Facebook Hack: Get Around The 20% Text Rule for Facebook Ads
Have you had your Facebook ads rejected because of the 20% text rule?
Do you ever have issues with the Facebook 20% ad text rule when trying to market a blog post or product?
Sometimes it’s hard to get the full title or text large enough to read without running into your ad being unapproved “Not Boosted” by Facebook. Well, I may have found a small solution / work around that may help some marketers until Facebook catches on.
I’ll use examples from my Facebook page for CollegeOwlz, an online student marketplace where college kids can make money selling their notes and textbooks. All of these ads exceeded the 20% ad text limit, but due to this work around, I was able to run the ads for extended periods of time ranging from a few hours to days.
Note however, that this workaround only works for users looking for immediate engagements with the post and not expecting the ad to run for a full week to month long period. As sometimes Facebook does catch it and moves the ad boost to “Not Boosted.”
So let’s begin…
What I have found is that upon posting your social message with an image, if you set your Boost to more than $250 your ad will bypass the 20% ad text limitation. Nearly every ad is approved within 10-20 minutes, and the ad spend will deplete rapidly before Facebook rejects it (depending on the overall ad spend amount).
Examples Of Facebook Ads That Exceed The 20% Text Rule
This post was published on October 27th, and ran through November 4th. Never unapproved and had a total ad spend of $140. When I originally published the post, I had a Boost spend of $440 set.
As you can see from the Facebook Grid Tool, my photo contains nearly 60% text, yet the ad was able to continue.
Here is an example of an ad that obviously breaks the 20% ad text limit, yet was still successful in my eyes as it reached the demographic we needed in the time we needed. The ad was published on October 16th and ran through the 17th with a total ad spend of $91.75 before Facebook unapproved the ad spend. However, since I set the original amount to spend $380 it was able to run through a good chunk of that ad spend.
Here’s another example of exceeding the text limit but never seeing the ad unapproved due to high ad spend.
How do I know it’s the ad spend that affects approvals? I’ve tried the same image twice with similar posts, but only difference was setting one for a $5-$10 total spend versus the $250+. Does Facebook just want you to show them the money? It appears so.
Looking over my history of ads, some other things that may affect or help with bypassing the 20% ad text limit may have to do with choice of font. If you pick fonts that are creative and look handwritten or are grungy, Facebook’s text recognizer sometimes doesn’t catch it. Also, the use of color and contrast sometimes helps hide your text from the auto-detector.
Give it a try and see if you can break the Facebook 20% text rule. Try setting the boost to over $250, but pause the ad whenever it reaches your actual limit on what you’re willing to spend. If you don’t have deep pockets, I don’t suggest setting up several ads like this and letting them run unchecked. You’d be surprised what Facebook will let you get away with.
Have you found any other helpful tricks with running Facebook ads? Share any other Facebook advertising hacks you know of in the comments below.
Justin Pinter is the Vice President of CollegeOwlz a company that allows students to make money buying and selling their class notes and textbooks. Justin is also involved providing marketing services for local businesses.
