How to Check Your Ads With a Text Overlay Tool

The best billboards call for your attention with bold fonts, messages on your face, and bright, eye-catching graphics. The best Facebook ads do exactly the opposite.

If you want to reach and engage with potential customers on Facebook, you need to create ads that blend in as seamlessly as possible with the rest of the content in their newsfeeds. This means focusing on simple, high-quality images, straightforward messages, and most importantly, minimal text.

Facebook knows that the best performing ads have images with little to no text, which is why the 20% rule was created. This rule states that your images must contain less than 20% text to serve an image-based ad on Facebook.

For a complete guide on creating Facebook Ads, check out our article here.

It’s important to note that the 20% rule only applies to text that covers images that are attached to your ad. It does Not Add text outside of images to your ad, such as: B. the description copy or the button for calling up actions.

There are some exceptions to the 20% rule, including pictures of book covers, album art, event posters, video games, and some product pictures that contain text (such as a cereal box). Text-based logos are Not an exception to the 20% rule and will be counted as text when Facebook reviews your pictures.

Why exactly does the Facebook 20% rule exist? It comes down to what users want to see and interact with their news feeds. In fact, ads with less overlay text perform significantly better than text-cluttered images, so the rule provides a better user experience for both users and advertisers.

Facebook Text Overlay Tool

When Facebook reviews your ad images, it checks how much of your images are covered by text. While creating an ad, it can be difficult to determine the exact percentage of text that will cover your image. Fortunately, Facebook offers a tool that allows you to review before even submitting your ad for review. You can access this tool here.

1. Display with acceptable text overlay

Your best approach to creating a Facebook ad is to use little to no text.

In this example of an ideal ad image, there is only a small text-based logo and no other copy.

An ad with a simple picture like this will fit into users’ newsfeeds more easily and will be more likely to gain awareness and engagement with your target audience.

2. Display with minimal text overlay

In the next example there is an additional line of text.

This image technically meets the 20% rule, but the extra line of text means you risk fewer people seeing your ad.

Try not to add a copy to your image, but rather to paste it directly into the main copy of your ad.

3. Display with excessive text overlay

This last example is exactly what Facebook is doing Not wanna see:

This ad has too much text over the image. The information displayed here can be easily incorporated into the master copy of your ad, which makes users’ newsfeeds look much cleaner.

While it is tempting to throw critical information like this on your pictures, there is a risk of your ad being disapproved by Facebook or alienating users who are turned off by the busy copy.

Here is a simple rule to remember: the best way to get users’ attention on Facebook is to use an eye-catching image with no text. The 20% rule is not just an arbitrary standard – it helps advertisers reach their target groups more effectively and prevents users’ newsfeeds from being overwhelmed with annoying advertisements.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in June 2019 and has been updated for completeness.