In this article you'll learn about:

Ad copy is just a fancy word for the text that coincides with your ad creatives (your images and videos). This means your primary text and your ad headline. Many people overlook ad copy because they believe that the visual aspect is the most important part of the advertisement. We aren’t going to debate which part is more important because there’s lots of good data to back either argument, but nonetheless ad copy matters!

Your ad copy supplements your ad creative. This means that many customers think about them as interconnected. Sometimes an ad works great with one creative paired with one version of ad copy, but that does not necessarily mean that the creative will perform well with other ad copy variants. This is why testing is important, but we get into this in another article (if you want to learn how to test, click here!).

There are things that you can and cannot say on Facebook that might get you either banned or cause Facebook to hold back on displaying your ad to more people. Obviously, you don’t want your ads to get rejected, because then they won’t run. If it happens too many times, Facebook might even temporarily (or permanently) ban your entire account. There really isn't a "list" of words that will get you instantly banned, but here's the general rule: if there is any way that a word could be misconstrued to mean something that might be slightly inappropriate, don't use it! It's better to be safe, than to risk getting banned.

Facebook also does not like ALL CAPS! They’ll almost always reject ads that abuse the use of all caps (i.e. using capital letters for words that are not acronyms). So, you can say “NASA” but you can’t say “CLICK HERE TO BUY NOW FOR 100% OFF”.

Facebook also does not like URLs inside of your ad copy. This is to prevent abuse from scammers who may put a website URL in the ad copy, but the link in the “Shop Now” button is actually something entirely different, misleading customers. So, to be safe, just don’t put links in your ad copy or headlines, instead only put your URL directly into the landing page field.

An ad getting rejected is cut and dry most of the time, you say a word/phrase that’s on the ban list and...well...your ad gets rejected or you get banned. Sometimes Facebook makes mistakes and accidentally rejects an ad that is not against their policies, so you need to always be prepared to appeal Facebook’s decision. With Preflect, we automatically make those appeals for you, so you don’t have to worry about it!

An even larger problem is writing ad copy that won’t necessarily get banned or rejected, but it’s not at a quality level that Facebook favors. This includes ad copy that has grammatical errors, incorrect spacing, is excessively long (over 250 characters), or misrepresents your company and/or products.

Also, using the line "Buy Now, Pay Later" or something similar in the ad copy is considered high risk by Facebook and will usually lead to delivery errors so it's best not to use it.

Most of those are pretty straightforward, but let’s talk about what it means to misrepresent your brand or products. I’ll give an example:

If you run an ad that promotes a buy 2 get 1 free deal, but you aren’t actually running this promotion on your site, that’s a misrepresentation.

Now, it’s hard to tell whether or not Facebook will notice. Sometimes it requires someone to complain for your ads account to get flagged, but sometimes it doesn’t. The moral of the story is: it’s not worth it. If Facebook catches you, they’ll ban you and if they suspect you of possibly doing something against their policies they’ll limit the exposure that your ad receives. Another reason why your exposure might get limited is because of negative comments on your ad. Facebook wants to promote content that their users enjoy, so if people are not happy with your brand and your content, Facebook will stop promoting the ad.

Now that you know what you shouldn’t do, let’s talk about what you should do.

The term “good” is wildly subjective. However, as long as you follow the rules on what not to do, you’re already on your way to writing what Facebook considers to be “good” ad copy.

One thing that Preflect believes is important, is to keep your ad copy short. You should write no more than 125 characters for your primary body text and 40 characters for your headlines. While you can write more than this in a Facebook ad, this is the maximum amount of text you can write that will be guaranteed to be seen in every ad placement without someone having to click the “read more” button, which most people don’t click. If you want to increase the odds that most of the people who view your ad read your copy, keep it brief!

Having good ad copy is important because it will get more engagement, likes, reposts, positive comments, and fewer complaints. This will lead to Facebook looking more favorably on your ads and your entire ads account, giving you more exposure on their ads platform. Essentially, Facebook punishes bad ad copy, but rewards good ad copy with cheaper ad costs, more exposure, and better traffic.

It doesn’t matter what your brand is, what you sell or who you sell it to. Every brand has at least one unique selling proposition. So what is a unique selling proposition (or USP for short)? A USP is a unique attribute that sets you apart from your competitors. It should describe one or more of the following:

Example #1

Unique selling propositions:

Ad Copy: “Tired of always going to the store to buy toothpaste? Try our organic toothpaste subscription, save big, and feel fresh!”

Example #2

Unique selling propositions:

Ad Copy: “We’ve reinvented the way denim jeans are made. Try the first ever pair of jeans that feels so soft and comfortable that some of our customers even sleep in them.”

Example #3

Unique selling propositions:

Ad Copy: “Not all affordable furniture has to feel like it’s made out of cardboard. Try the only affordable furniture brand that sources all its pieces right here in the USA.”

Sometimes, writing an ad copy that exemplifies your USPs is easier said than done when you’re trying to make it look good, sound good, and stay within Preflect’s recommended character limits. For some merchants, this comes super easy, especially if you sell a totally new product to the market, but for some merchants, it can be quite difficult. The best advice we have about this is to sit down and write as many USPs as you can possibly think of in 30 minutes.

Say that you can come up with 3, then go ahead and write 10 different copy variations for each of those USPs. That’s 30 ad copy variations! Which one’s will perform well? Who knows. The only way to find out is to set up a test. Click here to read our article about testing!