Meta hasn’t removed manual control over campaign management (yet), but it keeps hiding it further away: automation is switched on by default, and manual settings are something you have to go looking for. Those of us who manage campaigns every day notice this less in the big product announcements than in the details: a box that comes pre-ticked, an image selected by default, targeting the algorithm treats as a mere suggestion…
This post isn’t about whether Advantage+ works. It does, and it works well for many accounts; we use it regularly with some of our clients. It’s about how much manual control you really still have, where it’s worth applying, and some examples from real experience where automation doesn’t always work in your favour.
The 2025 and 2026 changes
The underlying shift is simple: Advantage+ is no longer a product you can choose; it has become the starting point for Meta campaigns. These are the options we notice most day to day:
- Advantage+ by default: Sales, App and Leads campaigns are created with Advantage+ switched on, and in early 2026 Meta merged manual and automated campaign creation into a single flow. Manual set-up is still there, but it is no longer the default.
- Detailed targeting is a suggestion: With Advantage+ Audience, the interests and demographics you set determine where delivery starts, but the system can go beyond them if it predicts better performance.
- Fewer targeting options: Detailed targeting exclusions disappeared in January 2025, and since mid-2025 Meta has been grouping niche interests into broader categories.
- Excluded placements that aren’t fully excluded: In Sales and Leads campaigns, excluding a placement brings up a pre-ticked box that lets Meta spend up to 5% of the budget on each excluded placement. It applies per placement, not in total: with four exclusions, up to 20% of the budget can go to places you didn’t want to be.
Silent changes
The biggest challenge isn’t the changes Meta announces, but the ones it applies without warning to settings you had already configured.
The clearest risk comes with restructures. When you move or duplicate ad sets between campaigns, Meta can reactivate creative enhancements that had been switched off, such as “Related media”. The result can be live ads using images or videos from the account library that were not part of the approved creative.
This is platform behaviour, not an upload error, and as of late 2026 there is no account-level setting that reliably prevents it.
The takeaway applies to any account: duplicating or moving is no longer copying. A structural change can reset settings to their defaults, and Meta’s default is almost always “on”. The same goes for account settings, such as testing new creative features or applying recommendations automatically, which can switch themselves back on after a platform update.
This matters especially for clients who cannot afford any deviation from what was approved. In these cases, we recommend a thorough review of campaigns after any change to make sure everything is correct.
Controls still in your hands
You have more control than it seems, but it’s important to know which controls are firm, which are only a suggestion and which you lose if you don’t keep an eye on them. Here are some examples:
| Control | How much it counts | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Location | Firm | Limit to the client’s actual markets, never the whole country out of habit |
| Minimum age and language | Firm | Always set them explicitly |
| Custom audience exclusions | Firm | Exclude current customers, recent leads and employees |
| Account-level placements | Firm | Block Audience Network, Marketplace or the right column in the account settings, which override any campaign |
| Ad set-level placements | Partial | Exclude and untick the 5% box every time an ad set is set up |
| Optimisation event and bidding | Firm | Optimise for the event that matters to the business and consider cost caps |
| Advantage+ creative enhancements | Firm, if you check | Switch them all off by default and audit them after every structural change |
| Interests and demographics | Suggestion | Use them as a starting signal, not a filter |
| Manual targeting (Original Audiences) | Available | Keep it for tightly defined audiences; it is mandatory for special ad categories |
Account-level blocking is the cleanest way to truly remove a placement: it also applies to campaigns created with Advantage+ and has no 5% box.
Beyond the controls: conversion signal and creative
The controls set the boundaries, but within them it’s the algorithm that decides who sees the ad. What you can control is what it learns from: what counts as a conversion and what message people see. That’s where campaigns are won or lost today.
- The conversion signal. Meta optimises towards whatever you tell it success looks like, so that event has to be the right one. In lead generation, that means separating events properly (resource download, webinar registration, contact form) and optimising each campaign for its own event, not a generic one. If we need to optimise temporarily for a proxy event until tracking is complete, we document it in the report and replace it as soon as possible.
- Creative as targeting. When interests are only a suggestion, the message does the filtering. An ad that speaks to the problems, language and priorities of a specific profile self-selects: people outside the audience don’t click, and the algorithm learns from that. That’s why the volume and variety of creatives, and each one speaking clearly to its audience, now matter more than fine-tuning a list of interests.
When manual control pays off
For B2C or eCommerce clients with good data volumes, letting Advantage+ do its job is usually the most effective option. In B2B and lead generation the maths is different: small audiences, long sales cycles and few conversion events, exactly what the algorithm handles worst. On top of that, in B2B, who sees the ads and where the brand appears carries its own weight: an ad shown to an irrelevant profile or in an unsuitable placement affects the brand, not just performance. That’s where we still advocate manual control, with three lessons:
- First, classify the audience properly before you build. Meta doesn’t offer reliable company-level targeting, so ABM (Account-Based Marketing) activity has to rely on lists of specific accounts or contacts. Audiences based on job title or ideal customer profile work differently, even if they come from the same data tool: they are broader, cost differently and their results are read differently. So it’s worth identifying each audience before assigning it to a campaign, as it’s easy for one to end up in the wrong place. What matters isn’t where the audience comes from, but what type of audience it is.
- Second, explain customer lists before you’re asked. It’s common for someone on the client’s team to see their own ads on their personal Instagram or Facebook profile and assume the targeting is wrong. It isn’t: Meta matches contact lists against personal profiles, so anyone on the list will see the ad. To avoid confusion, it’s worth explaining this behaviour when launching any list-based campaign and adding a list of the client’s employee contacts as an exclusion, so the internal team doesn’t use up impressions or skew results.
- Third, test automation in a controlled way. Rather than switching on Advantage+ Audience across the whole account or refusing it outright, we switch it on in a single ad set, agreed with the client, and compare it with the rest. If it works, it’s scaled up based on the data. If not, the damage is contained.
Outside B2B, manual control still makes sense in regulated sectors, special ad categories and awareness campaigns where controlling frequency and placements matters more than cost per result.
Audit routine
If Meta can change settings without warning, the best approach is to review campaign settings methodically. Here’s a recommended checklist after any structural change:
- Account settings: testing new creative features, automatic adjustments and automatically applying recommendations, all switched off.
- Placements: account-level blocks in place and, in every ad set with exclusions, the 5% box unticked.
- Audiences: Advantage+ Audience and targeting expansion in the agreed state, ad set by ad set.
- Creative enhancements: ad-by-ad review, paying particular attention to Related media, text optimised per person and automatic music. Take care when copying and pasting ads: every creative enhancement box needs a full manual review.
- Conversion event: each campaign optimising for the right event.
- Reporting: breakdown by placement to spot spend where there shouldn’t be any.
It may not be the most visible part of campaign management, but it’s what ensures campaigns run as planned: with the messages, images and placements that were approved.
Ultimately, the question is no longer manual or automated. It’s what you decide, what Meta decides and how you check that each is doing its part. Advantage+ can be a strong ally, but its defaults are designed to give Meta more freedom to spend, not to protect your budget or campaign settings. Understanding that difference is, today, a large part of the job in Paid Social.
