This is intentionally bad design…
Meta is burying manual placements, and it’s not clear if this is a test or the rollout of an official change.
In this version, the Placements section of your ad set appears to be locked in. If you click “Show more options,” you can click to edit Placement Controls and then be able to remove Audience Network and Messenger Stories placements (but no other placements).
One more click on “Switch to manual placements” (which is labeled “not recommended”), and it’s STILL more clicks away.
You need to click to edit each individual platform and then open a dropdown menu before you can finally remove other placements.
Meta is going way out of their way to prevent you from removing placements. It’s quite clear this is intentionally bad design to make it more difficult.
I’d be fine if Meta locked in Advantage+ Placements when optimizing for a conversion. The problem is for any type of top-of-funnel action. Meta will take advantage of weaknesses in placements to pad your numbers with low-quality actions.
An example of this is Audience Network when optimizing for link clicks or landing page views, so it’s good those placements are somewhat easy to remove.
There is NO REASON it should require five clicks (SERIOUSLY) to remove a placement.
What do you think?