If you’ve logged into Meta Ads Manager recently and noticed things look a little different, you’re not imagining it.
Meta has rolled out its most significant structural change to ad creation in years, affecting every campaign type across the platform.
Here’s what’s changed, what hasn’t, and what it means for how you build and approve ads going forward.
What’s Actually Changed: Uploaded Media & Format Display
The old workflow was straightforward but rigid:
Choose your campaign objective > Select your ad format upfront (Single Image, Video, Carousel, Flexible, or Collection) > Upload creative for that specific format > Repeat for every placement.
The problem? Format and creative were tightly linked, meaning each placement often needed separate assets.
The new workflow decouples this entirely:
- Choose your campaign objective
- Select Single Image/Video or Carousel (Flexible and standalone Collection formats have been removed from Ad Setup)
- Upload all assets into a new “Uploaded Media” pool; up to 10 assets per ad
- Format Display Options: product tiles, link tiles, and collection layouts.
- Meta’s AI then automatically assembles the best version for each placement and user.
The result is one asset pool that adapts across all placements; Feed, Reels, Stories and more; rather than manually building separate creatives for each.
If you’re thinking about what this means for how AI is reshaping advertising more broadly, our take on agentic commerce and the new rules of AI advertising is worth a read.
Can You Still Upload Creative Manually? Yes.
This is the most important thing to understand: manual creative upload is NOT being removed. It is being re-framed.
What stays the same
- Manual upload via Ads Manager ad step still works
- Single Image/Video and Carousel remain as format choices
- Bulk upload and API workflows are unchanged
- You still choose exactly which assets go into each ad
What has actually changed
- Upload and format selection are now separated into two distinct steps
- Assets go into the ‘Uploaded Media’ pool first, then you set display options
- ‘Flexible’ and the old standalone ‘Collection’ format options are gone from Ad Setup
- Format layout is now configured in ‘Format Display Options’
Who’s Affected and When?
These changes apply account-wide; not just to conversion campaigns. However, the impact varies by objective type:
- Website Conversion / Sales: Full Uploaded Media + Format Display rollout is live now
- Lead Generation: Conversion-style creative logic now applies to some accounts
- Traffic / Engagement: New format display options visible; Flexible removed (Rolling out Q2 2026).
- App Installs: New asset upload flow with more creative automation (Rolling out Q2 2026).
- Awareness / Reach: UI changes are visible but have less impact on ad assembly logic (Later in 2026).
What About Ad Previews and Approvals?
Preview links are not going away, but the conditions for accessing them have changed, which has real implications for approval workflows.
The key limitation: shareable preview links are only available after publishing. They are not accessible at the draft stage, meaning approvals can no longer happen via pre-launch links.
The recommended approval flow going forward:
- Step 1: Share static mockups for pre-build approval
- Step 2: Record a Loom from the Ads Manager preview panel
- Step 3: Publish at a token/minimal budget
- Step 4: Share the live Meta-hosted preview link
- Step 5: Scale after sign-off
What This Means for Your Creative Strategy
The shift to Uploaded Media and Format Display is more than a UI change; it’s Meta pushing advertisers toward a more AI-driven, asset-pool approach.
Here’s how to get ahead of it:
Creative structure
- Supply multiple aspect ratios per campaign: 1:1, 4:5, and 9:16 as a minimum
- For prospecting campaigns, use a broad asset pool with flexible Format Display settings
- For remarketing, map tighter assets to specific URLs and product tiles
- Exclude mismatched placements where vertical-only assets would appear in horizontal contexts
Testing & measurement
- Run before/after tests comparing old structure vs new Uploaded Media setup
- Normalise KPIs (CPA, ROAS, CPL) across campaign types to account for any performance shifts
- Set up incrementality tests to validate Meta’s AI automation decisions
- Keep your team across any changes to attribution metrics
If you’re revisiting your Meta approach alongside this, here is our guide to scaling Meta ads in FY26.
The Bottom Line
Meta’s 2026 ad setup update is the platform doubling down on AI-driven creative assembly. The manual control you’re used to hasn’t gone away; it’s just accessed differently.
The biggest immediate actions are updating your internal SOPs, refreshing any tutorials that reference the Flexible format, training your team on the new two-step upload flow, and adjusting the approval processes to account for the post-publish preview requirement.
Advertisers who adapt their creative briefing and asset structure to this new format will be better placed to take advantage of Meta’s AI optimisation, and those who don’t will find their legacy workflows increasingly at odds with where the platform is heading.
Not sure how these changes affect your current Meta setup? Our team works with brands across paid social and digital marketing to make sense of platform shifts like this one.
Contact us and we will walk through what it means for you.
