Meta ad rejections
Facebook ad rejected for too much text in the image
Meta retired the hard 20% rule, so this rarely appears as a clean rejection now. What persists is delivery suppression: heavy text overlay quietly costs reach and raises cost per result. When it does surface as a flag, it usually arrives alongside another policy.
What Meta’s notice says
What triggers it
- 01Dense text overlay, particularly across the top third of the creative
- 02Screenshots used as ad creative, which are mostly text by nature
- 03Logos with heavy wordmarks repeated across the image
- 04Text baked into a video thumbnail
Before and after
A creative with a full paragraph of offer detail overlaid.
A headline of five words or fewer on the image, with detail moved to primary text.
Reach usually improves whether or not a flag was ever raised.
How to fix it
- –Move detail out of the image and into the primary text, where there is no penalty.
- –Keep on-image text to a short headline.
- –Stop using screenshots as primary creative. Rebuild the point as a designed frame.
- –If reach dropped without a rejection, suspect this before you suspect the audience.
Not caught by a copy scan
Preflight reads copy, not pixels, so it cannot assess your creative. This one needs a human eye or a design check.
Policy Servo does not attempt an automatic rewrite for this category. A rewrite cannot fix it, so it goes to a human instead.
Scan your ad copy free →Questions
Is the 20% rule still enforced?
Not as a hard rejection. Meta removed it. Delivery effects from heavy text overlay are still real.
How do I check my creative now?
The old text overlay tool is retired. Judge it by eye, and compare delivery between a text-heavy and a clean version.
Other rejection reasons
Personal attributes
personal attributes
Misleading claims
misleading
Prohibited content
prohibited content
Restricted category
special ad category
Low quality or clickbait
low quality
Engagement bait
engagement bait
Landing page problem
landing page
Circumventing systems
circumventing systems
Brand usage
Facebook brand
No clear reason
ad policy violation