Meta's updated Self-Serve Ad Terms and Commercial Terms take effect on October 30, 2026, and running ads after that date counts as accepting them. Four documents become two, a broader website crawling paragraph appears in both, and the sentence calling automated campaign features optional is gone. Here is what changed and what to check before the 30th.
Nothing in Ads Manager switches on or off on October 30. This is a contract change, not a product change, which is why it is easy to miss. It lands two days after product browsing is added to existing ads and four weeks before Black Friday.
What Meta announced
The official notice is a Business Help Center page on streamlining Meta's terms. From October 30, 2026, updated versions of the Commercial Terms and the Self-Serve Ad Terms take effect. The Product Catalog Terms move into the Commercial Terms, and the separate terms for generative ad creative move into the Self-Serve Ad Terms. Meta's stated reason is to reduce overlap between its agreements.
The current Self-Serve Ad Terms are dated August 22, 2025, and the current Commercial Terms March 6, 2024. Both pages now carry a banner linking to the new text. Meta began notifying business users in early October, including in Meta Business Suite, as reported by PPC Land.
What changed in the Self-Serve Ad Terms
The notice lists the merge, not the clause changes. Put the two versions side by side and these are the ones that touch how you run ads, paraphrased from Meta's own pages.
| Topic | Version dated Aug 22, 2025 | Version effective Oct 30, 2026 | What to do |
|---|---|---|---|
| Automated features | Campaign setup help, described as optional: you opt out of features on by default and opt in to the rest | Also formats, selects and generates creative; the sentence calling the features optional is gone | Keep checking per-ad settings yourself |
| Responsibility | You are responsible for the order, ad content, targeting and placements | The same, plus their review, approval or removal, even when Meta's automated features made or chose the creative | Review generated variants before launch |
| Generative creative | Separate supplemental terms | Inside the main terms: output may be wrong or unsuitable, the risk is yours, keep watermarks and authenticity metadata | Do not strip metadata from exported assets |
| Third-party tools | Not addressed | You are solely responsible for the acts or omissions of any software or service you use or authorise with the ad interfaces | Audit connected apps and system users |
| Results and metrics | No guarantee of reach or performance | No guarantee of delivery, targeting accuracy, reach, impressions or conversions; no warranty that any measurement or report is accurate | Keep an order count outside Ads Manager |
| Website crawling | Placing an order lets Meta crawl content on your domains, for uses including research and training | Automated collection from domains associated with your products, periodic pulls and test credentials; content may be used to train Meta products | Set your robots.txt position |
| Prepaid balance | Advertiser balance, no time limit stated | Service credits, usable for three years from purchase or longer where law requires | Spend down old prepaid balances |
The automated features row is the one to read twice. The terms do not make any feature mandatory, and the toggles in Ads Manager are product settings, not contract clauses. But the contract no longer promises you an opt-out, in the same quarter that placement controls left ad sets and product browsing arrives switched on.
The crawling clause, read carefully
This is the part drawing the coverage. The same paragraph appears in both new documents, and that matters because the Commercial Terms cover any business use of Meta: a Page, a catalog, Business Suite or measurement tools, not only ads.
The old Self-Serve Ad Terms already let Meta crawl advertisers' domains, for uses that included research and training. What is new is the reach: domains associated with your products or services, collection by automated software with periodic updates, and permission to create test credentials, which the terms do not define.
Meta disputes the broad reading. Spokesperson Andy Stone wrote on X on October 16 that there is no change to how Meta uses web crawlers and that the update is about accurate information on products for sale on third-party sites, as reported by PPC Land. A Meta spokesperson told Nieman Lab that site owners can still use robots.txt. Neither new document mentions robots.txt, and neither lets you accept the rest of the terms while declining this paragraph.
What robots.txt can and cannot do
Meta's Web Crawlers page, updated May 21, 2026, lists five user agents. Meta-ExternalAgent crawls for training foundation models or improving products by indexing content. Meta-ExternalAds crawls to improve advertising and other business products. Meta-WebIndexer feeds search results and citations in Meta's assistant. FacebookExternalHit builds link previews. Meta-ExternalFetcher fetches single links at a user's request.
The page says two of them may bypass robots.txt: FacebookExternalHit during security or integrity checks, and Meta-ExternalFetcher because a user asked for the page. For the other three, a disallow line is the method it gives.
For most stores the decision is about Meta-ExternalAgent. Leave FacebookExternalHit allowed, since your link previews depend on it. Be careful with Meta-ExternalAds: Meta ties it to advertising products, and neither the page nor the terms say what blocking it does to ads, catalog updates or website destinations, so test on one path before blocking it site-wide. Changes can take up to 24 hours, because Meta's crawlers may cache robots.txt that long.
A robots.txt rule is a preference Meta says it honours. It is not a carve-out from the contract you accept on October 30.
Generated creative and connected tools
With the separate generative terms folded in, the wording now sits in the main ad terms: the output can be wrong, incomplete or unsuitable, and the risk is yours, including whether it suits your order. An automated enhancement that rewrites a claim, changes a price shown in an image or crops out a disclaimer is your ad, not Meta's. If enhancements are on, check the generated variants in the ad preview before publishing; the Advantage+ creative guide covers which settings produce them. If your workflow re-exports generated assets through an editor or compressor, check that it keeps embedded metadata.
The new third-party line makes you solely responsible for what any software or service you use or authorise does through the ad interfaces. Agencies already answered for clients; this reaches scripts, rule engines, launch tools and anything with API access. In Business settings, review connected apps and system users, and remove the ones nobody uses.
What to do before October 30
1. Save dated PDF copies of both preview pages, so you know exactly what you accepted. 2. Decide your robots.txt line for Meta-ExternalAgent by October 29, given the 24-hour cache. Leave FacebookExternalHit alone and test before touching Meta-ExternalAds. 3. Audit connected apps and system users with ad account access. 4. Review automated creative variants in preview before they go live, on every ad where enhancements are on. 5. Keep an order count from your store or payment provider beside Ads Manager, because the new terms disclaim the accuracy of every metric. 6. After October 30, confirm your catalog feed still updates on schedule; the catalog ads guide covers what a stale feed costs.
Annotate October 28 and October 30 in any report you will still be reading in December. Agencies should also tell clients, since the terms let Meta hold an agency responsible for a client's breach.
If AdRiseLab is one of your connected tools, the third-party line applies to it like any other. It generates Meta ad creative from a product page, and the campaign, ad set and ads are created only after you confirm, so the review step the new terms put on you stays with you. It is Meta-only, and plans start at $39 a month; see creative generation.
Sources
Meta Business Help Center, streamlining Meta's Commercial Terms, Product Catalog Terms and Self-Serve Ad Terms. Meta Self-Serve Ad Terms, current version, effective August 22, 2025. Meta Self-Serve Ad Terms, updated version, effective October 30, 2026. Meta Commercial Terms, current version, effective March 6, 2024. Meta Commercial Terms, updated version, effective October 30, 2026. Meta for Developers, Meta Web Crawlers, updated May 21, 2026. PPC Land, Meta's new terms let it crawl business websites from Oct 30, October 16, 2026. Nieman Lab, Meta's new commercial terms and news sites, October 2026. Search Engine Journal, Meta's new terms expand crawling rights. The comparison table paraphrases Meta's own terms pages as read on October 17, 2026; Meta's statements on crawler behaviour are as reported, not part of the terms.
Related reading
Meta turns on product browsing in existing ads on October 28 is the previous change in this series. Meta Pixel vs Conversions API covers which signals come from your own site, and a Meta ads audit reads a connected account for where delivery, cost and results do not add up.