Most Meta Ads activity happens at the campaign level: setting budgets, configuring audiences, uploading creative. The account-level settings — the panel that governs how Meta behaves across every campaign — get visited once during initial setup and rarely revisited.
That’s a problem, because what lives in those account settings actively affects your live campaigns. Eleven AI creative features are on by default, modifying your ad copy and images in real time. Value Rules — one of the most useful bidding tools available — go unconfigured. Audience Segments that unlock critical reporting remain undefined.
This post covers what’s in the Meta Ads account settings panel, what each section does, and what you should consciously configure rather than inherit as a default.
Creative Features: Eleven AI Modifications Running by Default
The Creative Features section controls which AI-powered modifications Meta is permitted to make to your ads. Most of these features are enabled by default, meaning Meta is actively applying them to eligible campaigns across your account.
The features currently available and typically on by default include:
- Comments keywords: AI-generated keywords added to ad comment sections.
- Creative call-to-action sticker: Meta adds its own CTA overlay to your creative, which may not match your intended call to action.
- Image Expansion: Your image is automatically extended to fill different aspect ratios for different placements, potentially altering composition and focus.
- Background generation: For product images, Meta can replace or generate new backgrounds, changing the visual context around your product.
- Answer suggestions for short answer questions: Meta generates AI responses within applicable ad formats.
- Promotional text with product repositioning: Meta rewrites or repositions your promotional messaging.
- Text keywords: Keywords are automatically added to your ad text by Meta’s AI.
- Reword identified phrases: Meta rewrites portions of your copy it identifies as candidates for improvement.
- Show highlights: Meta surfaces what it determines are the most engaging elements of your ad.
- Expand Video: Your video is automatically cropped and extended for different placement formats and aspect ratios.
- Virtual try on: Where product eligibility allows, Meta adds try-on functionality to your ads.
Several of these features solve genuine production problems. Image Expansion and Expand Video reduce the need to produce every asset in every format. Background generation can improve product presentation for catalogue ads.
Others are more significant. Reword identified phrases means Meta is changing copy you approved. Creative call-to-action sticker means Meta is adding a CTA you did not write. Promotional text with product repositioning means your messaging may reach your audience in a form you did not intend.
These are not hypothetical risks. They are active default behaviours affecting live campaigns on accounts where they have never been reviewed.
How to Review and Configure Creative Features
To access Creative Features, navigate to Meta Ads Manager, go to Account Settings, and find the “Creating ads” section. Creative Features will show which features are currently active and provide the option to modify each one.
The right approach is not to disable everything. Some features are genuinely beneficial. The right approach is to make each feature a deliberate choice:
- Review each feature against your specific campaign types. Features that solve a real production constraint for your account may be worth keeping on.
- For features that affect copy — particularly Reword identified phrases and Promotional text with product repositioning — assess whether your copy is legally reviewed or brand-sensitive in ways that make automated rewriting risky.
- For features that modify creative composition — Image Expansion, Background generation, Expand Video — assess whether you have full asset coverage or whether the automatic expansion is filling a genuine gap.
- Turn off features you do not want running. Turn on features you intentionally want to use. The goal is conscious configuration, not maximum restriction.
Value Rules: The Bidding Tool Most Advertisers Have Never Used
Value Rules is accessible from the same account settings panel and represents one of the most underused tools in Meta Ads. It allows advertisers to define rules that tell Meta how much more or less certain audiences, placements, and conversion locations are worth to their business — and have Meta adjust its bids accordingly across campaigns.
The use cases for Value Rules are significant for most business types:
- Geographic value differences: If customers from certain cities or regions convert to sales at a higher rate or produce higher lifetime value, a Value Rule can instruct Meta to bid higher for those locations without creating separate geographic campaigns.
- Demographic quality adjustment: If a specific age group or demographic segment produces a high volume of low-quality leads, a Value Rule can lower the bid for that segment rather than excluding them entirely from targeting.
- Placement quality adjustment: If Audience Network placements produce traffic that does not convert, a Value Rule can significantly reduce the bid for that placement type, limiting spend there without removing it from eligibility.
- Audience quality weighting: If your Existing Customer audience should be pursued more aggressively than new prospects, or vice versa, a Value Rule can encode that business priority into Meta’s bidding.
Value Rules allow you to inject business intelligence — information about what actually produces value for your specific business — into Meta’s bidding system without fragmenting your campaign structure. The account settings screen shows how many Value Rule sets are currently active. For most accounts, that number is zero.
Audience Segments: The Reporting Setup That Should Be Done Once and Maintained
Audience Segments in account settings is where you define your Existing Customers and Engaged Audience groups. Once defined at the account level, these definitions become available for use in Sales campaigns, unlocking the Audience Segments breakdown in Ads Manager.
The breakdown shows how campaign budget and results are distributed across Existing Customers, Engaged Audience, and New Audience groups. For most advertisers who check this for the first time, it reveals that Meta is already heavily allocating budget to remarketing audiences automatically — without any explicit remarketing campaign structure.
If the account settings screen shows these segments as “Not defined,” the reporting is unavailable. The setup requires assigning custom audiences — customer lists, pixel event audiences, engagement audiences — to each segment. It is a one-time configuration that permanently improves campaign visibility.
Other Account Settings Worth a Periodic Check
Account Controls
Account Controls is where age restrictions for regulated products are applied at the account level rather than per campaign. For businesses selling products with age restrictions — alcohol, financial products, health products — this is the appropriate place to set those limits. For most businesses, this section will be empty, which is correct. But it should be a verified empty, not an assumed one.
Datasets and Pixels
This section shows all data sources connected to the account, including the number of Pixels and custom datasets. Checking this periodically ensures that Pixel connections remain active and that conversion data is flowing correctly. A disconnected or misfiring Pixel is a targeting and optimisation problem that may not be immediately obvious from campaign-level metrics.
Marketing Messages
This section controls whether new campaigns can include WhatsApp marketing messages and sets the default WhatsApp number for those campaigns. For businesses that actively use WhatsApp as a customer channel, the default set here applies to all new campaigns. For those that do not, verifying that Marketing Messages is off prevents unintended inclusions in new campaign setups.
Key Takeaways
- The Meta Ads account settings panel contains settings that affect every campaign in the account. It should be reviewed periodically, not just during initial setup, as Meta adds new features and updates defaults over time.
- Eleven AI creative features are active by default in the Creative Features section. These include modifications to ad copy, image composition, CTA elements, and video format. Each should be a conscious choice, not an inherited default.
- Value Rules allow advertisers to inject business intelligence into Meta’s bidding system — adjusting bids by audience, placement, and conversion location — without fragmenting campaign structure. Most accounts have no Value Rules configured.
- Audience Segments defined in account settings unlock the budget and result distribution breakdown for Sales campaigns — one of the most informative reporting views available in Ads Manager.
- Account Controls, Datasets and Pixels, and Marketing Messages are sections worth periodic verification to ensure account-level configurations reflect current business requirements.
FAQ
1.Where are Meta Ads account settings?
Meta Ads account settings are accessible from the main Ads Manager navigation. Look for the settings or gear icon, or navigate to the Business Settings area of your Meta Business Suite. Within account settings, the “Your business” and “Creating ads” sections contain the features discussed in this post, including Creative Features, Value Rules, and Audience Segments.
2.Can Meta really change my ad copy without my approval?
Yes. Several Creative Features — particularly Reword identified phrases and Promotional text with product repositioning — allow Meta’s AI to modify your ad copy on live campaigns. These features are on by default in most accounts. If your copy is brand-sensitive, legally reviewed, or deliberately specific, these features should be turned off in your Creative Features settings.
3.What are Meta Ads Value Rules and how do I set them up?
Value Rules are account-level rules that tell Meta’s bidding system how much more or less certain audiences, placements, or conversion locations are worth to your business. They are set up in the “Your business” section of account settings under Value Rules. Each rule set specifies a condition (e.g., a specific placement or audience) and a value adjustment (e.g., bid 50% less for Audience Network). Multiple rule sets can be active simultaneously, and they apply across campaigns rather than requiring configuration at the individual campaign level.
4.How often should I review Meta Ads account settings?
A quarterly review is a practical minimum. Meta adds new Creative Features and updates default states periodically, often without prominent notification. A quarterly account settings review ensures that new defaults have been consciously accepted or rejected, that Value Rules reflect current business priorities, that Audience Segment definitions are current and accurate, and that Pixel connections remain active and complete.