• by Colin Kirkland , Yesterday

Meta has announced the consolidation of more detailed ad-targeting options, marking a substantial shift toward CEO Mark Zuckerberg's plan to automate ad creation – including targeting, creative and measurement – across its family of apps.

“Some detailed targeting options have been combined,” Meta has noted at the top of Ads Manager and other tools.

“Starting Jan 15, 2026, ad sets using the unavailable options will stop delivering,” the company adds. “Please edit your ad sets and saved audiences to remove them or replace them with alternative options.”

The change will remove more manual targeting options -- ultimately pushing advertisers toward a more automated experience powered by Meta's AI targeting systems, which the company has suggested drive better results than manual targeting.

In Meta's Q2 earnings update, Zuckerberg said AI was the main driver of increased efficiency and gains across the company's ads system, citing a new AI-powered recommendation model that has driven 5% more ad conversions on Instagram and 3% on Facebook.

Prior to this year's second quarter, Meta reported that the median cost per conversion for ad campaigns improved by 22.6% when detailed targeting exclusions were removed from the process.

Meta has been removing and consolidating detailed targeting options for some time, stating two years ago that they were not widely used, were too granular or related to topics “people may perceive as sensitive.”

Since the start of 2024, Meta has enforced broader targeting options through additional targeting consolidation and exclusion.

If Zuckerberg's 2026 plans come to fruition, Meta could deliver a fully realized ad product to an advertiser's preferred target audience, requiring nothing more than an objective and price point.

To help introduce ad partners to the company's emerging Advantage+ AI ad tools, Meta announced an “Early Release” program in May.