Defaults are deciding for you, and the bill comes to you

Most of this week’s important news wasn’t a product launch. It was a setting: the default. Meta and Google are switching on what AI adds to your ads before you have a say, and the responsibility for the result stays with you. In the same week, Meta’s test of putting Facebook links behind a subscription turned out to reach pages it was meant to spare, and the route for WhatsApp promotions changed. In Turkey, where I work, a local company launched an ad platform with the opposite pitch: you stay in control.

Meta’s AI edits, your liability

Last issue I said I’d watch the final text of Meta’s commercial terms, which take effect on October 30. On October 22, PPC Land relayed an Adweek report that the revised terms add a new “AI Features” section. Under it, advertisers are “solely responsible” for whatever Meta’s AI features create or change in their ads, including features Meta switches on itself. The earlier wording, as Adweek quotes it, applied only when advertisers chose to use the tools. The full section hasn’t been published, and PPC Land says it could not retrieve Meta’s preview to check it.

Agencies say this is already live. According to the same report, the agency Exverus has seen Meta’s AI add sitelinks, translate copy and build images and carousels from a brand’s own photos, sometimes on ads where nobody turned the feature on. Ryan Adams of Exverus says some options sit in hidden or collapsed menus: “If every one of those isn’t manually unchecked, the enhancements still apply.” A Meta spokesperson didn’t directly answer the liability question and said individual Advantage+ features can be turned off at any time. One more date: on October 28, Meta turns on product browsing in existing ads, sending some people to an in-app product page instead of your site unless you opt out.

All this lands four weeks before Black Friday on November 27. I read it as the job of policing settings moving to you too. My suggestion: this week, open the Advantage+ creative settings in each active campaign and look at the live ad the way a customer would.

Google: your account-level “no” stops at new campaigns

On October 21, Dora Sun of the Google Ads API team wrote on the Google Ads Developer Blog that from December 4, 2026, image extraction will be on by default for new Performance Max campaigns, PPC Land reported on October 22. The feature scans your landing pages for high-resolution images and uses them across Search, YouTube, Display, Discover, Gmail and Maps. If you turned off dynamic images for the whole account, new campaigns no longer inherit that choice. Existing campaigns keep their settings.

Two risks stand out. Google asks advertisers to confirm they hold the rights to use those images for advertising, and as PPC Land notes, a stock licence that covers your website may not cover a YouTube or Gmail ad. In the API, an update to this setting replaces the entire list of automation settings, so a careless one can wipe text asset automation.

To me this is about hierarchy, not images. A “no” said once for the account now has to be repeated for every new campaign. If an agency or a tool builds your campaigns, make sure the opt-out is in the template before December 4.

Your Gmail may become an ad signal

The Verge reported on October 23, based on a change spotted by Android Authority, that Google’s privacy policy gained an exception as of October 16. Its promise not to use Drive, Gmail or Google Photos for personalized ads now carries the clause “unless you choose to make data from these services available” to ad-supporting services. People who linked those services to AI Mode through Personal Intelligence may see ads based on that content. Advertisers don’t get the data or identifying details, and The Verge writes that Google won’t show ads based on sensitive categories such as religion or health.

You can disconnect apps or disable Personalized Recommendations on the Search Services Personalization settings page. For me the real story is the thinning wall between what you tell an AI assistant and how ads find you. I could not confirm whether this applies to users in Turkey.

Facebook’s paid links reach pages they weren’t meant for

Engadget reported on October 23 that Meta’s test of charging for links on Facebook has hit pages that are supposed to be exempt. The library page of Greenville, Texas, was told it could add links to only two posts a month, and small nonprofits got the same limit. The offered fix is Meta One: $49.99 a month buys eight Facebook links, $149.99 buys 20, and unlimited links come only at $499.99. Personal profiles are exempt. Meta has been testing paid linking for nearly a year.

For one nonprofit, California Freethought Day, the limit lifted this week without explanation, after its big fundraiser had passed. My takeaway: a free feature can move into a paid bundle without anyone asking you. If your Page drives traffic to your site, strengthen a channel you own, such as an email list.

WhatsApp promotions need a new route

PPC Land reported on October 22 that Meta published a developer blog post by Sascha Noll on October 21. Marketing messages sent through the WhatsApp Cloud API stop working on October 13, 2027 and must move to the Marketing Messages API for WhatsApp. Service, authentication and utility messages, like order updates, stay put. Meta says most integrations take about two weeks.

PPC Land also found a date the post leaves out: under Meta’s documentation, Messaging accounts created on or after April 13, 2027 can’t send marketing messages on the Cloud API at all. Templates Meta reclassifies from utility to marketing must go through the new API too. Optimization features don’t work in places including the European Economic Area and the UK. Turkey isn’t on that list as reported.

The trap is classification, not the calendar. Ask your WhatsApp solution provider this week how they will route reclassified templates.

Turkey: Hopi turns shopping data into an ad platform

Marketing Türkiye, a Turkish trade publication, reported on October 23 that Hopi launched Hopi Ads, which the company calls Turkey’s first end-to-end self-serve ad platform. Social media, programmatic networks, ad space in the Hopi app and partners’ inventory run as one campaign. CEO Elif Ateşok Şatıroğlu says it draws on shopping data from 21 million users and more than 300 brands. Deputy general manager Cenk Çınar puts retail media’s share of digital ad spend at 2.3 percent in Turkey and 10 percent in Europe. The report gives no source for those figures.

Murat Altuntaş, Hopi’s director of ad technology, says the AI assistant suggests while control “always stays with the brand or agency” (my translation). That’s a company promise, and we’ll see how it holds up. Read next to the rest of this week, I find it telling that a local player is selling control as the feature.

What the week leaves behind

Meta and Google are making AI edits to your ads the default and leaving the consequences with you. Links on Facebook, promotions on WhatsApp, data in Gmail: in each case the platform writes the rule. Where I land is this. A default setting is the platform’s strategy, not yours, and checking the settings menu regularly is now part of running ads.

What I’ll be watching:

• The full text of the “AI Features” section in Meta’s commercial terms.
• Whether Google tells account holders directly about the image extraction change.
• Whether Meta makes paid Facebook links permanent.
• The first advertiser results from Hopi Ads.