Meta Removes Manual Ad Placement Exclusions

Starting around August 25, 2026, Meta began rolling out an update that removes manual placement exclusions from Ads Manager, preventing you from turning off specific apps or surfaces at the ad set level. This matters because you can no longer completely opt out of low-performing or brand-unsafe placements, forcing you to find new ways to protect your ad spend.

What changed

• Meta removed your ability to manually exclude specific apps or surfaces at the ad set level.
• You are now forced to use value rules to adjust placement bids from +1,000% down to -90%.
• You can heavily discount a placement, but you can no longer completely switch it off.

Why it matters for your numbers

This update is a major shift for e-commerce brands that care about brand safety and strict placement-level ROI. In the past, if you noticed that certain surfaces like the Audience Network or specific mobile apps were driving low-converting junk traffic, you could simply uncheck them. That manual control is now gone.

Under the new system, Meta forces you to use value rules instead. While you can discount a placement's bid by up to 90 percent, you cannot set it to zero or turn it off completely. This means Meta's automated delivery algorithms will still allocate a portion of your budget to these surfaces.

From an attribution perspective, this is highly problematic. Forced placements can inflate your click metrics and view-through attributions without actually delivering real, bottom-line sales. If your budget is leaking into low-converting surfaces, your overall acquisition costs will rise, and Meta's self-reported numbers may try to mask this by claiming credit for low-quality touchpoints. This makes it incredibly difficult to maintain a clean acquisition funnel, as you are forced to pay for impressions on platforms that do not align with your customer acquisition strategy.

What I would do

• If you have strict ROI targets, your only remaining lever is designing creative that naturally filters out junk clicks.
• Set up value rules immediately to discount your bids on low-performing placements by the maximum allowed limit of -90%.
• Monitor your placement-level spend closely to see how much of your budget is still being allocated to surfaces you previously excluded.
• Adjust your creative strategies to ensure your ads appeal specifically to high-intent buyers, making them less likely to be clicked accidentally on mobile apps or games.

When the ad platforms take away your control over where your ads are shown, independent measurement becomes your only safeguard. At TrueROAS, we track what actually drives orders, server-side, independent of the ad platform's own numbers, so you can see exactly which campaigns are delivering real profit.

Source: PPC Land

If your numbers look off after this week, grab 20 minutes with me and we will look at your attribution together: Book a call with Rasmus.