Are Meta Advantage+ creative enhancements sabotaging your ads?
Facebook pitches them as AI-powered performance boosters, but in reality, many advertisers discover they distort ad copy, ruin brand visuals, and waste budget. Your ad creative is your brand’s first impression. It’s the visual and emotional hook that captures attention in a crowded news feed.
When you invest time and money into professional design, the last thing you want is an algorithm altering your hard work. This article is a comprehensive meta ads creative audit, breaking down each specific Meta Advantage+ creative enhancements and revealing why you should likely turn most of them off to protect your brand and your ad budget.
Table of Contents
What Are Meta Advantage+ Creative Enhancements?
These enhancements are a suite of AI-powered tools designed to optimize ad creatives for better performance automatically. Found at the ad level within Meta Ads Manager, they use machine learning to create personalized variations of your ads. Instead of you manually creating versions for every placement and audience segment, the AI can make adjustments on your behalf. This includes modifying elements such as:
- Visuals: Adding overlays with promotional text, background music to videos, or even 3D motion effects to static images.
- Media: Automatically cropping images for different aspect ratios or applying filters to videos.
- Ad Copy: Rearranging your primary text, headlines, and descriptions to find a combination that resonates with the user.
The goal is to simplify the ad creation process, increase engagement, and ultimately lower your cost-per-result by showing the “most relevant” version of your ad to each person.
Visual & Dynamic Enhancements
In this part of the Meta Advantage+ creative enhancements audit, we’ll cover the visual tools like overlays, touch-ups, and animations.
Add Overlays (formerly Image Templates)
This feature adds a text overlay to your static image creative. Meta’s goal is to make your message more visible, especially on feed placements.
Risk Level: High
The Verdict: Turn it off.
Design multiple versions of your creative with the text natively embedded for each placement. For example, a 1:1 image with text for the Feed and a 9:16 image with text for Reels. This maintains brand control and ensures a clean look.
Visual Touch-ups & Adjust Brightness and Contrast
These features automatically crop and expand your media to fit more placements and adjust the brightness and color.
Risk Level: High
The Verdict: Turn them off if you have professional creatives.
A professional advertiser should already be creating high-resolution creatives optimized for different placements (e.g., 1:1 for the feed, 9:16 for Stories/Reels, 4:5 for Instagram). When you have a dedicated designer or a creative team, you don’t need these. The best strategy is to prepare your own assets to ensure they’re perfect for every screen and placement.
Image Animation & 3D Animation
What they do: These enhancements automatically add subtle motion to your static images, turning them into short videos. This could be a zoom, a pan, or a strange 3D animation that adds a pulsating effect.
Risk Level: Medium
The Verdict: Experiment with caution.
If you want to use motion, a better strategy is to create a short, purpose-built video. For example, a simple product unboxing or a quick before-and-after clip. This gives you complete control over the narrative and visual appeal, rather than leaving it up to an unpredictable algorithm.
Music & Add Video Filter
What they do: Music adds a soundtrack to your image or video ads, while Add Video Filter enhances the color and visual sharpness of your videos.
Risk Level: High
The Verdict: Turn them off.
If you are running a video ad, manually select a licensed track that aligns with your brand’s tone. If your ad is an image, it’s best to let it run silently. The user is in control of their phone’s audio, and a randomly selected song can be jarring or even hilarious in a bad way. The story of a spin instructor who ran an ad for her high-energy class, only to have the AI add horror film background music, is a perfect example of this.
Textual & Behavioral Enhancements
When testing Meta Advantage+ creative enhancements, copy-based changes like Text Improvements can be even riskier. Meta’s AI can also interfere with your carefully crafted ad copy and messaging. This is a crucial part of any meta ads creative audit and can impact your campaign’s performance.
Text Improvements
This feature enables Meta to combine and modify your primary text, headlines, and descriptions as needed. It will also “highlight key sentences” and use AI to identify phrases it believes will perform well.
Risk Level: Extreme
The Verdict: Turn this enhancement off.
A good copywriter knows that every word has a purpose and every line has a place. You write your headline to grab attention, your primary text to tell a story or present an offer, and your description to provide less critical information like “free shipping” or a “30-day money-back guarantee.” When you activate this enhancement, that entire structure is thrown out the window.
In one account, we tested disabling text improvements, which resulted in a 26% increase in ROAS when A/B testing the same ad with and without the enhancement. This is a prime example of an algorithm lacking the strategic intent of a human marketer.
Relevant Comments
This feature automatically displays the “most relevant” comment below your ad on Facebook and Instagram.
Risk Level: Medium-High
The Verdict: Turn it off.
The comment section is an extension of your ad, and you should be actively moderating it to ensure a professional and positive environment. The best strategy is to encourage positive comments through your ad copy, and then respond to and manage them yourself. This puts you in full control of your social proof.
Enhance CTA & Highlight Promo Codes
What they do: These features pull key phrases from your ad and pair them with your call-to-action (CTA) button, most commonly in Stories. The “Highlight promo codes” feature specifically highlights an offer code from your website.
Risk Level: Low
The Verdict: Generally harmless, but always check previews.
These can be useful for optimizing Meta ads creatives for specific placements. However, it’s essential to check the ad previews to ensure they are pulling the correct information. The best practice is to manually create ad copy that clearly and compellingly communicates your offer, avoiding the need for AI to guess your intent.
Translate Text
This feature automatically translates your ad’s text and headlines for people who speak a different language. Meta uses AI to generate translations that are most relevant to the user’s language setting.
Risk Level: Medium-High
The Verdict: Turn it off.
For true localization, it’s always best to work with a native-speaking copywriter. A human can capture cultural nuances, idioms, and brand voice that a machine translation tool simply cannot. If you must use automation for a test, be sure to preview the translations carefully and consider using a professional localization service for your core campaigns.
Strategic Enhancements
Not all meta creative enhancements are created equal. Some, while still needing careful consideration, can offer real benefits under the right circumstances.
Add Catalog Items
This feature displays items from your product catalog alongside your ad creative.
- Risk Level: Low-Medium
- The Verdict: Use with caution.
If your ad is laser-focused on selling a single product, displaying other items can distract the user and lead to a lower conversion rate. However, if your ad is meant to promote a collection, this is a great tool. Be mindful of which catalog and product set are chosen, as you could inadvertently display a product from a different client’s catalog if you are not careful.
Site Links
This feature extracts links from throughout your website and displays them below your ad.
- Risk Level: Extreme
- The Verdict: Always turn this off.
Every effective campaign has a clear conversion funnel. The goal is to drive the user to a specific, high-intent landing page. Allowing an algorithm to direct them to a “Shipping & Returns” page or a blog post will harm your conversions and waste your ad budget. As conversion experts have long noted, a clean, distraction-free funnel is key to a higher conversion rate.
Summary of Enhancements: The Mini Playbook
| Enhancement | What It Does | Risk Level | Verdict | Safer Alternative |
| Add Overlays | Adds text to your images. | High | Turn off | Design text into the creative. |
| Visual Touch-ups | Crops & adjusts media. | High | Turn off | Manually prepare placement-specific assets. |
| Image/3D Animation | Adds motion to static images. | Medium | Experiment with caution | Create a custom video or GIF. |
| Music/Video Filter | Adds sound & visual filters. | High | Turn off | Manually select a licensed track or use no sound. |
| Text Improvements | Scrambles ad headlines & body. | Extreme | Turn off | Manually write and test specific ad copy. |
| Relevant Comments | Highlights a comment below the ad. | Medium-High | Turn off | Actively moderate and respond to comments yourself. |
| Enhance CTA | Dynamically changes CTA button. | Low | Use with caution | Manually write a compelling CTA. |
| Add Catalog Items | Shows catalog products in the ad. | Low-Medium | Use with caution | Ensure it’s only enabled for collection-based campaigns. |
| Site Links | Adds random links from your site. | Extreme | Always turn off | Link to one, high-intent landing page. |
Conclusion: Don’t Pay to Train the Algorithm
Meta’s AI, especially its Meta Advantage+ creative enhancements, is powerful and continually improving. Over time, these advantages, combined with a creative review tool, may become indispensable. But for now, they often lack the strategic nuance that a human marketer brings to the table. As a prominent industry expert recently wrote, the algorithm is literal; it will do exactly what you ask, even if it’s not what you want.
The ultimate lesson here is simple: Don’t pay Meta to train its algorithm for free. Instead, use your ad spend to achieve your own goals. The most successful advertisers are those who utilize automation as a supplement to their strategy, rather than a replacement for it. The key to a successful meta ads creative audit is to start with a manual, clean ad creative. If you have an ad that is performing well, consider A/B testing a version with one or two of these enhancements turned on. Then, and only then, can you make a data-driven decision for yourself. The key is never to relinquish your creative control.
If you’ve tested these enhancements, share your results below. I’m compiling real-world data for a future update, and may feature your case study (with credit) in the next audit.
In other words: let Meta’s AI assist, but never let it lead.
FAQ: Quick Answers on Meta Ads Creative
What are Meta Advantage+ creative enhancements?
They’re a suite of AI-driven tools that automatically modify ad creatives by changing elements like text, images, and video to try and improve performance.
Which Meta creative enhancements should advertisers turn off?
Most experienced marketers recommend turning off enhancements that directly alter your creative’s core message or design, such as “Text Improvements,” “Add Overlays,” and “Site Links.”
Do Meta creative enhancements improve ROAS?
While Meta states these enhancements can lower cost-per-result, they can also disrupt your brand message and funnel, potentially leading to a lower Return on Ad Spend (ROAS).
How do you optimize Meta ads creative?
The best way to optimize your ad creative is through continuous A/B testing, focusing on creating high-quality, placement-specific assets, and using data from your analytics to guide your creative decisions.
Should you use Meta Advantage+ automation for creatives?
You should only use these automation tools if you have a clear understanding of what they do and are willing to sacrifice some creative control. For most advertisers, a manual approach with limited, intentional automation is a safer and more effective strategy.
What’s the best way to test Meta creative enhancements?
The best way to test is by using an A/B test (split test) within Ads Manager. Compare a control ad with a specific enhancement turned on in the test version. This allows you to isolate the enhancement’s impact on your key metrics.
Are Meta Advantage+ creative enhancements worth using in 2025?
Meta Advantage+ creative enhancements can be useful in very specific cases, but they’re rarely a must-use feature for professional advertisers. If your brand lacks design resources or you’re running low-budget campaigns with minimal creative variations, these tools can provide quick optimization. However, for most advertisers with a strong brand identity, they often cause more harm than good by distorting visuals, scrambling copy, or weakening conversion funnels. The safest approach in 2025 is to run your own high-quality creatives and then selectively A/B test one or two Meta Advantage+ creative enhancements to see if they genuinely lift performance.
