Facebook error message – this one is more than confusing
So I was recently uploading a facebook ad and got quite a remarkable error message. After a little troubleshooting, I think I might have found a solution.
The facebook ads error message I got was the following:
AdAccountNotEligibleForDofApi: Please add your ad account id 265,146,234 in the gk dof_text_api to enable Dof Api. (#2446231)
This is a duplicate of an existing advert so it didn’t make a lot of sense. The only thing I was changing was an image for the ad.
The image I was uploading was a PNG file – 7.8MB file size and aspect ratio of 1936 pixels wide and 2592 pixels high.
It turns out the error was coming from this feature in Facebook ads which allows you to dynamically crop images. Essentially you enable this setting and Facebook will crop the image based on the display format. It’s called ‘Dynamically Crop Per Person’.
So with this disabled, the advert saved OK. The only limitation was that it was a portrait image size which limits where it can be shown in the facebook feed and link Instagram feed adverts.
So I thought it perhaps might be the PNG file. So I uploaded a JPG in the same format but a smaller file size as it was optimised.
The jpg I uploaded was the same dimensions but 2.9MB.
That didn’t work. The Jpeg file also returned the same error.
The solution? Wasn’t what I wanted. I reformatted the advert in Photoshop to be 1500×1500 and it worked no problems.
The image I originally uploaded was taken on a typical mobile phone so I think if this issue is related to the ratio, and Facebooks own auto / dynamic image crop tool doesn’t work then that’s a bit of a shame. I say that as a lot of people use mobile phones for getting images for facebook ads, and few of them have photo editing skills.
So, no miraculous solution for this one – just a manual workaround. You can either:
- Leave the image in Portrait size and reduce the placements it will receive or
- Crop the image to square size and then upload it.
If you have an error that needs an extra set of eyes let me know below in the comments.
