Meta's new ad terms start on 20 November: what should Indian advertisers check?

The short answer

Meta’s updated Commercial Terms and Self-Serve Ad Terms now take effect on 20 November 2026, not 30 October. Both preview pages say so: the Commercial Terms preview and the Self-Serve Ad Terms preview, as we read them on 31 October 2026. You do not have to click anything. If your ads are still running after that date, Meta treats you as having accepted.

For most Indian businesses, four clauses deserve a careful read before the 20th:

1. Meta may crawl any website linked to your products or services.
2. You are solely responsible for whatever Meta’s AI features generate in your ads.
3. If an agency places your ads, it must have authority to bind you to these terms.
4. Meta can run tests that affect your pricing, reporting, targeting and delivery.

None of this is new to anyone who has read Meta’s terms before. What is new is that the terms are being consolidated into fewer documents, that the crawling clause became a public argument, and that the date moved. The rest of this page covers each clause and what we would do about it.

General information, not legal advice. For a contract question specific to your business, ask a lawyer who has read your agreements.

What is changing, and when

According to Meta’s Business Help Centre, the update streamlines four sets of terms into two: the Product Catalogue Terms fold into the Commercial Terms, and the Ad Creative Generative AI Terms fold into the Self-Serve Ad Terms. The current Ad Creative Generative AI Terms carry a notice confirming they will be incorporated into the Self-Serve Ad Terms from 20 November 2026.

Date	What happened	Source
16 October 2026	PPC Land reports that the draft Commercial Terms let Meta crawl business websites and use the content to train AI	PPC Land
17 October 2026	Meta removes the word “train” from the crawling clause	The Verge, as reported by PPC Land
23 October 2026	A Meta spokesperson tells Reuters the effective date moves to 20 November	Reuters, as reported by PPC Land
30 October 2026	The original effective date, now superseded	Meta preview pages
20 November 2026	Updated Commercial Terms and Self-Serve Ad Terms take effect	Meta preview pages

One caution on dates. PPC Land reported that on the evening of 23 October some regional versions of the preview page still showed 30 October. The English pages we checked on 31 October show 20 November. If your Ads Manager shows a different date in a notice, go by what Meta shows your account.

The clause that caused the delay: Meta crawling your website

The updated Commercial Terms authorise Meta, or anyone acting for it, to use “automated software” to access and index the domains, web pages and URLs associated with your products or services, and to pull updates from them periodically. The Self-Serve Ad Terms contain a matching clause in section 6.

The public row was about one sentence. According to PPC Land, an earlier draft let Meta use content from those sites to “train” its products, and that word was removed on 17 October. The revised clause ties the crawling to advertising and business products. Meta told reporters, according to PPC Land, that site owners can still use robots.txt to signal their preferences. That statement is not in the contract text.

For a business that runs ads, this matters in a practical way. Meta’s web crawler documentation lists separate crawlers with separate jobs:

• Meta-ExternalAds crawls for advertising and other business products.
• Meta-ExternalAgent crawls to train foundation AI models or improve products by indexing content.
• FacebookExternalHit fetches link previews when your pages are shared, and Meta says it “might bypass robots.txt” for security or integrity checks.

Meta says the first two are configured through robots.txt, and that robots.txt changes can take up to 24 hours to apply. So you have a real choice. A business that wants its catalogue and landing pages understood by Meta’s ad systems, but does not want its content used for model training, can block one crawler and allow the other. A blanket block on everything from Meta is the option most likely to break something you are paying for.

What to check on your website

• Open your robots.txt and look for any rule naming Meta’s crawlers. Many sites have none, which means everything is allowed.
• Decide on Meta-ExternalAgent separately from Meta-ExternalAds. Write the decision down.
• If you change anything, test a link preview and a catalogue or dynamic ad afterwards.

AI-made ads: whose problem is a mistake?

Yours. The Commercial Terms preview says Meta’s AI features “may make mistakes” and that the business is solely responsible for the resulting content, including judging whether it suits business use. The Self-Serve Ad Terms say the same about ad creative in section 14, and both bar you from removing AI watermarks or content-authenticating metadata.

The current Generative AI Terms are even more explicit. They say output may be inaccurate or misleading, that similar output may be generated for other advertisers, and that you must not share personal information in your inputs.

This becomes concrete when Advantage+ creative rewrites a headline or changes an image. An AI variant that states the wrong price, invents a discount or puts a claim in your mouth is your ad, legally and reputationally. Before 20 November:

• List which AI creative features are switched on in each campaign.
• Turn off text variations on any ad that quotes a price, an offer or a regulated claim, unless someone reviews the variants.
• Keep the original creative files, so you can show what you actually approved.

If an agency runs your ads: the section 13 question

Section 13 of the Self-Serve Ad Terms applies to anyone “placing ads on someone else’s behalf”. The agency must have permission to place the ads and must represent that it has authority to bind the advertiser to Meta’s terms. Meta may hold the agency responsible for the advertiser’s violations, and may share campaign reporting with the end advertiser.

In plain terms: when your agency keeps running your ads after 20 November, it is accepting Meta’s new terms in your name. If your agency agreement is silent on that, three things are worth putting in writing:

• The agency has your authority to accept Meta’s terms for your ad account, and tells you when they change.
• The ad account, Business Manager, pixel and catalogue sit in your business, with the agency as a partner. This also decides what you keep if you part ways, which is the theme of our piece on the handover tax.
• Who reviews AI-generated creative before it goes live.

Tests, delivery and price: why your results may wobble

Section 5 of the Self-Serve Ad Terms says Meta may run tests that affect your experience and campaign performance, including tests to assess “pricing, reporting, targeting and delivery”. This clause is not new, but it is worth remembering when you compare November with October.

Nothing in the published terms announces a price change on 20 November. Auction costs move with seasonal demand anyway, so a shift in late November may have nothing to do with the terms. Add an annotation for 20 November in your reporting, so a later change in cost per result is not blamed on the wrong cause.

Which Meta company are you contracting with?

Section 17 of the Self-Serve Ad Terms says advertisers in the US or Canada contract with Meta Platforms, Inc., and advertisers elsewhere contract with Meta Platforms Ireland Limited. The same section notes that “advertisers in some countries may be subject to special provisions” for their orders. India is not named on the page. If your finance team needs the contracting entity for invoices or GST records, check the terms and billing details shown inside your own account rather than relying on the global page.

Section 4 also sets the payment rules for invoiced accounts, which are billed periodically and due within 30 days, with interest of 1% a month on overdue amounts or the legal maximum if lower.

What stays your responsibility

Several clauses in the preview pages put the risk squarely on the advertiser. You are solely responsible for your orders, creative, targeting and placements, even when you use automated tools. Meta can modify, limit, suspend or discontinue commercial products at its sole discretion, without prior notice. Ads about social issues, elections or politics can stay in the Ad Library for seven years. And the indemnity clause makes the business cover Meta’s losses from claims about your content, to the extent the law allows.

What we would do before 20 November

1. Read both preview pages once, end to end. They are long, but sections 3, 5, 6, 13 and 14 of the Self-Serve Ad Terms are the ones above.
2. Make the robots.txt decision for Meta’s crawlers, and test afterwards.
3. Audit AI creative settings on every live campaign, starting with ads that mention a price or offer.
4. Confirm in writing that your agency has authority to accept Meta’s terms for you, and that you own the ad assets.
5. Add a 20 November annotation to your Meta reports.
6. If you decide you do not want the new terms, the only route the terms offer is to stop using the products for business. Decide that before the date, not after.

Where Akvega fits

We run Meta ads and build the websites those ads point to, so the crawling clause and the AI-creative clause land on the same team. If you want a second pair of eyes on your ad account and landing pages before 20 November, our paid diagnostic is a fixed fee agreed in writing, takes one to two working days, and you keep the audit whether or not you hire us.