Meta Updates Placement Control Settings in Ads Manager: What Advertisers Need to Know

Meta is rolling out significant updates to how placement settings are managed in Meta Ads Manager. As Meta continues to enhance its automated delivery system, manual placement exclusions at the Ad Set level are being phased out for specific campaign objectives in favor of automated optimization.

Here is an accurate breakdown of what is changing and how you can maintain control over where and how your ads appear under the new system.

What’s Changing in Placement Settings?

You can no longer manually select or exclude placements at the Ad Set level for campaigns using the following performance objectives:

• Engagement

• Leads

• App Promotion

• Sales

For these objectives, Meta’s automated ad serving system takes over placement delivery to maximize performance across available formats.

Note: Campaigns using the Awareness or Traffic objectives are currently unaffected by this change; manual placement selection remains available for these objectives. To understand how objectives interact with budget and bid distribution, read our guide on Meta ad campaign optimization strategies.

How to Manage and Control Placements Under the New System

To ensure advertisers retain oversight over ad presentation and value priorities, Meta provides four key mechanisms within Ads Manager:

Customise Your Media for Each Placement

• New Creative Workflow: Multi-media ads and media customisation are part of a new creative workflow in Meta Ads Manager that allows you to upload multiple images and videos into a single ad.

• Maximising Reach & Placement Fit: Providing multiple media assets gives Meta's delivery system more creative options to display your ads where they are most likely to perform. Customising assets for specific audience behaviors and best practices on each placement helps your ad run across as many placements as possible.

• Granular Asset Control: For each asset, you can customise aspect ratios, text, URLs, and delivery settings. Meta’s delivery system then matches the right creative asset to the right placement.

• Placement Requirements & Warnings: At least one media asset is required for each placement. Your ads will not deliver in placements where the media assets are unsupported, and Ads Manager will show warning indicators when a different image/video, aspect ratio, or video length is required.

Placement Value Rules (Bid Adjustments)

Advertisers can set rules to adjust bids up or down for specific ad placements based on their relative value to business goals. 

Meta’s delivery system optimizes for outcomes based on these rules while respecting your relative bid adjustments.

Account-Level Placement Exclusions by Objective

Under Account Controls, advertisers using invoiced payment methods can still apply placement exclusions that affect all campaigns across an account.

Account-level exclusions are supported across all objectives (Awareness, Traffic, Engagement, Leads, App promotion, and Sales) for specific placements such as:

•   Audience Network (Native, Banner, Interstitial, Rewarded Videos)

•   Facebook Marketplace

•   Facebook Right Column

Partnership Ads & Advantage+ Placements

When running Partnership Ads with creators, brands, or businesses alongside Advantage+ placements, you retain ad-creation control to select specific creative/text and limit placements if necessary after selecting a post.

Key Takeaways for Marketers

• Prepare Diverse Creative Assets: Since automated delivery systems determine optimal placement, supplying a full suite of image and video aspect ratios (1:1, 9:16, 16:9) is essential to avoid delivery gaps.

• Leverage Placement Value Rules: If certain placements historically yield higher ROAS, use value rules to adjust bids up or down rather than attempting manual exclusions at the ad-set level.

• Upgrade Your Ad Account Infrastructure: As Meta shifts toward fully automated delivery systems, running campaigns on high-trust ad accounts ensures smoother budget pacing, higher spending limits, and early access to new feature rollouts. Scale your campaigns seamlessly with AGrowth's Premium Facebook Agency Accounts to maximize stability and ROAS.

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