Social Advertising is a great way for advertisers to reach their audience where they spend the most time these days: on their favorite social sharing platforms. While I understand the appeal of giving your consumer as much needed information as possible, doing so may end up giving you (and your advertising agency) a headache. To ensure the best performance and avoid campaign delay, below are a couple guidelines to keep in mind for social ad creation and the reason why your ads keep getting rejected.
Facebook prides itself on providing users with streamlined content that’s as easy to digest as possible. Their old rule of thumb was if your ad included 20% or more text it wouldn’t be approved. They have since changed this model—now allowing images and videos with heavy text in them to run. Sounds great, right? Well, not really. While these ads are allowed, they probably won’t have much, if any, reach. Try using the text fields to house this information—not your image. If you must include text in images and videos, reduce the font size and keep coverage to only a small portion of the ad. If you’re ever in doubt, Facebook has a text overlay tool where you can see just how much text is in your ad which can be found here. Just remember that the less text (under 20%) in your ad, the better the cost and the better the performance will be. When it comes to video, providing us with a text free thumbnail we can use helps creative approval as well. Something to also keep in mind is that most people are consuming the video ads they see with the sound off. Captions are helpful to both entice people to read along and prevent them from scrolling past them.
Content & Language
Facebook has been recently cracking down on discriminatory ads. Ads that call out people for what may be considered discreet or embarrassing attributes will not be run. Other ads that are off-limits are any content that singles out people based on gender, race, family status, sexual orientation, medical and genetic conditions, religion, age, national origin, and disability. If Facebook identifies an ad as providing housing, credit, or employment opportunities while also using any other audience segments, Facebook will require advertisers to state that they are in compliant with their updated discrimination policy.
It’s important to remember both images and text play a role in this policy. The take-home point here is that Facebook tries to create and maintain a certain inclusive and inoffensive atmosphere for their audience, so images and messages which counter this goal are nearly impossible to get running.
For more info, visit Facebook’s Guide to Prohibited Content.