Best Practices, Industry

Facebook has removed its 20% Text Rule, but should you still comply?

Late Q3, 2020 advertisers began to notice leniency in Facebook’s 20% Text Rule. The rule prevented advertisers from promoting ads containing more than 20% text by restricting reach relative to how much text was in the ad. With an official update to Facebook’s Business Help Center, advertisers will no longer face restrictions, but should they still comply with the old rule?

In order to best answer this question we’ll first break down how the ad auction scores ads to show audiences at a given time. 

Facebook has provided context on how it chooses ads to serve in their auction. In real-time Facebook analyzes competing ads and chooses a winner based on an assigned “Total Value.”

“To ensure that the winning ad maximizes value for both people and businesses, the winner of the auction is the ad with the highest total value.”

Facebook, About Ad Auctions

The Total Value is calculated by analyzing 3 major factors: Bid, Estimated Action Rates, and Ad Quality.  

From Facebook, we know estimated action rates and ad quality measure “ad relevance” which is a reported metric by Facebook in Ads Manager.  

Ads that contain a high amount of text may be deemed as irrelevant and given a lower Ad Quality score. This would cause the ad to be assigned a lower Total Value consequently losing more auctions and increasing costs. 

“Together, estimated action rates and ad quality measure ad relevance. In fact, we subsidize relevant ads in auctions, so more relevant ads often cost less and see more results.”

Facebook, About Ad Auctions

While the leniency of text in ads opens up opportunities for ad creative, advertisers should consider how their audience will perceive the quality of the ad. 


At this time, StitcherAds’ best practice for Dynamic Product Ads is to stay within the 20% Text Rule and increase ad quality by showing relevant feed data such as:

  • Product Title
  • Brand
  • Price
  • Sale Price
  • % Off 

Staying within the 20% Rule forces advertisers to stay relevant with messaging and promote scroll-stopping creative. However, advertisers have started to explore more text in their ads to increase the repetition and memorability of key messages and brand.  The example below stands out in the Facebook Newsfeed as it strengthens the opportunity for users to recognize a promotion while highlighting urgency with the “left in stock” inventory callout. 

We will continue exploring the effects of increased text in ads as advertisers use StitcherAds’ Creative Studio to iterate their ads at scale. 

Relevant Content:

https://kargocommerce.com/blog/facebook-holiday-marketing-reach-shoppers/