Pictured above are Facebooks specs for banner ads that appear on their site. There is no wiggle room. your headline can be no longer than 25 characters (including spaces) and the body copy can be no longer than 135 characters (including spaces). No slang can be used. no writing “ur” instead of “your”. no excessive use of exclamation marks. No using ALL CAPS. No smoking. No swearin’. No spittin’. No cussin’.
Doubtless some ad idiot who has never actually written one of these damned things will wax lyrical in Adweek about the wonderful creative possibilities that surely result from such tight constraints. Let me fill you in. It’s a pain in the bum and dangerously limiting to advertisers. Some 28 year old geek probably came up with these constraints. Now i understand that Facebook has some skanky advertisers (and by skanky I mean American Apparel) but it’s a mistake to limit expression to this degree.
When you rely on advertising for your income and you make writing the ads harder than doing the Sunday New York Times crossword puzzle, you might be in trouble. And i am really good at doing the NYT crossword puzzle. And advertising. I like to think.
