Anyone who has boosted a post on Facebook from a Facebook page knows the frustration that can come from the “20 Percent Rule.” In an effort to keep everyone’s Facebook news feeds looking less cluttered and attractive (among other reasons) Facebook restricts boosted posts to those with images featuring 20 percent or less of text.
The benefit of this rule is that users see less “meme based” advertising and more quality images. In short, the rule forces advertisers to be a bit more creative in their efforts than by simply putting up the latest picture of Grumpy Cat with a sardonic quip in Impact font.
So, is that rule finally going away?
A report by the European-site We R Social Media wersm.com says so.
Well it has changed. Maybe the rule has not been totally removed, but it has been made much more flexible. The new rule will not stop you from using any image, no matter the amount of text on it. On the contrary, it will let you use it for ads, but Facebook will warn you that the more text on your image, the less reach you are likely to achieve with the same budget:
Rejoicing? Well, don’t get carried away. While those at We R Social Media profess that they have tested this in real-time, no one else seems to have been able to reproduce the same result.
American site ADigitalBoom.com attempted to get the same results as We R Social Media, but was met with the all too familiar twenty percent rule dialogue box.
Digital marketers have been sharing false/unverified news today which claims that Facebook has changed the 20% text overlay rule for image ads and now accepts any image advert regardless the amount of text – which is totally incorrect according to Facebook.
As expected, no changes to Facebook 20% text overlay rule, we’ve created three adverts with more text and they’ve been rejects due to the rule.
So, as of right this second, it doesn’t seem like there have been any actual changes to the twenty percent rule, no matter if We R Social Media actually ran across it or not.
And while Facebook’s rule may sometimes seem a bit too harsh, especially when advertisers are attempting to get across information quickly without necessarily needing users to click, the alternative could be a news feed rife with text heavy ads. It’d be a meme graveyard.