Facebook Ad Image Rules — 10 Tips for Creating Facebook Ad images

Facebook accounts and intelligent cloaking increase the chances of profitable traffic redirection from Facebook. But it all starts with creativity and the abiding of the specified ad image rules. To successfully launch advertising campaigns on Facebook, first, webmasters need to learn how to create effective ad images that will pass moderation. There are things that one should know about prohibited topics and practices that Facebook won’t advertise. Let’s take a closer look.

The best practices for using Image Ads on Facebook can be found on the official Facebook Business Help Center. The service allows selecting the language you want and offers over 30 languages to read the guideline. Surely English, Russian, French, Deutsch, Portuguese, and Spanish are available so that the majority of customers could easily get acquainted with the basic requirements for Facebook ad images.

The Process of Checking the Ads

Prior to placement on Facebook or Instagram, ads are always reviewed for violation of Facebook advertising rules. Images, text, targeting, and landing page  — all are subject to check. If the page does not function properly, does not correspond to the advertisement, or violates the rules of Facebook, youк publication may get a refusal for posting.

Tips for Placing Text Over the Advertising Image 

• Do not place words on the main part of the picture and do not distribute them over the whole image area. Place them within a special place;
• Check the image for advertising with the Facebook text overlay tool.
• If the image does not meet your system requirements, reduce the number of words, or reduce the font.
• Make your text readable. Ads with large amounts of text in smaller fonts will not attract users.
• Do not overuse numbers, watermarks, or text logos. All of them can worsen the advertisement by reducing the audience’s interest. 

Let's discuss the types of products prohibited by Facebook.

Tobacco Products

Since July 2019, Facebook ad images should not contain offers to buy or use tobacco products and supplies, including cigarettes, cigars, chewing tobacco, smoking tubes, hookah, and specialized places for smoking, cigarette paper, nicotine vaporizers, and electronic cigarettes. All these images are prohibited.

However, if you advertise blogs or groups of people who are interested in tobacco, if the service does not sell tobacco products or related products or campaigns and tobacco-free ebooks, nicotine addiction counseling services, quitting programs, or rehabilitation facilities, then you will not have a problem with moderation. Those brands who deal with such a product should restrics their content to adults of 18 year old or older. 

Follow the Same Design Principle

        The design of the ad image should always correspond to the design of the landing page or design so that customers who would find the advertisement would easily recognize it. Sticking to the same design indicates a strong conversion scent. This creates a bridge between the advertising and the landing page and respectively a feeling of familiarity with all the new visitors who previously might have seen the website or landing page design.

Medicines and Drug-Related Products and Nutritional Supplements

As the overall drug-related products are potentially dangerous, Facebook decided to prohibit their advertising via its network. Only CBD market is estimated to be worth of $16 billion, which is a stunningly great number. To prevent this market from excessive grow Facebook keeps its rules steadily. Advertising images should not include offers to sell or use illicit or light drugs or prescription drugs. Images should not depict devices for drug use, such as bongs, cigarette papers, and spraying devices. It is also prohibited to use an image of marijuana for entertainment or medical purposes. This also includes the advertising of nutritional supplements, including, among others, anabolic steroids, chitosan, comfrey, dehydroandrosterone, ephedra, and human growth hormones.

Weapons and Ammunition

In June of 2018 Facebook made a decision to stop advertising gun holsters and other firearms both in text and visual formats due to the rising shooting tendency in American schools. Webmasters who desire to gain the hot traffic without the risk of getting their ad images being blocked should avoid images depicting firearms, ammunition, paintball guns, and even pepper spray cans, knives, stun guns, and weapons designed for self-defense, as well as fireworks and explosives. Such Things as gun safes, gun cases, and mounts were put under the restriction of 18-years age over.

Goods or Services for Adults

Advertising should not promote a sale or demonstrate adult content through both visual and textual information. An exception is advertising for family planning or contraception. Advertising for contraception should be about the contraceptive properties of the product and not about sexual pleasure or stimulation and should be shown to people of 18 years old or older. If you advertise such products for health protection or show contraception, such advertising can be approved.

Also, the image should not contain naked body parts, people in obscene poses, or actions that are excessively frank or sexually provocative.

Facebook does not accept images of body parts, such as the abdomen, buttocks, or breasts, even without sexual connotations, as well as images of too many naked body parts or deep necklines, even if sexuality is not explicitly emphasized or shown in art or fashion.

Even the eggplant and the peach emojis were banned to be used in various sorts of sexual content.

Content Without Copyright and Sensational Materials

Advertising images should not contain materials that violate third party rights, including copyrights, trademark rights, confidentiality, publicity, and other personal and proprietary rights. Advertising should not contain shocking, sensational, or violent materials. For example, pictures of car accidents are 100% prohibited visual content that will in any way be blocked. 

Content, including photos, with copyrights, trademarks, and other legal rights can’t be shared on Facebook. The illegal use of them might lead to user account being blocked. 

20% Image Text Space Rule

Despite the fact that Facebook has long ago removed the limitation of strict 20% of the amount of text that can be present on the advertising image, webmasters still often face this problem. The main reason is that the customer wants to use the space of a 1200x627px -large picture in the most efficient manner and place on its space over 20% of the text. Facebook and its customers are very critical of doing this as over 20% of images space used for text information makes advertising unsuitable for the perception and a person can lose track of the advertising easily. Let's find out how it works.

The rule that the image should contain no more than 20% of the text of the image area was abolished. But Facebook still restricts such pictures, with the difference that in the past it simply rejected them and did not allow them for publication, but now limits the target audience who might see this advertising.

That is — the more text your advertising image has — the less coverage the advertiser and the ad gets. Now there are 4 categories of rating the image quality and the audience that will see it:

The experts from Hubspot have repeatedly tested the effectiveness of the 20% rule in advertising campaigns. They came to the conclusion that it is rational, so they publish their articles and instructions with the same recommendation, despite the fact that it was canceled. Each advertiser decides for himself: how much text to place in the image. But if you want to get the maximum coverage of the target audience and the highest efficiency of advertising, you should not overuse the text content on the image space.

New realities are that better use less text in the image but more effectively. Look at a few variants of one image from Hubspot:

• Perfect variant according to Facebook (Just a few the most important words)

• Good variant with an affordable amount of text. (A few lines of text within a 20% limit).

• Undesired variant with a copious amount of text (the amount of text over 20%)

Facebook has created a special tool that can and should be used to validate an image before submitting a publication for review. The tool is called Image Text Check. To use it, follow the link to the Facebook tool, upload the image, and get a rating. 

Sport and Beauty

Facebook suggests that advertisers can encourage healthy eating and body care in their ad picture. At the same time, the target audience of such advertisements cannot be blamed for the way they look. Advertisements should not blame a person because of the unattractiveness of their body, and should not use appeals to get rid of their flaws and become more beautiful.

Above all, advertisements from the Sport and Beauty section should be directed only at adults. But it is not enough. Advertising content cannot offer or attempt to stimulate negative perceptions of oneself to promote products related to diet, weight loss, and other health products. Also, the advertisement should not contain images “before and after” or images with unexpected or unlikely results.

Such images as “before and after” the application of a product or service is a classic advertising technique, but it is not allowed on Facebook. The frank body parts cannot be shown close-up or mislead the user with incredible weight loss results.

Landing Page Image Optimization

People long ago used to share interesting information on their social networks. Those who search for suitable content know well that the best way to do it is to find the relevant Facebook page and find the inserted link for the appropriate landing page. Active Facebook users regularly use it to find the necessary information. All that required is to click a few buttons. This creates a lot of traffic. But to help users to associate the landing page with Facebook the webmaster should use the same image they used as the thumbnail for the advertisement shared via Facebook. The image that brings more clicks is better to be used both for the ad itself and for the Facebook page. This can bring the highest ROI. 

Split Test Images

Creating an effective ad image from the first attempt sometimes may be tricky. But creating a few versions of the ad image you might increase your chances to produce the one that would meet all the demands. Facebook allows splitting test images within its tool. This maximizes results. Still all versions of images should correspond to the rule of conversion scent and the 20% text limit rule. 

Specifications and Parameters for Facebook Ad Images

• Image size: 1200 x 628 px or 1080 x 1080 px  for a 1:1 images;
• Image ratio: 9:16 to 16:9 with no link involved or 1.9:1 to 1:1 with a link involved;
• No more than 20% text insertion;
• File types: png or jpg (all gifs should be uploaded as video ads);
• Text limitation is 125 characters (with no link);
• The headline should contain 25 characters;
• The link description should contain no more than 30 characters.

Conclusion

With a well-choreographed Facebook ad image used for online advertising, the webmaster is capable to provide the highest ROI. Even beginner webmasters who don’t have a lot of important experience when following all these tips for ad image optimization can increase their chances to create an effective advertisement. Following these rules for image optimization is crucial to proceed along the whole way from the advertisement planing to the actual publication that would be able to cover the highest possible target audience.