How to duplicate Facebook ads and campaigns (and what actually gets copied)

Updated November 14, 2026

Short answer: Duplicating in Meta Ads Manager copies your campaign, ad set, or ad settings into a new object that goes through ad review and starts the learning phase from zero. A duplicated ad usually gets a new Page post, so likes and comments start again from zero; in our API tests every copy got its own new post. To keep existing engagement, create the ad with Use existing post and enter the original Post ID.

How to duplicate in Ads Manager step by step

You can duplicate at the Campaign, Ad Set, or Ad level inside one ad account:

1. Open Ads Manager and go to the Campaigns, Ad Sets, or Ads tab.
2. Check the box next to the object you want to copy and click Duplicate in the toolbar (or hover over the row and click Duplicate).
3. Choose where the copy should live: Original campaign (or Original ad set), Existing campaign, or New campaign.
4. Choose the number of copies and click Duplicate.
5. Edit the new draft settings (budget, audience, placements, or name) and click Publish.

Meta creates the copies inside the same ad account. If you want the same structure in another ad account, Ads Manager's native Duplicate button does not copy across ad accounts; teams typically export to a spreadsheet and import into the target account, or rebuild the campaign there.

What carries over and what resets

Practitioners often expect a duplicate to behave like a clone of the running ad's performance. In practice, Meta copies configuration, not auction history.

How to keep comments and reactions (Use existing post)

Because comments and reactions live on the underlying Page post rather than on the ad row, keeping social proof across multiple ad sets or campaigns requires pointing every copy to the same post ID:

1. Find the original ad in Ads Manager, click Preview, open the share/post menu, and choose Facebook Post with Comments (or view the Instagram post).
2. Copy the numeric Post ID from the post URL (or from Page Posts in Ads Manager).
3. Open the target ad set, click Create to add a new ad, and make sure the Identity section selects the exact Page that published the original post.
4. Under Ad setup, switch from Create ad to Use existing post.
5. Click Select post (or Enter post ID), paste the Post ID, confirm, and click Publish.

Two practical limits apply to Use existing post. First, certain conversion locations, dynamic creative setups, or destination configurations do not support using an existing post, so the option may be greyed out. Second, because all ads pointing to that Post ID share one comment thread, hiding or deleting a comment on the post affects every ad using it.

What Meta's API actually does when copying objects

Live Graph API measurements explain several surprises media buyers run into when duplicating ads at scale. The following checks were measured on a paused test ad account (Graph API v25.0) on October 24, 2026 across 41 POST /{id}/copies calls (28 accepted, 13 refused, all created test objects deleted afterwards), alongside single-object write probes on October 21, 2026:

• Copying an ad by creative description always creates a new post. Six consecutive copies of the same source ad produced six distinct Page posts with identical content. Attempting to force the same post ID through creative_parameters.object_story_id returned HTTP 500 (code 1). Because copying creates a post, the acting profile must hold at least the Advertiser role on the source ad's Page (10/3858749 if missing).
• Copying without explicit enhancement flags turns on Meta's defaults. When a carousel creative with only carousel_to_video enabled was copied without creative_parameters, Meta automatically enabled video_auto_crop, video_filtering, and video_uncrop on the copy. Passing the source creative's own degrees_of_freedom_spec preserved the exact enabled features. Conversely, older creatives carrying the deprecated standard_enhancements flag were refused (100/3858504) until that aggregate key was stripped.
• Synchronous deep copies cap at 3 total objects, not 3 child ads. Although Meta's documentation states 3 child ads for synchronous deep copy and 51 for async, live v25.0 tests accepted 1 ad set + 2 ads (3 objects total, 13.8 s) and 1 campaign + 1 ad set + 1 ad (3 objects, 11.8 s), while 1 ad set + 3 ads (4 objects) failed with 100/1885194 ("Copy request is too large"). Copying by level (shallow ad set first, then each ad into the new ad set) bypassed the limit.
• Dynamic Creative ad sets copy as empty shells. Deep-copying an ad set with Dynamic Creative returned HTTP 200 and a new ad set containing zero ads (verified 3 s and 18 s later), and copying its single ad separately failed with 100/1885553.
• Sources Meta accepts vs. refuses: Legacy MESSAGES objectives (100/2490462), objective mismatches (100/1815149), and copying an archived ad set into its own archived campaign (100/1487866) were refused. Copying an archived campaign (shallow), an archived ad, or an archived ad set into a live campaign of the same objective succeeded.
• What happens when you edit a copy right after creation: Measured on October 21, 2026 on paused test campaigns, creatives are immutable and any creative edit generates a new creative where omitted fields revert to defaults; a 52-field comparison showed url_tags (UTM macros) and contextual_multi_ads disappeared unless explicitly re-sent. In addition, sending a second edit POST to the same object within seconds triggers Meta's per-object concurrent rate limit (613/4841018, "1 calls per 30 seconds"), though sequential /{id}/copies calls on the same source ad did not trigger that source lock.

Editing duplicated ads across ad accounts

Multitool ADS does not create ads, bulk upload new campaigns, or duplicate ads; ad creation and duplication happen in Meta Ads Manager. Where Multitool ADS saves time is right after you have created or duplicated campaigns across multiple ad accounts.

Instead of opening ten accounts one by one to adjust budgets, swap creative media, update targeting, or fix URL tags on your new copies, Multitool ADS loads all accounts into one table. You can filter the newly duplicated objects across accounts, stage changes to status, budget, name, placements, creative media, targeting, bid strategy, or schedule in one dialog, and publish them in one step with per-object results. In the Creatives tab, copies across different ads and ad accounts that share the same image or video frames are grouped into one creative row with combined metrics.

You can test filtering and bulk-editing campaigns across multiple accounts in the Multitool ADS live demo, no account needed.

Sources: Marketing API Campaign Copies Reference, Marketing API Ad Set Copies Reference, Marketing API Ad Copies Reference, Meta for Developers: Changing Creative Fields When Duplicating Ads, Meta Business Help Center.