What Actually Changes on November 20

The new Commercial Terms were first due on October 30. After complaints from advertisers and publishers, Meta moved the date to November 20 and changed none of the wording, according to Slate's reporting on November 2, 2026. Nothing gets signed. If your business keeps using Meta's products after that date, you have accepted the terms. The only way to decline is to stop using them.

The new section is called AI Features. It says Meta may use AI to optimize, enhance or create ad content, and that these features may make mistakes. Then it puts the risk on you: the advertiser is solely responsible for the AI features and any content they produce, including judging whether that content is fit to run. The older generative AI terms said advertisers could use the tools at their discretion. That condition is gone.

There is also a clause about your website. The terms allow Meta's software to access an advertiser's website and pull updates from it, to build and maintain its advertising products. You can state your preferences in your robots.txt file, but the terms do not commit Meta to honoring them. As written, the clause reaches any business using Meta's business tools, even one that only manages a Page and never buys an ad.

The Edits Are Already Running

This is not hypothetical. Meta's own Advantage+ help pages say some enhancements may be switched on by default: headlines rewritten, copy translated, images and carousels built from your own photos, and summaries of your selling points written for you. In October, a bookshop in the US found an AI generated illustration inside an ad its own staff had designed, added after an account update opted the business in. The shop turned every AI feature off. US agencies told Slate they have pulled live ads to clean out changes like these.

Product browsing followed the same pattern. On October 28 it switched on inside ads that were already running, for every advertiser who had not opted out first, and we wrote about that change when it landed. Meta's own numbers on it: in a test run in August 2026 across about 117,700 advertisers, product browsing produced 3 percent more conversions on average. Defaults, in other words, are not always bad for results. They are just not always your decision.

The same default logic now reaches your images. Since October 6, Meta can turn a static image you upload into a video variant inside Advantage+ creative, and its image tools can rebuild your photos into new compositions. Some of those variants will be fine. Some will show your product in a way you would never have approved. Under the old terms, you might have argued about that. Under the new ones, there is nothing to argue: the business that ran the ad owns the output.

One More Date Worth Marking

November 12 brings a quieter change with a loud effect on your reports. Meta's Pixel will start measuring some conversions on the customer's device, a setting that is on by default for accounts already sending events, according to PPC Land's report on the Events Manager change. Reported conversions can rise across every ad at once, with no change to your creative at all. If your numbers jump on November 12, check the calendar before you credit a new headline.

Neither change is a reason to stop advertising. Both are reasons to know exactly what is running under your business name, and what your reports are measuring, before someone else asks you about either one.

The Fifteen Minute Check

None of this requires panic, and none of it requires turning everything off. It requires knowing what is on. Before November 20, open Ads Manager and do this once:

• Open each live ad and check its Advantage+ Creative settings. Read anything Meta has rewritten, translated or generated as if a stranger wrote it, because one did
• Check the account level defaults in your ad account settings, under creative features, so new ads do not inherit surprises
• Check product browsing in each ad's Advantage+ Creative and destination settings, and decide per ad whether the in app page helps or hurts
• Repeat the check after you duplicate an ad or swap creative, because either action can switch enhancements back on
• Keep a screenshot of anything you did not approve. If an AI edit ever misstates a price or a promise, that record is your protection

Fifteen minutes, once. Then a shorter repeat whenever you launch something new. That is the whole job.

How We Handle This on Client Accounts

On the accounts we manage, every AI variant gets read by a person before it runs, the same way every ad did before these tools existed. That habit is a large part of why the results hold up. When we rebuilt a local tree service's campaigns, the cost per lead fell from $120.25 to $45.02, a 63 percent cut, and it came from people choosing what ran, not from defaults choosing for them.

You do not need an agency to do the November 20 check. You need a quarter of an hour and a simple rule: nothing publishes in your name unread. If you would like a second set of eyes on the account before the terms land, the call below is there whenever you are ready.