10 Apr The AI Advantage: Meta’s New Advertising Era

 

 

 

Major Meta Ads Changes in 2025: What Local and National Businesses Need to Know

If you’ve been running ads on Meta (Facebook and Instagram), you’ve probably heard the buzz about big changes coming to campaign creation. Manual controls are being phased out, automation is ramping up, and June 2025 is shaping up to be a key point in the rollout. So, what’s actually happening, and what does it mean for your business?

Let’s break it down.

TL;DR

Meta is shifting hard(er) towards AI-powered automation. Manual targeting is being stripped back, Advantage+ is taking centre stage, and AI-driven creative features are switched on by default unless you go out of your way to turn them off more often than not. This affects local businesses (who need to target specific areas) and national or global businesses in different ways.

Translation: Meta wants the system to run your ads with minimal manual input. You’ll need to adjust how you work if you rely on detailed targeting or exclusions. Most AI tools are toggled on by default, and many are hidden deep in the interface. In a frustrating move, Meta seems to be changing the location of the toggles for different features and changing the way you’re informed as whether or not they’re on for your ad.

The Technical Rundown: What Meta Is Actually Changing

Meta’s Ads Manager is evolving into an AI-first environment. These are the key shifts:

• Advantage+ Campaigns: Now the default for ecommerce and lead gen. You’ll get limited control, Meta handles placements, audience discovery, and budget distribution.
• Detailed Targeting Restrictions: Since early 2024, the ability to exclude specific interests or behaviours has been removed from many campaign types. That makes precision audience building harder. They continue to actively discourage the use and force a switch to “original options” if you want to be able to access the detailed targeting options.
• Location Targeting Simplified: The change to “People living in or recently in this location” happened well before 2025. That was the start of the this automation wave for most mainstream Meta users (excluding advanced AI users or developers).
• Creative AI Features Introduced in 2025: ~ Optimise Text Per Person: Meta decides which headline or description to show each user. ~ Creative Enhancements: Automatically adjusts brightness, applies motion, crops images, etc. ~ Generate Backgrounds: New from March/April 2025, AI creates stylised backgrounds at the click of a button. ~ Create Images: Meta’s generative AI now builds complete images from prompts.

 

Translation? Meta is aggressively pushing for AI-driven campaign management. The goal? Maximise reach, clicks, and conversion efficiency by removing manual variables and trusting their algorithm to do the heavy lifting. This shift helps them tailor ad delivery more precisely to individual users (even as Facebook’s audience shrinks) and keep advertisers spending with the promise of more stable outcomes.

Is it working? Not consistently. Especially not for accounts spending under $100 per day.

To support this shift, Meta is also putting pressure on advertisers to produce more creative variations, more often. And they’re ‘helping’ with that too — recently rolling out AI tools like image generation and background generation directly inside Ads Manager.

These tools are turned on by default, and the settings to disable them are often hidden or moved. You can still opt out, but only if you know where to look.

Let’s be honest, we suspect this is intentional. By making the features hard to avoid, Meta gets more usage data, wider testing, and performance benchmarks across more advertisers. They can then decide what works at scale (but does that work for the mum-and-dad operation or local business with a tight service area? Generally, no.)

 

So, What’s Happening in June 2025?

Multiple agency insiders and media buyers have referenced internal Meta comms suggesting June 2025 is a major checkpoint for automation. It’s not a deadline where everything flips, but it does mark an acceleration.

Importantly: there’s no public Meta statement confirming full removal of manual controls in June 2025. They do however, constantly refine the adverts manager interface and features, announcing changes as you open it up. Some speculation mentions 2026, but that appears to be a longer-term forecast, not a confirmed date.

Translation: The shift is already happening, but June 2025 is likely when things ramp up. If you’re not prepared, you’ll feel it then.

How This Affects Local Service Businesses

Local operators, like tradies, clinics, or regional retailers, will feel the squeeze most. With no way to exclude tourists or outside visitors, you’ll likely waste budget on irrelevant clicks.

What You Can Do: ~ Make your location and service area crystal clear in your copy. ~ Use radius targeting instead of postcodes for better consistency. ~ Use lead forms or messages to qualify people early.

Translation: Your copy now has to do the targeting. Meta won’t do it for you.

How This Affects National and Global Brands

For larger brands, automation can be efficient. Scaling is faster with less manual setup. But you lose a lot of granularity: ~ Less control over specific demographics. ~ Limited testing without AI interference. ~ Less transparency in performance segmentation.

Translation: Great for speed, risky for strategy. You’re adjusting after the fact, not before.

What You Should Do to Prepare

• Start using Advantage+ now so you’re not caught off guard.
• Test Advantage+ strategically and pay attention to what you’re doing (spray and play isn’t always a good idea) – don’t use everything for the sake of it. Some of the features will not work for your creative or message. As an example, we work with a a lot of health and wellness clinics and we cannot allow Meta to change the text, as it may take the copy outside the guidelines for these industries. Tread carefully!
• Refine your messaging. Your ad copy matters more than ever.
• Build out your creative asset bank with multiple versions of text and visuals.
• Double-check all toggles during campaign builds. Assume nothing.
• Stay current. Meta rarely announces changes publicly. Join communities or work with an agency.

 

What’s Coming Next? (And What We’ll Be Watching)

These are the emerging features and trends we’re keeping a close eye on:

~ AI-generated video tools (currently in closed beta). These may replace basic editing needs.

~ Prompt-to-creative workflows. You can feed in a few lines of description and Meta generates full ad variants.

~ Audience suppression by intent. Likely a future evolution to help businesses avoid overlap and waste, but not yet confirmed.

~ More limited manual placements. We’re seeing more campaigns locked into Advantage+ placements without a toggle.

This is a moving target. Meta will likely continue testing in the wild and rolling out changes in batches, so if your interface doesn’t match someone else’s, don’t stress.

If you don’t use adverts manager (formerly Ads Manager) you may be totally unaware of these increased shifts to purely AI driven advertising. I’ll use this opportunity to gently remind you not to boost your posts if you can help it.

 

Need a Hand Navigating the Chaos?

If keeping up with these changes feels like a full-time job, we’re here to help. Our team is testing and adapting daily so you don’t have to.

You can join the Free Facebook group – Ads Made Easy – here.

Or book a free call and let’s make your ads work with Meta’s changes, not against them.

At the end of the day, AI is a change that’s coming to us whether we like it or not. You can try to opt out, but it’s probably going to be a pretty futile effort if you want to market your business in any way.

The idea that AI is replacing everyone’s job isn’t quite accurate – but if you don’t move with the times? Someone who did probably will.

 

Jess Riches is the Founder and Chief Marketing Officer at Enriches Business, a marketing advertising agency based in regional Queensland. We specialise in Meta Ads and helping service-based businesses grow with strategic, well-crafted campaigns.

Editor’s Note: This article was last updated in April 2025. While accurate at the time of writing, Meta often makes changes without notice. For tailored advice, speak to an expert who’s inside Ads Manager daily.