It's only a small change (the 20% rule) and Facebook really didn't want to pay much attention to it at all at first. The less the user is aware of changes related to the differences between paid posts and free posts, the more clicks are made for Facebook. Facebook has not given an official reason why they are making these changes after so many years, but in our opinion, the discussion with the unjustified advertising of celebrities that misled users and thus collectively lost millions of dollars has created the realization that Facebook should also be able to clearly distance itself between user and advertiser.

What does the 20% rule mean?

Traditionally, the 20% rule means that a maximum of 20% of a video or image can be filled with text. For that, Facebook provides tooling that allows you to make sure you stay within these frame margins. The main goal was for Facebook to remain a mainstream of beautiful text and not have too many garish ads visible in your timeline. After all, that would mean that users would eventually become irritated with the view and drop out of the medium.

Back in 2016, Facebook already decided that this restriction could also lead to problems in situations when an ad should actually provide a good and informative image.

From now on, the amount of text in your image directly influences your campaign results. Ad images are divided into four categories:

1. Image text "OK": your image contains little or no text at all. That rewards Facebook!
2. Image Text "Low": your image contains some text. Range is slightly limited.
3. Image text "Medium": images contain an average amount of text. Reach is limited to a greater extent.
4. Image text "High": the ad image contains a lot of text. It becomes difficult to reach your target audience at all. Facebook penalizes these ads immediately and is not a fan of a lot of text. You have to offer more to reach your target audience in the Facebook timeline.

In short, the more text, the less reach and the higher the CPC to still reach your target audience. Vice versa still applies: the less text, the better the reach to your target audience at a good CPC.

What are the expected new developments?

We think removing the 20% rule will have a positive effect, especially in the long run on how ads will again make a distinctive value. There are always going to be hefty discounters in between, overwhelming you with colors and text to get a message through as much as possible with a screaming effect. But in general, we have now become accustomed to subtlety in an ad and we do not expect this trend to be broken in the coming years.

It is also fair to say that the current media landscape has ensured that the perfect picture must always be shared. If you don't, chances are that your ad won't get enough people interested in it and it will have become obvious that it will not be successful.

Finally, we can add that today's potential customers have also become accustomed to a very clear picture of how an ad is presented. Within youtube, for this reason, they have also chosen to ensure that you cannot click away some ads, but always have to look out. The ad is of such good quality and short enough that the length of time you watch it does not become distracting. Facebook will probably have made a run-up in this new model to look at this image from a utopia as well, creating more real value in an ad