An Ode to Facebook's 20% Rule
2020 has been a turbulent year to say the least. Just like every other aspect of life, digital marketing has been going through more changes than ever before in an effort to keep up. While some advancements have hit harder than others, there’s one pivotal shift that finally came. It was a day digital marketers thought they’d never truly see, a monumental farewell, and frankly a cause for an all too rare celebration: The phasing out of Facebook’s infamous 20% text rule.
For context, Facebook and Instagram have long implemented a rule for all paid advertising on their platforms that images can include no more than 20% text per image. Since introducing self-serve paid advertising in 2007, Facebook has always meant for advertising on the channel to be a more immersive and visually heavy experience. However, their strict guidelines meant an over-reliance on imagery, leaving advertisements with necessary copy components, such as legal callouts or contest details with limited ways to convey their message while advertising.
After strong backlash from users that Facebook was unnecessarily limiting their advertising capabilities and taking freedoms from creatives, the platform released the classically lamented Grid Tool. A shoddy, cheaply run software that would give marketers an idea if they could possibly (but never a guaranteed shot) pass their approval system.
@adelsbergermktg
Granted ads with less copy perform better, that’s always been the case. It was also part of Facebook and Instagram’s long standing reasoning behind their implementation and strict enforcement of the policy. But with the evolution of mixed media such as video accepted as the norm on user’s feeds, and more long-form stories being told on the apps (influencer’s captions that read like short novellas, carousels of iPhone note screenshots and posted organically) the stronger case was made to allow advertisers the freedom to experiment within the platform.
As time went on, and Facebook’s priorities went from controlling text within images, to essentially protecting our democracy from fake news, the rule became less and less enforced. Certainly by now you’ve been served ads with more text, or that’s bombarded with logos. While neither of these practices traditionally yield desirable results, those are ultimately the decisions of the advertisers to make. Other social platforms such as Twitter have no comparable rule, essentially leaving it up to the brand to find out what works best for them, optimize, and repeat.
When the news finally broke earlier this month that the rule would be phased out at long last, it was met not with the fanfare one would have initially expected, but rather with a whimper. It seemed to be yet another instance of Facebook giving their audience (or in this case their advertisers) what they wanted, just too little too late.
So fare thee well 20% text rule. May you rest easy alongside the likes of Twitter’s 140 character limit, YouTube’s un-skippable 30 second ads, and all the other rules that never really made sense to begin with.