– Avi Ben-Zvi, Group Director, Paid Social at Tinuiti
Facebook recently announced it will be rolling back its long-standing policy limiting the delivery of ads with higher amounts of text on images. This has been one of Facebook’s creative bedrocks in place since the birth of ads on the platform, where ads with text higher than 20 percent saw limited delivery or even ad disapprovals.
“The 20 percent text rule for Facebook was a staple of the platform since the inception of page posts. This change represents a fairly dramatic shift in Facebook’s advertising policy that was geared towards preventing “spammy,” low-quality content.”
In the statement from the platform, Facebook mentioned they are continually revisiting the effectiveness and impact of their ad quality checks or ad reviews. As a result of the pandemic, Facebook has relied more heavily on automated checks as opposed to person-lead reviews so this move will be sure to free up bandwidth on that front.
Why is Facebook rolling back limitations on image text?
While long-term effects remain to be seen, Facebook is still emphasizing that ads with less text have a tendency to perform better. Advertisers should continue to focus on more dynamic ad variations as opposed to text overlays in order to see strong performance.
Next steps for advertisers
“The willingness to eliminate this rule shows how far creative has evolved, and how advertisers have adopted towards asset creation within the Facebook ecosystem. Instead of advertisers needing to check their assets for too much text, they can place more focus on actual strategic matters, or even algorithmic concerns like the learning phase,” Ben-Zvi said.
