Meta final-week political ad block: finish video early

Meta says it will block new political, electoral and social issue ads during the final week of the US election campaign. Ads that had at least one impression before the restriction period may keep running. So every cut you want to run has to be finished, disclosed and live, with at least one impression, before that week starts.

Rules below are from Meta's 2026 midterms post, read 2026-09-30. Sume's side comes from its Timeline and bulk runs docs. This is not legal advice.

What does Meta require for these ads?

Political advertisers must complete an authorization process and include a "paid for by" disclaimer; ads are stored in the Ad Library for seven years. Advertisers must also disclose when they use AI to create or alter ads about elections, politics or social issues. When disclosed, Meta adds information to both the ad and its Ad Library entry.

What does a production calendar look like?

Count back from the first day of the restricted week, not from election day.

How can I render many variants before the deadline?

Timeline 1.0 has an unbilled compile preflight, POST /v1/timeline-1.0/plan, that returns duration, segment count and the estimated cost before anything is reserved. A render is $0.10 per output minute. Renders are async by default, so a batch can run overnight. For many variants, a bulk run queues up to 100 Format runs server-side with a concurrency of 1 to 16; see Format bulk runs.

What should I record for the AI disclosure?

For each cut, note whether AI created or altered it, and keep the Sume job ids next to the file names. That way the answer you give in the disclosure toggle matches how the video was made. The platform-by-platform view is in the disclosure checklist.