Post-Processing for Ad Creation and Edits

Updated: Jun 26, 2026

Prior to v4.0, ad buying could cause system timeout, out of memory errors or delays. To scale the system, Meta decoupled logic that requires significant computation and that causes transient errors into a separate workflow called post-processing. Now when you create or edit ads, it is more resilient to transient errors. The following diagram shows the post-processing workflow:

Figure 1: Ad creation workflow with post-processing phase.

To represent a post-processing phase after a request is received, v4.0 introduces the ads run status IN-PROCESS. This new status applies to:

• {campaign_ID},
• {ad_set_ID},
• {ad_ID} and
• {ad_creative_ID}.

For campaigns, ad sets and ads, this impacts:

Field	v4.0 and above	Below v4.0
effective_status (enum {ACTIVE, PAUSED, DELETED, PENDING_REVIEW, DISAPPROVED, PREAPPROVED, PENDING_BILLING_INFO, CAMPAIGN_PAUSED, ARCHIVED, ADSET_PAUSED, WITH_ISSUES, IN_PROCESS})	IN_PROCESS	For campaigns or ad sets: configured_status or status. For ads: pending_review.
configured_status enum {ACTIVE, PAUSED, DELETED, ARCHIVED}	No change	No change
status (enum {ACTIVE, PAUSED, DELETED, ARCHIVED})	No change	No change

The post-processing phase appears in effective_status for campaigns, ad sets and ads, and in the status field for ad creatives. For example, you can query the status of your object at /creative_id?fields=status. If it is in the post-processing phase, you see:

{
 "status": "IN-PROCESS",
 "id": "<creative_id>"
}

If your ad creative successfully passes post-processing, you see:

{
"status": "ACTIVE",
"id": "<creative_id>"
}

If post-processing fails, the system sets your object to WITH_ISSUES and provides an error in issues_info. For example, at creative_ID?fields=status, issues_info:

{
"status": "WITH_ISSUES",
"issues_info": [
{
"level": "CREATIVE",
"error_code": 1815869,
"error_summary": "Ad post is not available",
"error_message": "The Facebook post associated with your ad is not available. It may have been removed, or you may not have permission to view it." }
],
"id": "<creative_id>"
}

When an ad object is IN_PROCESS, you can still make regular updates to the object and its children.