What’s actually changing

1. Four agreements become two. Meta’s announcement says the Product Catalog Terms are being folded into the Meta Commercial Terms, and the Ad Creative Generative AI Terms into the Self-Serve Ad Terms, to reduce overlap and make the terms clearer.

2. Meta can crawl your website. The new Commercial Terms include a paragraph that lets Meta use automated crawlers to access and index the web pages connected to your products or services. Meta can then use that content to develop, improve and train its products. A Meta spokesperson said the update only consolidates terms that already existed elsewhere.

3. AI creative tools come with a wide licence. If you use Meta’s Ad Creative AI tools, you give Meta a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to use whatever you put into them

4. Your campaigns can be part of Meta’s tests. Under the Self-Serve Ad Terms, Meta can run tests that affect formatting, relevance, pricing, reporting, targeting and delivery. So if your CPMs move suddenly, your setup may not be the only reason.

5. If you keep advertising, you’ve accepted. The terms say that continuing to use the Self-Serve Ad Interfaces counts as accepting the changes. The only way to opt out is to stop using Meta products for business.

What it means for Indian advertisers

No India-specific rule. The update isn’t India-only. What varies by country is the contracting entity, local law and industry regulation. Outside the US and Canada, Meta Platforms Ireland Limited generally provides the ad tools.

Get AI disclosure right. Ads Manager now has AI-disclosure options for campaigns targeting India, in line with India’s updated intermediary rules on synthetically generated content. If you tick the self-disclosure box, the AI Info label appears next to “Sponsored” instead of being hidden in a menu

Treat compliance as three separate layers: Meta’s terms, Meta’s ad policies, and Indian law. Approval from Meta doesn’t make an ad RERA- or ASCI-com

The US election blackout doesn’t apply to you. Meta’s 27 October to 3 November freeze on new political and social-issue ads covers the US only

Your pre-30 October checklist

1. Read the updated terms in Ads Manager.

2. Check which pages on your website are public. Nothing confidential should be crawlable.

3. Before uploading client or unreleased assets to Meta’s AI tools, confirm you have the rights to use them.

4. Turn on AI disclosure for any AI-generated or AI-edited creative aimed at India.

5. Agencies: write down who owns each ad account, catalog and creative.

The bottom line: this is a contract update, not a new ban. But it gives Meta more room to use your content. Spend 30 minutes reviewing it now so you aren’t surprised later.

Want your ad account reviewed before the deadline? Write to ask@madsocial.in.