How-to

Client approval for Meta ads: five ways agencies get sign-off before anything goes live

The client wants to see the ads before they run. Meta has exactly one approval gate, peer approval, and it belongs to the client's business portfolio, not to the agency. Around it sit preview links, Creative Hub mockups and paused ads, and each one breaks in a different place once a batch has forty ads in it. Here is what Meta documents, and which route fits which client.

Adlio teamPublished 24 September 2026Updated 24 October 20269 min read

The short answer

Meta has one native approval gate: peer approval. With "Extra protection" switched on for an ad account, every ad waits until a trusted user selects "I approve this ad" and publishes it. But it is a security setting of the business portfolio that owns the ad account, so for client work the client switches it on, picks the approvers and does the approving, and anyone with full control of their portfolio skips it. Everything else agencies use for sign-off sits around Meta rather than inside it (preview links for draft ads, Creative Hub mockups, ads created paused, or a tool with its own approval step), and which route fits depends on how many ads are in the batch and how much the client is willing to do in their own ad account.

Everything Meta-specific below is quoted from Meta's help centre and Marketing API reference, checked on 24 September 2026; the peer approval section was added and checked on 28 September 2026. Claims by other tools are their own, from their websites on 24 September 2026. Our recommendations are labelled as ours.

1. Peer approval: Meta's own gate, on the client's side

Meta: "You can add a second review before your ads are published with peer approval to help keep your business portfolio secure and prevent unauthorized activity. If you set up peer approval, ads must be reviewed by a trusted user of the ad account before they can be published." It lives under security, not under roles: in Meta Business Suite go to Settings, Security Center, Peer approval, then Manage next to Ad account security. Each ad account gets one of three levels:

Default protection: "Only suspicious ads require approval."
Extra protection: "requires that every ad needs approval before it can run". Meta recommends it "for ad accounts that have partners who advertise on behalf of the business or people with temporary access", which is an agency, described from the client's side.
Custom protection: "requires approval on an ad that is published above a budget you choose."

The approval itself happens in Ads Manager. Trusted users get "notifications in Ads Manager and an email from Meta for Business", open Review and publish, and then: "After reviewing budget, creative, URLs, and region, select I approve this ad, then select Publish."

What that means for an agency:

The client sets it up, not you. "To set up or edit peer approval, you must have full control of the business portfolio", and "The business portfolio must own the ad account you want to add peer approval to." A client account shared with your agency stays in the client's portfolio, so only the client can switch it on.
The approver sits on the client's side. "People with full control of the business portfolio are trusted users by default", and "People who have basic access to your portfolio, and access to the relevant ad account, can be added as a trusted user". Meta adds: "People who haven't been active on the ad account for 90 days or more are ineligible." In practice the approver is the client, or someone the client has given access to their portfolio (our reading).
Full control skips it. "Ads published by people with full control of the business portfolio do not require a second review." With Extra protection it holds the ads your team publishes, not those of the client's own people with full control.
It is a security check, not a review workflow. Meta's article describes approving and publishing. It does not describe comments, rejecting with feedback, or approving a whole batch in one go, and the client has to be at home in Ads Manager to do it.
Two things Meta does not state: whether ads created through the Marketing API, which is how launch tools create ads, are held for peer approval the same way, and whether ad account peer approval is available to every business portfolio.

Good for a client who wants a hard stop on their own side and works in Ads Manager anyway. It turns "please check before it runs" from a request into a rule.

2. A preview link from an Ads Manager draft

Meta presents this as a route for creative approval: "Generate a preview link for any draft ad in Meta Ads Manager for review and creative approval." The client sees "how your ad could look in different placements, across mobile and desktop".

What to know before you send one:

The client needs Facebook. Sharing "allows anyone with a Facebook profile, even people outside your business, to see your ad preview", and to open the link "you'll need to be logged into Facebook".
The link is temporary. Link sharing "is off by default"; you choose "30 days or 60 days", and "when your ad is published, your previews are no longer viewable on that link".
It is live, not a snapshot. "If you make changes to the unpublished ad, the changes will be reflected in your shared URL until the ad is published." What the client approved is whatever the draft looked like when they looked.
It shows one variation. "The preview you share will only include your original creative and one potential variation of your ad."
Not every format. "Pre-publish preview links are not supported for multi-media ads."
One ad at a time. Meta's share flow starts from a single ad ("For your ad, click Share in the top right"), and we found no Meta page describing one link for a whole batch. Forty ads means forty links (our reading).

Good for a handful of ads. Painful for a weekly batch.

3. A Creative Hub mockup

Creative Hub is Meta's tool for building ad mockups before anything exists in Ads Manager, and Meta says its previews "can streamline the approval process". You can "share a preview link of your mockup with people whether or not they are Meta Creative Hub collaborators".

The catches:

"Preview links aren't password protected" and they "expire after 3 months for security reasons".
"The preview link shows the latest version of your mockup so your client can see updates you make." To freeze what the client approved, Meta suggests duplicating the mockup.
Turning an approved mockup into an ad needs "an ad account role that allows you to advertise. For example, Advertiser or Admin", and some objectives are not supported ("Engagement (with the conversion location Facebook Page) and App promotion (Meta Advantage+ app campaigns)"), nor are "dynamic creative ads".

Good for concepts before production. It is a second place to build every ad, so it does not scale to batches.

4. A paused batch in the client's own ad account

Build the real ads, paused, in the client's account, and let approval be the moment someone switches them on.

Why it works:

Meta reviews at creation. "When an ad is created, it will first go through ad review, and will have the ad status PENDING_REVIEW before it finishes review and reverts back to your selected status of ACTIVE or PAUSED." Meta even recommends paused during testing "so as to not incur accidental spend". So Meta's review runs while your client is still looking. More on that timing in Facebook ad review in bulk.
The client sees the real thing. "If you own the ad account, you automatically have the Admin role", and Admins "can view all ads and campaigns". Paused ads show "Off" in the Delivery column.
Approval leaves a record. Switching on is a toggle, and Ads Manager's activity history logs run status changes ("when you pause, resume or delete your ad"), with who did it. How to read that log is in who changed this Meta ad.

The catches:

The client needs a role in their account and some comfort in Ads Manager. A client with only view access (Analyst, or "View performance" in the business portfolio) can look but not switch anything on, per Meta's role descriptions.
Edits after approval restart review: Meta's triggers include "Creative (for example, images, text, links or videos)". Freeze the batch once it is approved.

This route works at any batch size, because the batch is already built.

5. An approval tool

Some launch tools add their own approval step, one the client can use without working in Ads Manager. From their own pages:

Kitchn: "Preview the real ad, with every variant and placement, then comment and approve in one place. No staging campaigns; no preview links." Its pricing page lists "Client Approvals" under an Agency Suite whose price is not published. See our Kitchn comparison.
AdManage: "One link. Every ad. No Business Manager login." and "No login and no Meta account required." See our AdManage comparison.

On their public pages, Ads Uploader, Rapid Ads and Blip do not offer a client approval step or a client preview link (checked 24 September 2026). Blip describes the paused route instead: "Launching paused is a safe way to review a batch in Ads Manager before it spends."

Side by side

Route	Client needs	Fine for a 40-ad batch	Record of the approval	Main catch
Peer approval (Meta)	Full control of their portfolio to switch it on, and a trusted user who approves in Ads Manager	Not stated: Meta describes approval per ad	Inside Meta; where the approval is logged is not stated	The client's setting, full control skips it, API-created ads not stated
Draft preview link	A Facebook login	No, one link per ad	Your own email or chat	Link is live until publish, then dies
Creative Hub mockup	The link (mobile preview needs the Facebook or Instagram app)	No, every ad built twice	Your own email or chat	Some objectives and formats unsupported
Paused batch in their account	A role in their ad account	Yes	Activity history shows who switched it on	Client must be at home in Ads Manager
Approval tool	The tool's link	Yes, per the vendors	Inside the tool	Price and a second tool to run

Our default

Concepts: a Creative Hub mockup, or a screenshot, before anyone produces forty variants.
Weekly batches for a client with account access: a paused batch in their account. They switch it on, or reply "go" and you switch it on. Either way the activity history shows who did it.
Clients who want a hard stop on their own side: peer approval with Extra protection on their ad account, their setting and their approvers. Agree who approves and how fast, so a batch does not wait all week, and try it on one ad from your launch tool first, because Meta does not say how it treats ads created through the API.
Clients without Meta access, or who want to comment on each ad: an approval tool.
Always: freeze the batch after approval. A change after sign-off is a new review at Meta and, worse, an ad the client never saw.

Where Adlio fits

We are Adlio, so weigh this section accordingly. Adlio is route 4 by construction: every ad it creates lands paused in the client's own ad account, with that client's naming, UTMs and settings, and there is no way to create an active ad. It has no approval step and no client preview link of its own; if your clients must approve in a link, Kitchn or AdManage do that and we do not. Adlio creates ads through Meta's Marketing API, and Meta does not say whether peer approval holds ads created that way, so we do not claim that a client's peer approval covers ads launched from Adlio; if your client runs Extra protection, test it with one ad first. On the Team plan, the history page shows who launched each batch. In-house teams use the same paused batch as an internal review step: the strategist builds, the lead switches on (see the page for in-house teams). How it fits an agency week is on the agency page, and the checks we run on a paused batch are in the pre-launch QA checklist. The launch itself: how bulk upload works.

Frequently asked questions

Does Meta have a built-in approval workflow for ads?+

One gate, yes: peer approval. With "Extra protection" on an ad account, "every ad needs approval before it can run", and a trusted user approves it in Ads Manager ("I approve this ad", then Publish). It is a security setting of the business portfolio that owns the ad account, so for client work the client controls it, and "ads published by people with full control of the business portfolio do not require a second review". Meta's article describes approving and publishing, not comments or rejecting with feedback; that part still happens outside Meta or in an approval tool.

Can an agency turn on peer approval for a client's ad account?+

No. Meta: "To set up or edit peer approval, you must have full control of the business portfolio" and "The business portfolio must own the ad account you want to add peer approval to." A client account shared with an agency stays in the client's portfolio, so the client switches it on and picks the trusted users. An agency can use it on ad accounts its own portfolio owns.

Does my client need a Facebook account to see a Meta ad preview?+

For a draft preview link from Ads Manager, yes. Meta: sharing "allows anyone with a Facebook profile, even people outside your business, to see your ad preview", and to open it "you'll need to be logged into Facebook". Some approval tools, such as AdManage, advertise preview links that need no login or Meta account.

How long does a Meta ad preview link last?+

A draft preview link lasts 30 or 60 days, which you choose, and "when your ad is published, your previews are no longer viewable on that link". Creative Hub preview links "expire after 3 months". A preview generated through the Marketing API is an iframe that "is only valid for 24 hours".

Does a paused ad go through review again when the client switches it on?+

Meta reviews an ad when it is created, paused or not: it has the status PENDING_REVIEW and then returns to the status you chose. Meta's list of edits that start a new review is targeting, creative (images, text, links or videos), optimization and billing event; switching an ad on is not on that list. Edit the creative after approval and it goes back into review.

Sources

Adlio team

Built by media buyers who launch Meta ads in volume. Questions or corrections: support@adlio.ai.

Topic cluster

Teams and client accounts

Running Meta ads across many ad accounts with more than one person: access, roles, approval, and keeping accounts apart.

Start here

Managing multiple Facebook ad accounts without leaks

How an agency gets access to a client's Meta ad account: partner access, step by step
How to give a colleague access to your Meta ad accounts (without sharing your Facebook login)
Meta ad account roles for agencies: who can build ads, who can publish them, and who can spend
Who changed this Meta ad? Ads Manager activity history, and what it misses for agency teams
Client approval for Meta ads: five ways agencies get sign-off before anything goes live
Meta ads in the EU: the DSA beneficiary and payer fields, and how to set them once