Meta may add website discounts to your ads. Here is the setting to check

What happened

Meta can take a discount it finds on your website and show it inside your Facebook or Instagram ads. That includes a copy of an ad where you had switched promotions off on the original, according to PPC Land, which reported a LinkedIn post by Bram Van der Hallen, a Meta advertising specialist who works in digital marketing at Edge.be.

The control sits in Commerce Manager, under Settings and then Offer merchandising. It is a checkbox called "Detected offers", and it applies to all ads. Turning promotions off on one ad does not settle the question, because the switch that decides it is not on the ad itself.

Van der Hallen's advice was blunt: "if you want to take back full control, be sure to disable this option in Commerce Manager."

The post does not cite a Meta announcement, and it does not say when the setting appeared or whether it is switched on by default. Meta has not said whether it is on by default, according to PPC Land. Treat the post as a practitioner's observation, not a company statement.

What it means for you

The report also includes a notice that appears when you duplicate an ad. It reads: "Eligible promotions can appear with your new ad, even though promotions are turned off for your original ad. Manage or turn off promotions anytime in Commerce Manager."

So a choice you made on one ad does not necessarily travel with the copy. Copying an ad is a routine action. Media buyers copy ads to move them between ad sets, to relaunch winning creative, or to test a variation.

The report says this matters for any business advertising on Meta with more than one offer live. A discount meant for one campaign or one audience could show up somewhere else.

What to do this week:

• Open Commerce Manager, go to Settings, then Offer merchandising, and look at the "Detected offers" checkbox.
• Decide whether you want Meta picking up offers from your website at all. If not, untick it, as Van der Hallen recommends.
• Look at your live ads and any recent copies for a discount you did not write yourself.
• If you do want Meta to show your offers, make sure the offer on your website is one you are happy to honour in every ad.

Where MarketRead fits

The lesson here is that what is on your website can end up in your ads. It pays to see your ads before they run, not after.

MarketRead shows you your ads free with no sign-up, made from your own website. You can look at what it makes before you decide anything.

That does not change Meta's own settings. The Commerce Manager checkbox is Meta's, and it is worth checking whichever way you run your ads.