‘Facebook has finally ditched the 20% rule, but is it a good move?’
Digital

‘Facebook has finally ditched the 20% rule, but is it a good move?’

By 6 April 2016No Comments

Facebook has confirmed that they have removed the infamous 20% rule.

‘’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’’- Facebook spokesperson

 Surely this is a fantastic thing for social marketers?

Think about it, why did Facebook have the 20% rule in the first place? Well, firstly it made marketers and advertisers more creative with their content. It’s very easy to slap a lot of branding and text over any image and still get the main points across to the consumer, so in a way Facebook forced us to advertise in a more artistic way. It has definitely made our timelines more appealing.

Looking at it from another point of view, the 20% rule made it difficult for marketers to get their ads through the review process, with ads rejected often and even companies with text in their logo getting turned down because of it.

So how do the new rules work?

The new rules will not stop you from using any image, no matter how much text is on it. The catch is, the more text you have on your image, the less reach you are likely to have with the same budget. Have a look at these examples;

 

So,You can use images with more than 20% text but Facebook is going to punish you for it, by limiting your reach and you will have to pay more to increase the reach of text heavy posts compared to ones with less text.

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

So are the new rules a good thing? do they give marketers more flexibility? Or is it just a subtle way for Facebook to drain our pockets? You can read the full Facebook article here:

https://www.facebook.com/business/help/980593475366490