Meta Pauses New Ad and Business Terms Set for Nov. 20

Meta has paused updated ad and business terms that were scheduled to take effect on Nov. 20, leaving advertisers and business users operating under existing agreements — several of which already grant Meta the right to crawl their websites for purposes including "research and training." The pause, first reported by Nieman Lab on Nov. 5, means no business placing ads on Meta platforms will be asked to accept new terms before that date.

A Meta spokesperson said: "We're pausing the changes as we continue to engage with stakeholders and take our time to get this right." As of Nov. 10, Meta had set no timeline for revised terms, nor had it said how much of the paused text might change.

Which terms are on hold?

The Meta Business Help Center notice covers four documents: the Commercial Terms, Product Catalog Terms, Self-Serve Ad Terms and Ad Creative Generative AI Terms. According to the notice, the updates "are now paused and will not take effect on November 20, 2026." Each of the four existing documents' pages now opens with a line stating the updates are on hold.

When checked on Nov. 10, the U.S. and UK English previews of the updated Commercial Terms and Self-Serve Ad Terms returned a "page isn't available" message.

What crawling rights exist right now?

The picture differs by document. The Commercial Terms currently in force, dated March 6, 2024, contain no crawling paragraph at all. The paused version would have added one covering sites associated with a business's products or services. Those terms apply to any business use, including managing a Facebook Page.

The Self-Serve Ad Terms, dated Aug. 22, 2025, are different. They already include a crawling grant: by placing an ad order, an advertiser gives Meta the right to "access, index, cache, analyze or crawl" content on its domains. Listed uses include developing advertising and other business-related products, "research and training," and maintaining the integrity of Meta's products.

The Ad Creative Generative AI Terms, dated May 6, 2024, also permit Meta to crawl URLs that advertisers provide, for use with their ads.

One practical gap for practitioners: the current ad terms granting the crawling allowance make no mention of robots.txt.

What happened to the AI Features section?

Adweek reported in October that the suspended Commercial Terms included a new section called AI Features. Under it, advertisers would have been "solely responsible" for all results produced by Meta's AI features — including features Meta enables automatically — and for all changes those features make.

The liability framing in force today is narrower. The Ad Creative Generative AI Terms tie responsibility to the advertiser's own actions: when an advertiser uses or posts AI-generated content, they are "solely responsible" for determining whether the output is correct and suitable for public display.

A Meta spokesperson told Adweek that advertisers can opt out of individual Advantage+ features at any time from within their Ads Manager account.

Does robots.txt still matter?

Meta says it has made no changes to its crawling methods, and that content owners retain the same options to express crawl preferences via robots.txt. Meta's crawler documentation identifies Meta-ExternalAds for ads and other business products, and Meta-ExternalAgent for uses such as training foundation AI models. The documentation includes robots.txt rules naming both crawlers, so advertisers and site owners should review how their robots.txt files handle each one. The same page notes that two of Meta's other crawlers might skip robots.txt in certain situations.

What are regulators doing?

The pause follows mounting legal and regulatory pressure. According to Nieman Lab, courts in Brazil and Norway have entered preliminary injunctions against the terms following complaints from press organizations. In the UK, the Competition and Markets Authority confirmed its investigation remains open — covering both Meta's current business terms and the proposed changes. The CMA's first fact-gathering phase is currently scheduled to run through January 2027, though that timeline is subject to revision.

For advertisers, the immediate implication is operational continuity rather than relief: the existing crawling grants under the Aug. 22 Self-Serve Ad Terms continue to apply each time a new ad order is placed. Meta says it is still talking to the parties involved and will share an update when it has more to say — which means the Nov. 20 deadline passes with the sharper liability language and expanded crawling paragraph shelved, but not withdrawn.