Navigating Meta in 2026

How to use AI agents directly in ads manager to perform BAU tasks 

Meta acquired Manus AI last month to strengthen its AI agent capabilities. Manus is built to handle practical marketing tasks like report generation, audience research, and workflow support the kinds of repeatable, time-consuming activities that advertisers deal with daily. 

Meta is moving forward with its rollout of Manus AI inside Ads Manager, and it’s starting to actively surface the feature to advertisers. 

Some users are now seeing in-stream prompts highlighting Manus functionality. While Manus has technically been available to all advertisers via the “Tools” section, Meta is clearly shifting from passive availability to active promotion.

The goal: drive adoption and make AI a visible, embedded part of the ad workflow. 

The deeper play here isn’t just feature expansion. It’s positioning AI as a measurable performance driver. 

Meta is investing heavily in AI, with spending at historic levels. While consumer-facing AI tools like image and video generation grab headlines, they aren’t yet meaningful revenue engines. Advertising, however, is different. If AI can demonstrably improve campaign performance, streamline execution, or unlock new efficiencies, that creates immediate business impact and clearer ROI. 

That’s where Manus fits. By embedding AI agents directly into Ads Manager, Meta can: 

• Show tangible performance gains tied to AI 
• Increase advertiser efficiency 
• Reinforce the value of its broader AI investments 

For advertisers, the upside is practical with faster reporting, sharper insights, and potentially more optimized campaigns without additional manual effort. 

Whether Manus becomes a must-have tool remains to be seen. But as Meta pushes AI deeper into the advertising stack, this integration represents a meaningful step and likely worth testing to evaluate its impact on workflow and results. 

Skippable Instagram Reels 

The limited test is designed to explore whether the format helps users discover businesses. A visible countdown timer appears before the ad, followed by a “Skip” button. Tapping it sends users back to the beginning of the Reel. Meta declined to share how long the test would run or whether creators would eventually see revenue. 

Huge Meta AI ad update  

Meta recently rolled out a major update to its Andromeda AI advertising system in 2026 part of the platform’s move toward more advanced, AI-driven ad delivery. This isn’t just a tweak to settings it’s a fundamental change in how Meta decides who sees your ads.

Meta now looks mainly at what your ad is actually about. Its AI analyses the images, video, text, and even the overall feel of your ad, then shows it to people who are most likely to care about that message.

In short: Meta decides who sees your ad based on the meaning of your creative, not the audience settings you pick. 

Because of this, tightly controlled targeting and lots of small ad sets can actually hurt performance. Meta’s system works better when it has more freedom to learn, so broader campaigns with fewer restrictions tend to perform best. The quality and clarity of your ads matter more than ever if your creative clearly communicates a problem, desire, or offer, Meta’s system will find the right people automatically. Many advertisers saw performance swings during the rollout as Meta re-learned how to match ads to users. 

To succeed going forward, businesses need to focus on strong, clear creative rather than clever targeting tricks. That means testing different ad angles, keeping messages simple and specific, and making sure your landing page matches what the ad promises. If the ad and the page tell the same story, Meta’s system sees that as a strong signal.

The takeaway is simple: good ads get rewarded, vague or confusing ones get ignored.

Meta isn’t making advertising harder it’s just shifting the focus back to clear messaging and real customer relevance. 

TikTok GMV max results are in    

TikTok has recently introduced GMV Max  an AI-powered advertising solution for TikTok Shop designed to automatically optimise campaigns for total sales value (Gross Merchandise Value) rather than traditional metrics like clicks or impressions. Unlike older TikTok Shop ad types, GMV Max combines organic content, paid ads, and affiliate videos into one unified system that automatically decides which products and creatives to promote, where to show them, and how to allocate budget to hit your target ROI and maximise incremental revenue.  

In a recent study of UK brands, TikTok reported that advertisers using GMV Max saw an average of +15% revenue uplift and +8% ROI gain, with some individual cases experiencing much higher performance. The platform measured this using causal analysis to isolate the impact of GMV Max, meaning it compared actual results against a statistical “what would have happened without it.”  

To get the best results, brands are encouraged to meet minimum activation thresholds (e.g., consistent budget over time), allow the system to auto-select creatives (giving it more options to test and scale), and support campaigns with high-quality product listings and engaging creative content.

Creative best practices include:

• Product demonstrations
• Clear offers
• Social proof
• Influencer collaborations
• Local relevance

All of which help the AI find patterns that drive conversions.  

As paid social becomes more sophisticated, understanding new tools and settings is key.

Our team at Summit works with clients to not just implement these updates, but also develop strategies that drive results, from creative development to campaign scaling. 

Speak with the Summit team today to start working with our Paid Social team of experts.