Meta can show discounts it detects on an advertiser's website inside Facebook and Instagram ads, including in a copy of an ad whose promotions were switched off. The behaviour was flagged on November 6 by Meta ads specialist Bram Van der Hallen and reported by PPC Land. Meta has not published an announcement or commented, so the details come from the interface itself.
What was found
When you duplicate an ad, Meta now shows a notice saying eligible promotions can appear with the new ad even though promotions are turned off for the original. The notice points to Commerce Manager to manage them.
The control lives in Commerce Manager under Settings, then Offer merchandising. In the account shown in the report, every checkbox on that page was ticked.
- Detected offers (under "All ads"): display offers detected from your website and ads.
- Sale events (ads leading to shop or product browsing): display sale events detected from ad text.
- Seasonal event names: show labels such as a New Year offer next to related offers.
What is still unclear
Meta has not said when the setting appeared, whether it is on by default for every account, or which countries have it. PPC Land could not review any Meta documentation for Offer merchandising, and the source post links to no help article.
It is also not shown whether a running original ad with promotions off can pick up a detected offer, or only its copies. The duplicate notice talks about "promotions" while the settings page says "offers", and Commerce Manager has a separate Promotions section, so the two terms may not mean the same thing.
Who it affects
Anyone with a catalog or shop in Commerce Manager, and especially teams that duplicate winning ads to scale them, which is standard practice in peak season. A discount that ended on your site, applied only to some products, or was meant for one audience could surface in an ad you never approved with that message.
This lands on top of other automated additions this autumn, including product browsing switched on for existing ads from October 28 unless advertisers opted out. With Black Friday on November 27 and Cyber Monday on November 30, ad copy and on-site offers will change fast.
What to do now
Open Commerce Manager for every catalog you run, go to Settings and Offer merchandising, and decide deliberately which boxes stay ticked. Do this per business and per client, since each catalog has its own settings.
If you keep detected offers on, make sure what is on your site is what you are happy to see in ads: expired codes removed, terms clear, and prices matching the landing page. Then check a sample of duplicated ads in preview before they go live.
What it means for you
- Check Commerce Manager > Settings > Offer merchandising on every catalog.
- Turning promotions off on the original ad may not carry over to its copies.
- Clean up expired or limited discounts on your site before peak season.
- Preview duplicated ads before launch; Meta has not documented this setting.
