Meta Removed Placement Controls From Ad Sets: What Changed and What to Do Now

For years, one of the first things many media buyers did when building an ad set was open the Placements section and untick Audience Network, the right column, or Messenger. That habit is ending. This guide explains exactly what Meta is removing, what you can still control, when you should actually use those controls, and how to change your creative so automatic placements work for you instead of against you.

What exactly did Meta remove?

Advertisers now see a notice in the Placements section of the ad set saying that excluding placements, platforms, devices and operating systems will no longer be available. Jon Loomer, who documented the change on August 20, 2026, breaks it into four things you can no longer do at the ad set level¹:

1. Remove individual placements, such as Audience Network, Facebook right column or Messenger inbox.
2. Remove a whole platform, for example running only on Instagram and not on Facebook.
3. Limit ads to mobile only or desktop only.
4. Limit ads to certain operating systems, such as iOS only.

According to reporting by PPC Land, advertisers started noticing on August 25, 2026 that the placement control had vanished from Ads Manager, even though Meta's Help Center pages still described it as available². There was no big launch announcement. Many advertisers only found out when they went looking for the setting and it was gone.

Which campaigns are affected?

Based on the information available so far, the change applies to campaigns with the Sales and Leads objectives. Other objectives, such as Awareness, Traffic and Engagement, keep full placement control¹. Loomer also reports that the rollout started as a test, that sensitive verticals (likely special ad categories) are excluded for now, and that it is tied to accounts with Meta's newer multimedia ad creation workflow. Treat those details as early reporting rather than official policy until Meta documents them. If you still see the old controls, you may simply not be in the rollout yet.

This did not come out of nowhere: the timeline

Meta has been steering advertisers toward automatic placements for years. PPC Land lays out the recent steps²:

Each step pushed the same way: less manual control, more decisions made by Meta's delivery system. If you have read our guide to how Meta's Andromeda system groups similar ads, the logic will look familiar. Meta wants a large pool of ads and placements to choose from, and it wants to choose per person, per moment.

Why is Meta removing placement controls?

Meta's stated reason is performance. Its documentation says that "ad sets using Advantage+ placements delivered an 11.7% lower cost per action (CPA) on average compared to ad sets using manual placement settings"².

The reasoning behind that number is simple. When you remove placements, you remove cheaper impressions from the pool Meta can buy for you. The system can no longer shift budget to wherever your next conversion is cheapest right now. For a campaign optimising for purchases or leads, that usually means paying more per result.

There is a fair counterpoint. An average across all advertisers hides the cases where one placement really does produce junk, and critics point out that other ad platforms have been moving the other way and adding exclusion options². That is exactly why the replacement tools below still matter.

What you can still control

1. Value rules: lower or raise bids by placement

Value rules let you tell Meta that some impressions are worth more or less to you. For placements, you can adjust bids by placement, by device (mobile or desktop) and by mobile operating system¹.

• The adjustment range runs from +1,000% to -90%². You can make a placement very expensive for the system to use, but you cannot make it impossible. PPC Land's summary: "exclusion becomes suppression."
• At the time of writing only seven placements are eligible for placement value rules, including Audience Network. More are expected¹.
• There is no platform-level value rule yet. To lean away from Facebook or Instagram as a whole, you adjust the individual placements within that platform.

2. Account-level placement controls

If there are placements your business must never appear on, for brand safety or compliance reasons, you can still block them for the entire ad account. In Advertising Settings, open Account Controls, then Placement Controls, turn on the option that your business can only advertise on specific placements, and untick the ones you want removed¹. This applies to every campaign in the account, so use it for real hard limits, not for everyday optimisation.

3. Use a different objective where placement control genuinely matters

Because the change is limited to Sales and Leads, campaigns with other objectives keep full placement control. That is not a workaround for purchase campaigns, since switching objective changes what Meta optimises for. But for awareness or video view campaigns where you have a specific placement plan, you still have the old controls.

When should you actually use value rules on placements?

Most advertisers who were excluding placements did not need to. Loomer makes this point directly: the times you truly need placement control are almost always when Meta can get cheap, low-quality actions from a placement¹. The classic cases:

• Optimising for link clicks or landing page views. Audience Network can deliver lots of cheap clicks that never turn into anything.
• Optimising for ThruPlays. Audience Network rewarded video pays app users in virtual currency to watch, which inflates view counts.

If you optimise for purchases or purchase value, placement-driven junk is much less likely, because a placement cannot fake a purchase. In that case the better question is not "which placement should I block?" but "why is my creative weak on that placement?" Use the checklist below before adding any value rule.

A simple placement audit (15 minutes)

1. In Ads Manager, open your Sales campaign and choose Breakdown → By delivery → Placement.
2. Look at the last 14 to 30 days, not the last 3. Small placements are noisy.
3. For each placement, compare cost per purchase and purchase ROAS against the campaign average. Ignore CTR and CPC for this decision.
4. Only flag a placement if it has meaningful spend and is clearly worse on cost per purchase over that longer window.
5. For a flagged placement, first check the creative on it. Is the text cropped? Is the product hidden under the Reels buttons? Is a landscape video shrunk into a tiny box? Fix that before touching bids.
6. If the placement is still clearly worse after the creative fix, add a value rule that lowers the bid, starting at -30% to -50% rather than jumping to -90%, and check again after a week.

The real impact: your creative has to work everywhere

Here is the part most coverage misses. When you could untick placements, you could also hide weak creative. If your video only looked good in the 4:5 feed, you ran it in the feed only. That option is going away. From now on, the same ad set can show your ad in Facebook Feed, Instagram Feed, Stories, Reels, Explore and more, and each surface frames it differently.

An ad that looks polished in a 4:5 feed slot can look broken as a 9:16 Reel: the headline sits under the caption, the product is covered by the like and share buttons, and the first two seconds are a letterboxed landscape clip. Meta will still buy those impressions for you if they are cheap. You pay for them, and they do not convert.

Creative checklist for automatic placements

• Supply native aspect ratios. Provide a 9:16 version for Stories and Reels and a 4:5 or 1:1 version for feeds, using placement asset customisation, rather than letting Meta crop one file.
• Respect the safe zones. On 9:16 placements, keep text, faces and the product away from the top strip (profile and sponsored label) and the bottom band (caption, CTA and buttons). Leave the right edge clear of important details too.
• Make the first frame work without sound. Many placements autoplay muted. The opening frame should explain the offer or problem on its own.
• Check every placement preview before publishing. Ads Manager's preview shows how each placement will look. Five minutes here saves days of wasted spend.
• Build variety, not near-copies. Under Andromeda, near-identical ads get grouped and compete with each other. Different formats for different placements are one of the easiest ways to create real variety. See why Facebook spends all your budget on one ad.

Why this links to Reels performance

As placement control goes, more of your spend will naturally flow to vertical video surfaces, because that is where a lot of inventory is. If your account has little 9:16-native creative, now is the time to build it. Our breakdown of Reels ads vs Feed ads covers what changes between the two formats, and why short videos often win on Reels covers length.

What about brand safety?

If you had excluded placements because of where your ads might appear next to other content, value rules are the wrong tool. A -90% bid still allows some delivery. For true brand-safety requirements, use the account-level placement controls described above, together with Meta's brand safety and suitability settings in Business Settings, such as block lists and inventory filters, which operate separately from ad set placements. Document which placements you block at the account level and why, so the decision is reviewed deliberately rather than left in place forever.

What to do this week

1. List every live Sales and Leads ad set that uses manual placements. When the change reaches your account, those settings will not carry over the way you expect.
2. Run the 15-minute placement audit on your biggest campaigns so you know which placements actually underperform on cost per purchase.
3. Decide your hard blocks (brand safety, compliance) and move them to account-level placement controls.
4. Plan value rules only for proven problem placements, starting with moderate bid reductions.
5. Fill the creative gaps. For each winning ad, make sure you have a 9:16 version and a feed version that both respect safe zones.
6. Watch the placement breakdown for two weeks after the switch, and judge on cost per purchase, not CPM.

FAQ

Did Meta remove manual placements completely?

Not for every campaign. Reporting so far says the change affects ad set level placement, platform, device and operating system exclusions in Sales and Leads campaigns. Other objectives keep full placement control, and account-level placement controls are still available.

How do I exclude Audience Network from Meta ads now?

In an affected Sales or Leads ad set, add a value rule that lowers your bid for Audience Network, down to a maximum reduction of 90%. To block it completely for every campaign, use Account Controls, then Placement Controls, in your ad account's Advertising Settings.

What are Meta value rules?

Value rules let you raise or lower how much Meta bids for certain people, placements, devices or operating systems. For placements, adjustments range from plus 1,000% to minus 90%, so you can make a placement less attractive but you cannot fully turn it off.

Why did Meta remove placement exclusions?

Meta says ad sets using Advantage+ placements delivered an 11.7% lower cost per action on average than ad sets with manual placements. Giving the system every placement lets it buy the cheapest conversions available at any moment.

Will automatic placements hurt my ROAS?

For purchase-optimised campaigns, usually not, because a placement cannot fake a purchase. The bigger risk is creative that looks broken on some placements. Supply native 9:16 and feed versions and keep key content inside the safe zones.

Does this change affect Traffic or Awareness campaigns?

Based on current reporting, no. The removal applies to Sales and Leads objectives, and other objectives keep their placement controls. Check your own Ads Manager, since Meta rolls changes out gradually.

References

1. Jon Loomer — Meta Is Removing Placement Controls From Ad Sets (Aug 20, 2026, updated Aug 24, 2026)
2. PPC Land — Meta removes ad placement controls as bid cuts get capped at 90%
3. Engineering at Meta — Meta Andromeda: next-gen personalized ads retrieval engine