How to Exclude Audience Network in Facebook and Meta Ads

For why Meta invalid traffic concentrates in placements like this, see our guide to Meta Ads click fraud.

Most guides still say "switch to manual placements and untick Audience Network". In August 2026 a practitioner blog and trade press reported that some Sales and Leads ad sets no longer allow that, and as of 13 October 2026 we found no official Meta statement confirming or explaining the change. This guide covers the how: every control that still works, which parts Meta has confirmed, and how to check the result in your own reports.

What Changed in Meta Placement Controls, and What Meta Has Confirmed

Two separate changes are being mixed up. The first, limited spend on excluded placements, is confirmed by Meta. The second, the removal of ad-set placement exclusions on some Sales and Leads ad sets, is reported by a practitioner and trade press but not announced by Meta.

Confirmed by Meta. Meta's developer blog of 8 October 2025 says: "Starting October 8th, we're rolling out a new feature within placements that allows up to 5% of your spend to be allocated for each excluded placement". It adds: "This feature is available in the Sales and Leads objectives." And for the Marketing API: "Advertisers are not defaulted into limited spend on placements" (Meta for Developers).

Reported, not announced. On 20 August 2026 Jon Loomer, a practitioner blog, published an in-app alert reading: "Excluding placements, platforms, devices and operating systems will no longer be available for your ad sets" (Jon Loomer, 20 Aug 2026, updated 24 Aug). His understanding was that it applies to Sales and Leads objectives and is a test. The same day, Social Media Today (trade press) reported that "no timeline has been announced yet" (Social Media Today, 20 Aug 2026). PPC Land (trade press) wrote on 26 August that "Meta has published no announcement confirming a wider removal" (PPC Land, 26 Aug 2026).

Not part of it. Marketing API v26.0 was released on 29 July 2026, and its changelog contains no change to placement exclusions, limited spend or Audience Network (Graph API changelog).

What this means in practice: do not rely on ad-set checkboxes that may disappear. Put the exclusion at account level, where Meta still documents it. We could not load Meta's Business Help Center pages on placements, block lists or value rules on 13 October 2026, so anything about the Ads Manager screens below is labeled as reported.

How to Exclude Audience Network in an Ad Set (Where the Option Still Appears)

If your ad set still shows placement settings, choose Manual placements instead of Advantage+ placements and untick all three Audience Network placements (native, banner and interstitial; rewarded video; in-stream video). The August 2026 reports describe the removal only for some Sales and Leads ad sets. We found no report of a change for other objectives as of 13 October 2026. Ad-set settings can change without notice, so pair this with the account-level control below.

How to Exclude Audience Network for the Whole Ad Account

Account-level Placement Controls are the one control that turns Audience Network off for every campaign in an ad account, and Meta's Marketing API documents it. Meta's account_controls reference (v25.0) says the placement exclusion field "provides information on which placements need to be excluded while targeting. All the other placements will be included."

The same reference lists only five placements that can be excluded at account level:

• audience_network_classic (native, banner and interstitial)
• audience_network_rewarded_video
• audience_network_instream_video
• facebook_marketplace
• facebook_rhc (the Facebook right column)

Those are developer identifiers. In plain terms: the three Audience Network placements (classic, rewarded video and in-stream video), Facebook Marketplace and the Facebook right column.

In Ads Manager, the path was reported by Jon Loomer in August 2026. We have not verified it in a live account:

1. Open Advertising Settings for the ad account.
2. Go to Account Controls.
3. Select Placement Controls.
4. Turn on the option that says your business can only advertise on specific placements.
5. Exclude all three Audience Network placements, not just one. Excluding classic alone still leaves rewarded video and in-stream video open.

If your team works through the API, set the exclusion on the account_controls endpoint with the three audience_network_ values above, then read it back to confirm.

The limitation is scope. Only those five placements appear in the reference, so you cannot use account-level controls to remove Instagram, Reels, Stories or other Facebook placements. For Audience Network, though, it is the cleanest option, because it does not depend on settings in each ad set.

How to Turn Off Limited Spend on Excluded Placements

Meta can spend up to 5% of your spend on each placement you excluded, in Sales and Leads campaigns, unless limited spend is off. Three details decide whether this affects you.

It is per excluded placement, so it stacks. Meta's wording is "for each excluded placement", not one allowance for all of them. As a hypothetical: an ad set with $10,000 of spend that excludes two Audience Network placements has a ceiling of up to $500 for each of them. That is a ceiling, not a measured loss; Meta describes the allowance as applying when it expects better performance, and it does not say it will use all of it.

It only applies to Sales and Leads. Meta's announcement says so directly. Other objectives are not covered by the feature.

The default depends on where you set it. Meta says API advertisers "are not defaulted into" limited spend. In Ads Manager, PPC Land reported on 16 October 2025 that the checkbox is labeled "Allow limited spend to excluded placements" and that "The feature activates by default" (PPC Land, 16 Oct 2025). We could not check this in a live account.

What to do:

• In every Sales or Leads ad set where placement settings still appear, untick "Allow limited spend to excluded placements" (reported label).
• For API users, check the placement_soft_opt_out field on each ad set. Meta's blog shows it can be read back with a GET on the ad set, so you can audit it across accounts.
• Prefer the account-level exclusion above. A placement excluded at account level is outside the ad set's settings entirely.

If you suspect some excluded-placement spend was not genuine, the billing side is covered in does Meta refund invalid clicks.

How to Block Specific Apps With a Publisher Block List

If you keep Audience Network on, block the individual apps that waste spend, and use Meta's own report to find them. A common belief is that Meta does not say which apps showed your ads. It does: the Publisher Delivery Report gives "approximate impressions information at the publisher level and the content level", including Audience Network apps (classic and rewarded video formats). The report's position filter lists only those two, so in-stream video apps will not appear; the account-level exclusion is the only way to cover that placement. If you do not set dates, it covers the last 29 days.

A practical routine, without relying on any specific screen:

1. Pull the publisher delivery report for the account.
2. Sort Audience Network publishers by estimated impressions.
3. Cross-check the top apps against link clicks, landing page views and conversions for the same period (see the checks further down).
4. Add apps that deliver clicks without landing page views or conversions to a publisher block list.
5. Apply the block list to the account or campaigns that run on Audience Network.
6. Pull the report again after 29 days and repeat.

Two limits apply. First, impressions in the report are estimates; Meta's documentation says the number is calculated semi-real time. Second, blocking works one publisher at a time, and new apps keep appearing, so a list built in October will be incomplete by December. Meta itself does not promise full control here: on its placement selection page, Meta says "we can't guarantee that all content and publishers will be compliant", as quoted by PPC Land in August 2026.

A block list narrows Audience Network. It does not switch it off. If your goal is zero Audience Network delivery, the account-level control is the tool.

When You Can't Exclude Audience Network: Value Rules

On ad sets that reportedly lost placement exclusions, value rules can lower what Meta bids for Audience Network, but they make it more expensive, not impossible. So a value rule discourages Audience Network; it does not switch it off.

What has been reported about them:

• Value rules can adjust bids by placement, and Jon Loomer wrote in August 2026 that there are "only seven eligible placements available for bid adjustments", with Audience Network the most common target (Jon Loomer, 20 Aug 2026).
• PPC Land reported on 26 August 2026 that value rules allow a "maximum bid decrease of 90%", so no placement can be shut off completely this way.

In December 2025 Jon Loomer applied a value rule cutting his Audience Network bid by 90% and wrote: "When I did this, Meta didn't spend a single penny on Audience Network" (Jon Loomer, 15 Dec 2025). That is one practitioner and one account, not a controlled test. Your auction, audience and budget differ, so your result may differ.

Only account-level controls give a hard off. A -90% value rule is a discount.

Which Controls Remain in Advantage+ Sales and Leads Campaigns

Two different things share the name. Advantage+ placements is the automatic placement setting in any ad set; Advantage+ sales campaigns are an automated campaign type. Both can deliver to Audience Network unless it is excluded at account level.

Automated campaigns leave the fewest levers, so the account-level control does most of the work in Advantage+ sales campaigns. Every control in the table above applies to them. The one that matters most is account-level Placement Controls, because Meta documents them on the ad account, not the campaign. Check the limited spend setting anywhere it appears, since Meta confirms it for the Sales and Leads objectives.

We are not listing which options appear inside the Advantage+ setup screens, because we could not verify them. The safe assumption is that anything set at ad-set level may change, and anything set at account level is the control you can count on.

How to Check It Worked

Break your results down by placement and confirm that Audience Network spend is zero (after an account-level exclusion) or falling (after a value rule or block list). Settings tell you what you asked for. The placement breakdown tells you what Meta delivered.

Then compare link clicks with landing page views by placement. A link click counts a tap on your ad's link; a landing page view counts only the visits where your page loaded and your Meta Pixel fired. Some gap is normal on every placement, because of the in-app browser, slow pages and people who tap back quickly. A gap concentrated in one placement is the signal to act on (invalid traffic).

• Placement breakdown. Audience Network spend is zero after an account-level exclusion, or trending down after a value rule.
• Limited spend. Every Sales and Leads ad set has the limited spend box unticked, or placement_soft_opt_out checked through the API.
• Clicks vs landing page views. The gap on Audience Network is no wider than on your other placements.
• Publisher report. Re-pull the Publisher Delivery Report after 29 days and look for new apps.
• Cost per result. Compare cost per result for two to four weeks before and after the change.

If Audience Network still shows spend after an account-level exclusion, check that all three Audience Network placements were excluded, not only classic.

Should You Exclude Audience Network at All?

For Sales and Leads campaigns optimized to on-site conversions, many advertisers exclude it. For app-install or reach goals, measure by placement first, because Audience Network may carry results you would lose. The full case, including where the risk sits, is on our page about why Audience Network carries more invalid traffic.

What ClickFortify Does on Meta

Placement controls decide where your ads can run. They do not tell you whether the people who click are real.

ClickFortify works on the landing-page path: it validates the traffic that reaches your site, detects fake leads submitted through your own forms, builds audience exclusions so flagged visitors stop seeing your ads, and sends fraud-filtered conversions to Meta through the Conversions API, so Meta optimizes on real results. It does not block IP addresses on Meta, because Meta has no way to exclude IP addresses. Native Instant Form submissions never load your site, so validate those leads in your CRM; see fake leads from Meta lead ads.

Setup takes under five minutes, and there is a 7-day free trial with no credit card. See Meta Ads protection and how fraud-filtered conversions through CAPI work.

The Short Version

Work in this order: exclude the three Audience Network placements in account-level Placement Controls, untick limited spend on excluded placements in any Sales or Leads ad set where it still appears, block the worst apps with a publisher block list, use a value rule only where nothing else is available, then verify in the placement breakdown.

Last checked: 13 October 2026. Meta has not published an official statement on removing ad-set placement exclusions as of that date.