Facebook hates type designers

Ray Larabie

Facebook has a rule for ad images: no more that 20% of the image can be text. As a type designer, there's mot much imagery I can post that Facebook wouldn't consider as more than 20% text. I suppose I could post pictures of kittens now and then but I can't show images of what I've made, what I'm working on or what my fonts have been used for. When setting up promotions for images, there's an option to appeal the rejection but I've tried and failed every time. I've complained many times and only once received a response. They recommended posting images with less than 20% text. Not so helpful. I imagine sign painters, logo designers and calligraphers probably have the same problem. I have an ad budget I'd like to use for Facebook ads. I buy ads for my non-font ventures and I find they're very effective.

Has anyone here encountered this problem? Heard any responses from Facebook? Any tricks to get around this?

SiDaniels

As I recall Jan Middendorp has complained about this on FB and may have had a reply from https://www.facebook.com/scottboms

Chris Lozos

I have had this exact cycle of events! Once, when  I asked them what image should I post, someone replied "Show your product"

Michał Jarociński

I always write a request to review my add and they always, sooner or later, publish it. It is annoying, I know. It looks like noone is reading your arguments. They are all bots!

Ramiro Espinoza

Many of my type releases adds have been rejected in the past and but some managed to evade the rule. What I find more disturbing is the fraude of Facebook click farms. When you put some money in promoting a banner quite frequently, beside some legitimate clicks, you start getting clicks from teens with profiles with no relation whatsoever to the world of design or typography. They always come at the end of the day when there is still some money in the pot. So this is the fraudulent Facebook scheme: the money you put will be always spent because if not enough people clicked, their click monkeys will come to take it. 

Ofir Shavit

Use the add's image as a target audience eye catcher, that leads to the sale description outside the image.
The 20% rule is permitting text at 1/5 of the add area, while gigantic text is normally detected as a shape and can pass the bots.

So, for example if you like to market a new font, you can split the image horizontally to 5 (invisible) rows, use the bottom fifth row for a text bullet like: "Fugibuji - a new font by me" and the upper 4 fifths for an extreme closeup on your font's name, some typographic characteristic of your typeface or simply the word "sex"

These worked for me once...

Chris Lozos

If I am paying for an ad of my product, I should not have to trick the bot to get it approved.

Jasper de Waard

@Ramiro Espinoza I looked into this. The click farms are not run by facebook. That would ruin their own business model. They are companies you can hire to get more likes or followers on your own facebook page. However, fb has a detection algorythm to prevent such activities, which the clickfarms evade by liking random stuff, so as to seem like a normal person to the algorythm. So ironically, type ads only get fake likes, because fb wants to prevent fake likes from occuring.

Jasper de Waard

Chris Lozos said:

If I am paying for an ad of my product, I should not have to trick the bot to get it approved.

True, but what you gonna do?

Chris Lozos

I quit paying, Jasper.

SiDaniels

Chris, how will Cambridge Analytica learn about your fonts then? ;-)

Chris Lozos

Si, they already hate me because of my Flickr page ;-)

Thomas Phinney

FontLab has certainly run into this problem.