Wow, who knew there were enough ‘not to do’s’ to have 3 entire posts dedicated to the topic!
There’s a reason we’re covering this topic in such great detail though - your Facebook ad image is so little, yet so incredibly crucial to the success of your ad.
We’ve covered a bunch of ‘not to do’s’ to this point, but today’s come straight from the source: Facebook’s advertising guidelines.
No Overt Nudity, Scare Tactics or Exploitation of Sensitive Issues
In theory, this makes perfect sense and is generally an easy guideline to follow. If you wouldn’t want a kid seeing it, it’s probably best to choose another image.
In practice however, it can be a bit trickier.
For instance, take a look at an image Facebook deems ‘appropriate’:
And here’s one they deem inappropriate:
In my mind, they’re both appropriate…in fact, if I had to choose I’d say the first one was slightly more ‘appropriate’. Alas, this is where it can be trial and error when it comes to choosing your images.
Images Can’t Portray Non-Existant Functionality
Translated, this simply means no fake video ‘play’ buttons, no close button, nothing that makes it look as your image is anything other than just an image.
Including a button with text in your image does appear to be okay however.
Acceptable:
Unacceptable:
Images Generated from Sponsored Stories Can’t Contain Text
Now this is a bit of a strange one. When doing a sponsored story, the image from your Facebook page is used to automatically populate the image.
And Facebook wants these images in particular, to look as realistic and natural as possible.
From Facebook:
“Images should depict real people, real things, and real life situations. Photos that appear authentic and closely resemble those posted by individuals trigger much deeper emotional responses than ads that appear photoshopped or contain large amounts of text. Therefore, stories that originate from Pages may not contain an image with text overlay.”
Images CAN Contain Infographics
(But why would you want them to?)
Facebook uses this as an example of an acceptable image:
Would you really want to shrink this infographic down and use it as your Facebook ad or sponsored story image? Anyone want to guess what the click through rate on that ad would be?
If you’re looking for some more guidance on what not to do when it comes to your Facebook ad images, be sure to check out part 1 and part 2 of our 3 part series!
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