The Facebook 20% Rule was 📝Facebook's former policy that ad creative would not be approved — or would be served at reduced reach — if text occupied more than 20 percent of an image, enforced via a 5×5 grid overlay and a public text-overlay measurement tool.
The rule was introduced to push advertisers toward less cluttered creative, on the platform's argument that low-text imagery performed better in feed. In practice it created friction at the operational layer of paid social: copy-heavy ads, infographic-style creative, and screenshots routinely tripped the threshold, and an entire cottage industry of overlay-testers and creative-rebalancing workflows grew up around staying inside the line. Categories like book covers, event posters, software screenshots, and product packaging were eventually exempted.
Meta has since quietly retired hard enforcement, leaving the recommendation in place as a best practice rather than a gating mechanism — ads with heavy text still tend to underperform in auctions, but they will run.