How long should your ad copy be? There are lots of opinions on this, but Meta has their own official recommendations.
Let’s discuss what those recommendations are and how much they matter…
Meta’s Recommendations
Under Best Practices, Meta says this:
Keep ad copy short: Primary text should span 1-3 lines at most.
And then, under “considerations for text in ads”…
Text in your ad may be truncated if it exceeds the character limitation. The recommended text length for most placements is 125 characters for the Primary text field…
What Should You Do?
This makes sense in theory. Because text can be truncated, it’s good practice to be sure that the most important text appear within the first 125 characters. So, yes, prioritize having some sort of engaging hook or CTA in those first few lines.
But that doesn’t mean that you need to follow a strict limit. Just because text can be hidden beyond 125 characters doesn’t mean you should avoid more than that at all costs.
My suggestion: Give Meta options. Luckily, you don’t need to commit to a single text format.
You can provide up to five primary text variations. Create them at varying lengths: Short, medium, and long. Let Meta sort it out.
Overall, beware of strict universal rules about things like text length. It may be a rule of thumb, but that doesn’t mean that long copy can’t work.