How to review an AI-generated Facebook ad before you approve it

Why review is the real work

Generation has made ads cheap to produce. It has not made them cheap to get wrong. A draft appears in moments and looks finished, which is exactly why it is tempting to wave it through. The reviewer is the only part of the process that knows the business: what is in stock, what was promised to whom, what the month can afford.

Five passes, in order

Make the passes in this sequence, since there is no point checking the budget on an ad whose picture shows the wrong product.

• Pass 1: the stranger's look. View the ad on a phone for a few seconds, then look away. Say aloud what was being offered. If you cannot, neither can a customer.
• Pass 2: the facts. Check price, date, product name, location and any claim against your own records, in the text and in any words inside the image.
• Pass 3: the link. Tap it. Confirm the page is the right one, loads promptly and agrees with the ad.
• Pass 4: the money. Take the daily budget, find the total it adds to the current month and to the following one, and hold both against the ceiling you set.
• Pass 5: the decision. Approve, ask for a named change, or reject. 'Leave it for now' is not one of the options.

Who should review

The reviewer should be whoever answers for the money. For a small business, that tends to be the owner. On a larger team, it is the holder of the budget the ad will draw on. When a colleague prepared the draft, the reviewer should be someone else, because people read their own work as they meant it and not as it is written.

It helps when the draft itself shows who made it. Then questions go to the right person, and nobody approves an ad believing a colleague already checked it.

Sending a draft back well

A returned draft should carry one clear instruction per problem: 'price should be $45, not $40', 'show the shop front, not a generic street', 'link to the booking page'. Vague returns produce vague revisions and a second review that takes as long as the first.

What a review cannot catch

A review confirms that the ad is accurate, affordable and pointed at the right page. It cannot tell you whether people will respond. Treat approval as permission to find out at a known cost, and put a date in the calendar to look at what happened.

Two things sit outside the draft and deserve a glance on the same day: whether the business can serve the customers the ad brings in, and whether another ad for the same offer is already running.

Where Link AI fits

Our recommendation for this step is Link AI by Linkme, since review is built into the flow Linkme publishes. The sample ad draft is headed 'Draft for Meta · by [team member]', states the daily budget next to the spend it adds, and sits under a 'Needs review' label. Launch on Meta comes after approval, not before.

Who exactly is able to approve, and how a draft goes back for changes, are details to see for yourself. See Link AI on your own accounts in a demo, and put a real draft through the five passes. The fourth pass has its own entry: reading the budget impact.

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