Facebook's Twenty Percent Rule for Ad Pictures

A flyer turned into an ad

A business has a printed flyer it is proud of: the name across the top, a photo, the dates, the prices, the address and the phone number, all on one page.

Running it as a Facebook ad seems obvious. The design exists, and it already says everything.

Then the ad is not approved, or a boosted post with the flyer as its picture comes back rejected. The notice mentions too much text in the image.

The rule behind it is simple, and it explains why flyers make poor ad pictures anyway.

What the rule says

Facebook does not approve ads whose picture is more than twenty percent text. That covers ads in the News Feed and the right-hand column, and boosted posts, which are ads too.

It is measured with a grid: five rows of five boxes laid over the picture. If text appears in more than five of the twenty-five boxes, the picture fails.

The words in the ad's own text fields, above and below the picture, do not count. Only the image is measured.

Ordinary posts on your page, the ones you do not pay to promote, are not checked at all.

What counts as text

• Words typed over a photo, however small or faint.
• Logos and slogans, including the business name in a corner.
• Prices, dates and phone numbers, the usual contents of a flyer.
• Signs, menus and screens that happen to be in the photo.
• Borders and banners with writing on them.

The fourth catches people out. A photo of the shopfront with its sign, or a chalkboard menu behind the counter, can fail the grid without a single word added.

Why a flyer fails in a feed

A flyer is built for paper. Someone holds it at arm's length, standing still, and reads every line.

A feed is scrolled on a phone. The picture is shown a few centimetres wide, for about as long as it takes a thumb to move past it.

Squeezed to that size, a flyer's dates and prices become unreadable, and a block of small type looks like an advertisement, which is the thing people scroll past fastest.

So the rule, irritating as it is, pushes ads toward what works in a feed anyway: one clear picture and a few words.

Where the words go instead

A Facebook ad has its own places for text: a line or two above the picture, a headline below it, a short description and a button such as Learn More or Book Now.

Each has a job. The text above says what is happening and why it matters. The headline names it. The button says what to do next.

Dates, prices and the address belong there, or on the page the ad links to, where they can be read at full size and changed without redrawing anything.

A worked example

A piano bar on a busy street near the theatres has a pianist six nights a week, a request night on Thursdays and a sing-along that fills the room on Saturdays.

Each month the owner designs a poster listing every performer by night, the cover charge, the hours and the address. It goes up by the door and in the windows of nearby shops.

Last month the poster also became the picture for a boosted post. It was not approved: nearly every box of the grid held text.

The owner tried again with the poster shrunk inside a plain frame. That passed, but the performers' names were now too small to read on a phone.

What worked was a photograph from a Saturday: the pianist mid-song, the room singing along, warm light and no words at all.

The ad's text named the Saturday sing-along and the cover charge, and the button led to the website's page with this month's full schedule written out as text.

Choosing the picture

The best ad pictures show the thing itself: people at the event, the product in someone's hands, the room on a good night.

Use your own photographs where you can. Real people and real places tell a stranger what they will actually find, which a stock image cannot.

For a link ad, Facebook suggests a picture about 1,200 pixels wide and 628 high. Check how it looks small, since the right-hand column shows it at a fraction of that size.

Checking before you submit

Facebook offers a grid tool for exactly this. Upload the picture, mark each box that contains any text, and count.

Aim well under the limit rather than at it. A small logo in one corner and nothing else leaves plenty of room.

If an ad is rejected, the notice says why. Replace the picture and submit it again.

Keep the schedule on the website

The flyer still has a job: on the door, on the counter, in the windows nearby. Online, its contents belong on the website as text.

A schedule written as text can be read on a phone without zooming, found by search engines and updated in a minute. A picture of a poster can do none of that.

The ad then does one thing: it gets the right person to tap through to the page that has all the details.

The counter-case

Some businesses sell things that are mostly words: book covers, signs, printed invitations. The grid may count them anyway.

A photo of the work being made, or of the shop itself, is often the easier picture to get approved.

A page post that is not boosted can still carry the flyer, since unpaid posts are not checked. It will reach only some of the page's fans, though.

For anything you pay to show, build the picture around a photograph and put the details in the ad's own words.

Before the next ad

1. Keep the flyer for paper and the door.
2. Choose a photograph of the real thing.
3. Check it with the grid tool before uploading.
4. Put the details in the ad's text.
5. Link to a page with the full details.
6. Write that page as text, not an image.
7. Preview the ad at phone size.

Step five is what lets the picture stay simple. Once the dates, prices and schedule live on a page the ad links to, the image no longer has to carry them.

Why the same flyer posted to the page without paying reaches so few fans is covered in what Facebook counts as too promotional.

Frequently asked questions

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.