There was a time when Facebook advertisers had almost complete control over how ads looked. An advertisement includes:
- An image or video
- A main text
- A title
- A description
There is no change in aspect ratio for placement. A size (usually 1.91:1, but depending on the ad type). If you want to display other versions of your ads for placement, you must create a separate ad set and ad for it.
Thanks to this simple structure, advertisers have a clear view of what they do and what doesn’t work. They will create different ads to test the combination of ad copy and creativity. They have control.
This setup made sense in the early days of Facebook ads. However, as positions multiplied by and automation evolves, maintaining a level of control becomes difficult, if not impossible.
Most advertisers are not adapting. They are still close to ad copy and creativity, just as they both need and retain that level of control. But the reality is very different.
Simple Early Era (before 2017)
In 2013 and 2014, advertiser placement limited:
- Desktop News Summary
- Mobile News Summary
- Right column on the desktop
- Right column on your phone
Here is a screenshot of Power Editor, which shows how we chose the location at the time…
That’s it. Need little change is required, and the meta does not have the ability to place customizations. Single assets are used everywhere.
By the end of 2017, things started to get more complicated. There are 12 official locations…
Facebook:
- feed
- Instant articles
- Play video
- Right column
- Suggested videos
Instagram:
Audience Network:
- Local, banners and gaps
- Play video
- Reward video
messenger:
This expansion prompts advertisers to think more broadly. Ad creation tools still rotate around a fixed combination unless you are willing to manually build each ad for each placement.
Even with 12 locations, an ad still represents a combination of ad copy and creativity. No change.
The first wave of automation (2017-2019)
In 2017, Meta introduced dynamic creativity, allowing advertisers to submit an ad with up to 30 creative elements:
- 10 images or videos
- Five main text options
- Five headlines
- Five descriptions
- Five CTA buttons
Meta will automatically mix and match them to find the best performing combination. This is optional and is largely considered a test tool (correct or wrong). The default ad creation stream is still focused on a single combination of creativity, main text, title, and description.
Later that year, advertisers could customize ideas through placement for the first time.
Advertisers no longer need to use the same image or copy in all locations. This change eliminates the need to create separate ads for each placement, just using different visuals or text.
In 2019, Meta added multiple text options to get features from dynamic creativity and apply it more widely.
This allows advertisers to submit up to five variations of main text, title and description about traffic, application installation, and conversion goals. The control gap begins to widen: You can still provide specific inputs, but Meta is doing more assembly.
Current Landscape (2025)
Nowadays, the idea of “control” looks very different. You still submit the components, but the final output is far from predicted and the changes are much different.
Why:
1. There are 26 locations, each with different layout rules, text restrictions and creative processing.
2. Advertisers are encouraged to submit three aspect ratios of image and video assets to fit 1:1, 9:16 and 1.91:1 placement groups.
3. You can still customize your ad copy and ideas by placing them (you should get the best results).
4. Advertisers can manually submit up to five variants of major text, headlines and descriptions.
5. Meta may use AI recommendations that advertisers can apply for or automatically generate five variants of each text field.
6. If Advantage+ Creative is enabled, META can automatically apply multiple creative enhancements. Optional enhancements for single image and video ads include:
- Adjust brightness and contrast
- Display the product
- Add details in the ad layout
- Add overlay
- Add dynamic overlay
- Enhanced CTA
- Expand the image
- Image animation
- music
- Related Comments
- Storage location
- Text improvement
- Video effects
- Video extension
- Visual modification
- 3D animation
- Add a site link
All of this will create other changes to your ads.
result? A single ad is no longer a well-defined unit. Instead, it is a collection of replicas, images, videos and AI-enhanced changes of components dynamically assembled according to users, placement, devices, etc.
Ads no longer represent a combination of individual definitions. Now, it can involve hundreds, if not thousands, of possibilities.
From input to ecosystem
A simple, well-defined creative decision in the past is now a branch ecosystem:
1. You provide input (text, images, video).
2. Meta-established combination (manual or AI-assisted).
3. Meta makes these combinations different in up to 26 positions.
4. Enhancements may further alter these combinations.
The ad you submit becomes one of many possible versions. What users see is larger depends on what you submit, and more on how the Meta system interprets, optimizes and delivers it.
Your “AD” is no longer a well-defined set of components. Now it is a collection or “ad film” of assets that can be merged to create infinite changes in ads so that the right version can be displayed to the right people at the right time.
In many ways, modern “advertising” behaves more like our perception of ad sets.
New roles for advertisers
The problem is that many advertisers still play roles in advertising creation as if it was a world that clearly defined ads before 2017. But the environment is now very different, and your role is different.
Today, your job is not to accurately determine the appearance of your ad. Instead, it is providing high-quality ingredients.
This means:
1. Write flexible, engaging and modular copies.
2. Provides creativity across formats and aspect ratios.
3. Understand that your input can be swapped, trimmed, enhanced or reassembled.
Control has not disappeared, but it has changed. You no longer control the final output. You are shaping the possible paths that the Meta system may take.
In this new era, embracing this transformation is distinguishing outdated advertisers from those thriving in the platform’s growing ecosystem.
How this affects creative testing
The evolution of advertisers’ role in advertising copy and creative outcomes in uncertainty makes advertisers uncomfortable. This may also mean that the way we do creative testing has changed.
It makes sense to isolate the best combination of ad copy and creativity to optimize results when we have complete control over variables and variants. This is easy to do because the ad reflects a single combination.
But this is not true. Since a single ad is a combination of hundreds or thousands of combinations and variables, the old rule of “finding winning combinations” no longer applies the same way. An effective ad is a collection of many winning combinations.
This doesn’t mean you’ll ignore the results of individual ad copies and creative variants, although I suggest that it makes more sense to view the summary results now. However, instead of micromanaging the results based on this information, we learn from them and apply these adjustments to future advertising.
now you
How will you develop the advertiser’s role in advertising copy and Creative?
Let me know in the comments below!
