Meta Is Starting to Remove Placement Exclusions From Ad Sets

Some advertisers are losing the placement checkboxes in their ad sets. The replacement is a value rule, which bids a placement down but cannot switch it off. The control that still does what the checkbox promised sits one level up, in account settings.

The notice appearing in Ads Manager states that excluding placements, platforms, devices and operating systems will no longer be available for ad sets. No date is attached and the rollout appears to be account by account. Treat it as reported rather than confirmed. Meta has published no announcement, and its Business Help Center pages still describe manual placement selection as available, so this is currently a change some advertisers can see and Meta has not documented.

A value rule changes what you pay. It does not remove a placement from the auction. PPC Land puts the maximum decrease at 90%, and only around seven placements are eligible for placement-level bid adjustment at all.

Our math: the exclusion being lost was probably never total. For eligible Sales and Leads campaigns, Meta offers an option allowing up to 5% of budget to reach each excluded placement, and Jon Loomer documents it as checked by default in his own account. That is per excluded placement rather than an overall cap. Where the option was left on, an exclusion was already leaking, and what replaces it leaks more.

The control that still does the job is one level up. Advertising Settings, then Account Controls, then Placement Controls. An account-level control applies across the whole account, keeps applying to campaigns built later with automated placements, and carries no 5% allowance. An exclusion that exists for brand reasons rather than performance reasons should have been living there all along.

Our read: the mechanism is a setting that changes underneath you, and the cost is that nobody was asked. Write down every ad-set exclusion you run and the reason for each, sorted into performance and brand, then move the brand ones up. Once the controls go, so does the record of what was decided and why. This is a Stage 1 problem, set out in Stage 1 of the audit.

Is a value rule the same as a placement exclusion? No. It reduces the bid for that placement, reportedly to a floor of minus 90%. The placement stays eligible to serve. A complete block requires account-level Placement Controls.

Sources: Jon Loomer, on the removal of ad-set placement controls, with parallel reporting from PPC Land, 25 August 2026. The minus 90% floor and the 5% allowance are figures reported by those outlets, not published by Meta. Last verified 20 September 2026.

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