Meta has revised its Commercial Terms, the contract that sits over every business using its ad and business tools, and the new version applies from October 30, 2026. The change drawing attention is a new paragraph letting Meta crawl websites associated with a business and use what it collects to train its products. There is no separate opt-out: continuing to use Meta's business products after the date counts as agreeing.
What changes on October 30
The current Commercial Terms date from March 6, 2024, and Meta's legal page now carries a banner announcing the revised version from October 30, 2026. According to PPC Land's breakdown of the new text, Section 1 gains a paragraph authorising Meta, or parties acting for it, to use automated tools such as crawlers and bots on domains and pages associated with your products or services.
The clause covers accessing, indexing, caching and collecting content, including periodic updates, and allows that content to be used to train and develop Meta's products and features. It also mentions Meta creating test credentials to access covered domains. The phrase "associated with your products or services" is not defined in the terms.
What Meta says, and the pushback
Meta's communications lead Andy Stone called reports on the clause false and said there is no change to how Meta uses web crawlers. A spokesperson told Nieman Lab the language was previously spread across other terms and has simply been consolidated, and that site owners can still manage access through robots.txt. Meta describes the purpose as getting accurate information about products sold on third-party sites.
Lawyers and publisher groups quoted by PPC Land point out that the clause itself is not limited to product data and does not mention robots.txt, and that the test-credentials wording could reach content behind sign-up walls. Meta has not said it will narrow the wording before the effective date.
Other changes in the same update
Most of these points matter less day to day than the crawler clause, but they confirm the direction: more of Meta's AI tooling is being folded under one contract, and more of the risk sits with the advertiser.
- A new AI features section: businesses are responsible for risks from Meta's AI-powered features and may not remove AI watermarks or metadata.
- The Self-serve Ad Terms, Business Tools Terms and Meta AI Business Assistant supplemental terms are now explicitly incorporated.
- Meta may modify, suspend or discontinue commercial products at its sole discretion.
- Indemnification now covers claims brought by you or anyone, not only third parties.
What to do before the date
You cannot accept the ad tools and reject one paragraph, so the real decision is about your sites. Check what your landing pages, catalog feeds and any client sites expose publicly, and decide whether robots.txt rules are worth setting for Meta's crawlers, knowing experts question whether the contract overrides them. Agencies running accounts for clients should flag the change to those clients now, since acceptance happens through continued use of the account.
What it means for you
- The revised Commercial Terms apply from October 30, 2026; continued use means acceptance.
- The new clause covers crawling sites associated with your business and using the data for AI training.
- Review what landing pages and feeds expose publicly and set robots.txt rules deliberately.
- Tell clients whose sites sit behind your ad accounts about the change before the date.
Sources
- PPC Land: Meta's new terms let it crawl business websites to train AI from Oct 30
- Meta Commercial Terms
