Three Meta Ads changes for Q4 2026 worth acting on: Threads by default, new-customer targeting, creative-level reporting

Meta shipped a run of changes through October 2026 ahead of the Black Friday period. Most are for large ecommerce accounts. Three of them matter to the restaurant, property and services accounts I run, so this is a short note on each, with sources.

1. Threads is a default placement everywhere

Announced on 19 October and completed in the week of 26 October, Threads was added by default to campaigns globally, according to Common Thread Collective's tracker. Because placement exclusions were removed from sales, leads and engagement campaigns in August, you can't take Threads out of those campaigns. You can set a placement value rule under "Adjust bids for placements" to cut the Threads bid by up to 90 percent.

What I've done: nothing drastic. Threads reach is cheap, and for a brand awareness campaign that's fine. For lead form campaigns I've set a reduction and I'm watching the placement breakdown weekly. If Threads produces leads that get answered, the rule comes off. If it produces form fills nobody can reach, it stays.

2. Customer Lifecycle Strategy: a toggle for new customers only

Reported on 11 October, this is a single ad set setting that directs spend to people who haven't bought from you in the last 180 days. It's the easiest version yet of something I've always done by hand: excluding existing customers from prospecting so you stop paying to reach people who already order.

For an established delivery or ecommerce brand this is the kind of control that moves the return on ad spend, because a big share of a known brand's conversions come from people who would have ordered anyway. For a new restaurant it's irrelevant, since everyone is new. I've turned it on for sales campaigns on established accounts and kept it off for launches, where the goal is the opposite.

3. Creative-level reporting

From 28 October, Ads Manager shows spend, click-through rate, cost per result and ROAS for each individual asset in Advantage+ Shopping, flexible ads and dynamic creative, per the same tracker. Until now, those formats reported at the ad level and you had to guess which image or video was doing the work.

This matters to anyone running the fortnightly creative test I described in this post. The test used to need separate ads per creative to get a clean read. Now a flexible ad with five assets tells you which one earned its place. I've switched the restaurant accounts to flexible ads for the next test cycle and will report the asset-level results in the monthly reports.

Also in the pile, for completeness

• Creative Diversity Score (26 August): Ads Manager rates each ad set Low, Medium or High on visual and thematic variety. A nudge towards more creative, which I agree with, but the score itself isn't a result.
• Exclusion-only custom audiences (10 August): an audience type that only suppresses people. Useful for keeping customers, staff and past applicants out of campaigns.
• Updated commercial and self-serve ad terms: scheduled for 30 October, then moved to 20 November. If you've seen the prompt to accept new terms, that's why it keeps changing.

Update, 4 November: the new terms were delayed again on 3 November, with no new date. And on 2 November Meta added Image Animation to Advantage+ Creative, which turns a static image into a video ad inside Ads Manager. I'd test it against a real video rather than assume it wins.

These dates and descriptions come from Common Thread Collective's changelog, which tracks Meta's in-product notices; Meta's own announcements for several of them are in-product only. I've linked their tracker rather than restate it, and I'll correct this post if any of it turns out to differ in the accounts.

Checked on 4 November 2026.