How to Edit Facebook Ad Placements
Running a Facebook ad campaign can feel like you're just handing Meta your credit card and hoping for the best. One of the simplest ways to reclaim control over your budget and results is by choosing exactly where your ads show up. This article will show you what Facebook Ad Placements are, why you should be actively managing them, and a step-by-step guide to editing them for better performance.
What Are Facebook Ad Placements?
Facebook Ad Placements are simply the different locations where your ads can appear across Meta’s family of apps and services. It’s not just the main Facebook News Feed anymore. Think of all the places you see sponsored content on Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and even on third-party apps and websites.
Meta groups these placements into several categories based on how users experience them. The main categories include:
Feeds: The primary scrolling-based feeds, like the Facebook News Feed, Instagram Feed, and Marketplace. These are often the highest-value placements.
Stories & Reels: Full-screen, vertical, and immersive placements such as Instagram Stories, Facebook Stories, Messenger Stories, and Instagram Reels.
In-stream videos: Ads that appear before, during, or after video content on Facebook and Instagram.
Search results: Ads that show up when users search for content on Facebook and Instagram.
Messages: Sponsored messages that appear directly in the Messenger inbox.
Audience Network: A network of countless third-party mobile apps and websites where Meta can display your ads.
When you create an ad campaign, Meta gives you two options for managing these locations: Advantage+ placements (the default, formerly called "Automatic Placements") and Manual placements. Advantage+ lets Meta's algorithm show your ads across all possible placements to whatever it thinks will get you the best results. Manual placements, as the name suggests, give you the control to pick and choose exactly where you want your ads to run.
Why You Should Care About Editing Placements
While letting Meta’s algorithm handle placements with Advantage+ is temptingly simple, taking manual control offers some significant benefits, especially once you have some data to work with. Here’s why thoughtful placement editing is a powerful lever for campaign success.
1. Control Your Budget and Maximize ROAS
Not all placements deliver equal value. You might find that the Audience Network is spending 20% of your budget but generating zero sales, or that Facebook’s right-column ads are getting expensive clicks that don’t convert. By manually deselecting these underperforming placements, you can redirect your ad spend to the locations that actually drive a positive return on ad spend (ROAS). This prevents your budget from being wasted on spots that don't contribute to your core business goals.
2. Align Placements with Your Campaign Objective
Your goal determines the best stage for your ad. If your objective is to get conversions, placing your ad in a high-intent environment like the Facebook News Feed or Instagram Search Results makes more sense than an In-stream video placement that interrupts someone’s viewing experience. Conversely, if your goal is brand awareness or video views, In-stream and Stories placements can be incredibly effective and cost-efficient. Editing placements allows you to ensure the user’s context matches your campaign's desired outcome.
3. Tailor Your Creative to the Format
An ad created for a square Instagram Feed post will look strange and unprofessional when forced into a vertical (9:16) Instagram Story. This mismatch can scream "I'm an ad!" and cause users to immediately tune it out. By selecting placements manually, you can create different ad sets for different placement groups. For instance, you could run one ad set for Feeds using a square image and a separate ad set for Stories and Reels using a specifically designed vertical video, ensuring your creative feels native and engaging in every location.
How to Edit Facebook Ad Placements: Step-by-Step
Editing your ad placements is done at the Ad Set level within Meta Ads Manager. Here's a look at how to do it for both a brand-new campaign and one that's already running.
Editing Placements for a New Campaign
Follow these steps when you're setting up a new campaign from scratch.
Create Your Campaign: In Ads Manager, click the green "+ Create" button. Choose your campaign objective (e.g., Sales, Leads, Traffic) and click "Continue."
Navigate to the Ad Set Level: After setting up your campaign-level details, proceed to the Ad Set. This is where you’ll define your budget, schedule, audience, and placements.
Locate the Placements Section: Scroll down in the Ad Set settings until you see the "Placements" section. You'll notice that "Advantage+ placements (recommended)" is selected by default.
Switch to Manual Placements: Click on "Manual placements." This will reveal a detailed menu of every available placement, grouped by platform.
Select and Deselect Your Placements: Now you can go through the list and use the checkboxes to choose where your ads will run. You can toggle off an entire platform (like "Audience Network") or get granular and uncheck specific spots within a platform (like "Facebook Marketplace" but not "Facebook News Feed"). On the right, a preview window will show how your ad looks in selected placements.
After you’ve finalized your placement choices, simply continue setting up your Ad Set and create your Ad creative as usual.
Editing Placements for an Existing Campaign
If you have an active campaign and want to adjust its placements based on performance data, the process is just as easy.
Go to Ads Manager: Open your Ads Manager dashboard.
Select the Right Ad Set: Click on the campaign you want to edit. Then, click on the "Ad Sets" tab to view all the ad sets within that campaign.
Click "Edit": Hover over the name of the ad set you want to modify and click the "Edit" link that appears. This will open the ad set editing panel on the right side of your screen.
Scroll to Placements: In the editing panel, scroll down to the "Placements" section.
Make Your Changes: Adjust your selected placements by checking or unchecking the boxes. For instance, if you noticed poor results from Audience Network, you can now deselect it. Once you’re done, click the "Publish" button in the bottom right corner.
Important Note: Be aware that making significant edits to a live ad set (including changing placements) can sometimes reset Meta's "learning phase." This means the algorithm has to re-learn how to best deliver your ads, which can cause a temporary fluctuation in performance.
Proven Tips for Choosing the Right Ad Placements
Knowing how to change placements is one thing, knowing which ones to choose is another. Here are some proven strategies to guide your decisions.
1. Let the Data Guide You
Don't just guess which placements work best. Use the reporting tools inside Ads Manager to get clear answers.
Here’s how to find your placement performance data:
In Ads Manager, select the campaign, ad set, or ad you want to analyze.
Find the "Breakdown" dropdown menu located just above the reporting table.
Click Breakdown > By Delivery > Placement.
Ads Manager will now show you a detailed report of performance metrics for each individual placement where your ads were shown. Look specifically at your "Cost Per Result" (your primary campaign objective), Click-Through Rate (CTR), and Amount Spent. If you see a placement like "Instagram Explore" eating up budget with a high Cost Per Result, it's a prime candidate to turn off.
2. Start Broad, Then Narrow Down
If you're launching a new campaign without any past data, it can be a good idea to start with Advantage+ placements. Let the campaign run for a few days to a week with a modest budget. This allows Meta to test all the placements and gather valuable performance data for you. Once that initial period is over, use the Breakdown report we just discussed to see which placements performed well. Then, duplicate your ad set and switch it to Manual placements, selecting only the winners from your initial test.
3. Be Cautious with the Audience Network
The Audience Network allows Meta to show your ads in a vast network of third-party mobile games, apps, and websites. While it's great for getting cheap reach and impressions, the traffic is often considered lower quality. Clicks can be accidental (think "fat finger" clicks in a mobile game), leading to high bounce rates and low conversion rates. For campaigns focused on high-intent actions like purchases or lead form submissions, it's often wise to deselect the Audience Network entirely and focus your budget on on-platform placements.
4. Group Similar Placements by Creative Type
To ensure your ad creative is always a perfect fit for its placement, break your ad sets down by format. Instead of running one ad set with manual placements for every format, try this:
Ad Set #1: Feeds. Select only News Feeds and Search Results. Use polished square (1:1) or landscape creative here.
Ad Set #2: Stories & Reels. Select only Instagram Stories, Facebook Stories, and Instagram Reels. Use an engaging, full-screen vertical (9:16) video designed specifically for this immersive format.
This approach gives you complete control over how your ads look and feel in every environment, leading to a much better user experience and stronger results.
Final Thoughts
You now grasp what Facebook ad placements are, why dialing them in matters for your budget and goals, and exactly how to edit them inside Ads Manager. By moving from a "set it and forget it" approach to active placement management, you can stop wasting money on underperforming ad spots and channel your budget where it will have the greatest impact.
Making smart decisions about which placements to keep or cut requires a clear and reliable view of your performance data. We built Graphed because we know how tedious it can be to analyze different reports across multiple platforms. Instead of digging through breakdowns in Ads Manager, Graphed connects to your marketing data sources and lets you ask questions like "show me the highest performing ad placements by conversions" and instantly get the answers in a real-time dashboard. This makes the entire process of optimizing your campaigns faster and more intuitive, helping you improve performance without getting stuck in the weeds.