Blog
Notes on ad creative that performs
What the platforms specify versus what most guides republish, which layouts and workflows hold up in production, and comparisons of the tools in this category, one of which we make.
Meta restricted or disabled your ad account: how to request a review, and when the decision is final
Meta says a restricted ad account's review typically takes 48 hours, review requests are limited, and ads don't restart on their own. What to do, in order.
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Meta ads AI connectors: what the MCP server and CLI let an agent do, and what gets throttled
Meta's ads MCP server and Ads CLI let an AI agent build and edit campaigns. What Meta's docs say on setup, paused defaults, agent rules and rate limits.
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Meta partnership ads and TikTok Spark Ads: how the codes work and when they expire
Meta gives a partnership ad code no end date; the creator turns it off. A TikTok Spark Ads code lasts 7, 30, 60 or 365 days. Permissions, fixes and limits.
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TikTok's automatic enhancements are on by default: what each one changes and how to turn them off
TikTok says its creative enhancement drawer is on by default and remembers your last settings. What each enhancement changes, and where to switch it off.
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Meta's ad limits per Page and per ad account: the tiers, what counts, and error 3253001
Meta caps ads per Page by spend tier and caps ads per ad account. What counts toward each limit, what stops at the cap, and how to clear error 3253001.
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Meta auction vs reservation: what each buying type locks in, in Meta's words
Meta has two buying types. Reservation fixes the CPM and predicts reach before you book; auction prices every impression. Who can use each, and the limits.
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What you can edit after a Meta ad is published, and which edits send it back to Preparing
Meta lists the settings you can change on a published ad. Which edits restart review, Preparing and learning, and which ones mean a new ad or ad set.
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Do AI avatar ads need a label? What Meta, TikTok and Google's rules say
TikTok makes you label any AI-generated ad. Meta and Google label it themselves or by region. All three ban faking a real person's endorsement.
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About ad auctions: how Meta picks which ad shows, in Meta's words
Meta's auction ranks ads by total value: your bid, estimated action rates and ad quality. Meta sets the bid by default; the creative shapes the other two.
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About campaign budgets and ad set budgets: why Meta's Advantage+ campaign budget may not spend equally
Meta says Advantage+ campaign budget may not spend equally across ad sets. What its pages say about when to use it, spend limits and what not to touch.
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Set up a creative test in Meta Ads Manager: the budget, the limits, and what the results mean
Meta's creative test runs 2 to 7 test ads inside a live campaign on a budget share you pick. What its help page says, and how it differs from an A/B test.
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Meta frequency controls: target frequency vs frequency cap, in Meta's words
Meta has two frequency controls, target frequency and frequency cap. Which goals, budgets and buying types get each, and where Meta's pages disagree.
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ChatGPT ads: the specs, bidding and rules in the official docs
ChatGPT's docs cap ad titles at 50 characters and copy at 100, want a square image up to 1200 px, and set creative enhancements on from Oct 30, 2026.
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How Meta fills a missing aspect ratio: padding, crops and AI
Meta fills a missing aspect ratio with padding, media expansion, cropping or AI pixels. Which placements get which, what you can turn off, what to upload.
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Meta video ad metrics: what ThruPlay and each play counts
What Meta says ThruPlay, 2- and 3-second plays, plays at 25% to 100% and average play time count, which are in development, and what Meta renamed.
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YouTube ad safe zone: what Google's templates say
Google's YouTube safe-zone templates, measured: on 9:16, 15% top, 35% bottom, 17.8% right; on 16:9, 35.8% bottom plus two top-corner blocks.
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How much Meta can overspend a daily budget, and how pacing works
A Meta daily budget is a weekly average: up to 75% over on a day, at most 7 times the budget a week, though ad set budget sharing lets one go higher.
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Meta Ads Manager delivery statuses, in Meta's words
What In review, Learning, Learning limited, Not delivering, Update required and more mean, quoted from Meta's pages, plus API statuses Meta never explains.
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How long TikTok's ad review takes, and why ads get rejected
TikTok says most ads are reviewed within 24 hours, with no ceiling for a first review and up to 24 hours for an edit. What it checks, rejections, appeals.
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The EU AI Act makes you label deep-fake ads, not every AI ad
What Article 50 of the AI Act and the Commission's guidelines say advertisers must label: deep fakes, including misleading product images, not every AI ad.
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How long Meta's ad review takes, and which edits restart it
Meta says most ads are reviewed within 24 hours, with no upper limit. What In review means, which edits send a live ad back, and what Meta says on delays.
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Meta's learning phase: how long it lasts and what resets it
An ad set leaves Meta's learning phase after about 50 optimization events in the week after a significant edit. What resets it; what Learning limited is.
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Meta video ad best practices, from Meta's help pages
What Meta's help center and ads guide recommend for video length, sound-off viewing, captions, aspect ratio and the first seconds, and where they disagree.
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Audio ad specs by platform: YouTube, Spotify, Amazon and SiriusXM
YouTube audio ad specs first, then Spotify, Amazon and SiriusXM: length, file, bitrate, loudness and image, from each platform's spec page.
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How to write a 30-second audio ad
How many words fit in 30 seconds, where the brand goes, why one message and one call to action, and how to write for the ear. With a worked example.
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The Ad Library sorts by impressions, and its “Most recent” is not a date sort
Meta's Ad Library sorts by total impressions by default, and the one alternative groups ads by month rather than sorting by date. The URL proves both.
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Four of the numbers in every ad guide have no source, and the famous one is misread
We traced nine ad-creative statistics repeated without citation. Four dead-end. The famous 47% is real, eleven years old, and measures something else.
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Meta rejected your ad. Its policies say which part of the creative to change.
Before-and-after imagery is on Meta's allow-list, not its ban-list, and ad images have no text limit. Each creative policy, mapped to what to change.
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Meta has no per-ad budget, and says your new creative getting no spend is intended
A Meta ad has no budget field, in the interface or the API. Meta calls the uneven delivery intended behaviour. Three documented paths, each with a cost.
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Hands are in 45% of live Meta ads, which is awkward if you generate them
We classified 4,487 active Meta ads from 89 advertisers. Hands are everywhere, a quarter of tech ads paint in a CTA button, and dense text is nearly gone.
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What to check on an AI-generated ad before it goes live
Nine checks, in the order that catches the most for the least effort. Most of what goes wrong with generated creative shows in about ninety seconds.
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Nobody agrees on whether Meta killed Dynamic Creative. Its help centre still documents both.
Is Meta retiring Dynamic Creative or Flexible ads? Its help pages document both formats as live, with two gates that limit who can use them.
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Meta publishes one creative-volume number, and it isn't any of the ones you've been told
Meta advises at least 20 diversified ads in Advantage+ shopping and 20-30% of budget on testing. The 8-15 per ad set and Entity ID rules aren't Meta's.
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Meta can tell your ad was made with AI, and documents no penalty for it
Meta names C2PA as one way it detects third-party AI tools, labels its own output automatically, and documents no delivery or eligibility consequence.
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There is no account-level switch that turns Meta's creative enhancements off
The shared tip opts you out of testing new features, not ones already live. Meta picks defaults per ad, over seven categories, and hides half the toggles.
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Meta creative fatigue: flagged on cost per result, not frequency
What Meta says creative fatigue is, where Ads Manager flags it and Meta's three fixes. The status compares cost per result to your past ads, not frequency.
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Instagram Reels ads are 1440 × 2560, not 1080 × 1920
Meta's ads guide sets Instagram Reels ads at 9:16 and 1440 × 2560, up to 15 minutes, with 44 characters of text. Where 1080 × 1920 comes from.
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Meta ads safe zones in 2026: 14% top, 35% bottom, 6% sides
Meta's pages, placement by placement: one rule for Facebook and Instagram Stories and Reels, the unannounced 2026 Stories change, pixels, feed, carousel.
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Almost every performance ad is one of sixteen layouts
We tagged about 4,500 live Meta ads against our own taxonomy of static ad layouts. Sixteen skeletons covered nearly all of them.
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Translating the ad is the easy part
Machine translation solved the words years ago. One creative in nine markets still breaks, in four places that have nothing to do with translation quality.
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Meta's Ad Library API is not for competitor research
Meta's Ad Library API covers political ads and ads that ran in the UK or EU. For anything else, Meta's documentation sends you to the website.
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No, you don't have to disclose AI in your Meta ads
Guides say advertisers must now declare AI-generated creative. Meta's docs say otherwise for commercial ads. The one real rule likely isn't yours.
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TikTok's safe zone: four template downloads, not one number
TikTok ships four safe-zone templates, not one figure. The standard one, measured: 12.5% top, 34.4% bottom, 11.1% each side, plus a right-hand column.
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The best AdCreative.ai alternatives in 2026
Six tools that replace AdCreative.ai, what each one is good at, and which to pick for static ads, UGC video, or a design system.
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Meta ad sizes: the four that matter, and the one number every guide copies wrong
Meta's ads guide says 1440 × 1800 for Facebook feed; most spec sheets say 1080 × 1350. The four sizes you need, plus file types, sizes and durations.
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Stop making one ad and resizing it into five
The square-first workflow is a banner-era habit. Cropping one master into every placement wrecks composition, and the fix costs less than people assume.
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Why AI image models still can't spell
Text is what image models are worst at, and the one thing an ad can't get wrong. The actual reason, and what it means for generating ad creative.
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