 20 percent rule spread when “media buyers were noticing the text overlay tool page was redirecting,” according to Search Engine Journal. 

Without the 20 percent rule in place, social media advertisers will have more creative freedom over the contents of their images. 

Facebook still recommends that ads contain less than 20 percent image text, but it is no longer a set standard that social media advertisers must comply with. 

“We’ve found that images with less than 20% text perform better. With this in mind, we recommend keeping your text short, clear and concise in order to get your message across effectively,” according to Facebook. 

In the past, we never felt the 20 percent rule was entirely necessary. The 20 percent rule gave social media advertisers fewer opportunities to get creative with their campaigns and test different options with more or less text, specific to their audience. 

Based on our previous ad performance, we agree with Facebook that less is more. But, we also found that occasionally being able to have slightly over 20 percent image text present would have made a great difference in our ability to be creative. This was previously not an option without ads being limited or even rejected entirely. 

We are excited to now have the opportunity to test ads with more text compared to less on images, and truly find out what works best for specific campaigns without being limited. 

If you would like support with your social media accounts, feel free to contact us at 913-428-9508. We would be happy to support you and your business by helping you stay informed and well prepared to maximize your social media performance.