What are Ad Overlays in Meta Advantage+ Creative Enhancements?
Ad Overlays (also known as “Image Templates” or “Add Overlays”) is a creative enhancement in Meta’s Advantage+ Creative.
When enabled, it takes text from your ad’s text assets (like headlines, primary text or promotions) and overlays that text on top of your images, possibly with styling (colours, fonts) chosen or suggested by Meta.
The idea is to draw attention, and highlight price, discount, or calls to action. Meta claims these enhancements help improve visibility and performance in certain placements.
Why should I turn it off?
While overlays can help in some cases, there are good reasons they might hurt your campaign:
Cluttered visuals. Overlaid text can cover important parts of your image, like the product, branding, or design elements. It may reduce clarity and harm aesthetics.
Inconsistent brand look. If you have precise design guidelines (font, spacing, color), automatic overlay styling may violate them or make images look “off brand.”
Readability issues. In smaller formats or certain placements (feed, Stories), the overlaid text may become unreadable or cut off.
Message dilution. If the underlying image already has messaging or graphic text, overlays can clash or lead to mixed messages.
Reduced creative control. You might want control over when and where a message appears, but overlays are applied automatically in many scenarios.
How does this Improvement work?
Opteo checks your campaigns (at campaign, ad set, or ad level) to see if Add Overlays/Image Templates is enabled.
We’ll show you when it was first detected, so you can see how long overlays have been auto-applied.
In one-click, you can disable Ad Overlays, so your creatives only show the image + layout as you designed them, without auto-added text overlays.
When is Ad Overlays most harmful?
Here are common scenarios when enabling overlays often backfires:
Highly designed or artistic image creatives, where layout, composition or visuals are critical (e.g. fashion, photography, luxury, design). Overlays risk breaking the design.
Ads with promotional images that already include text or logo placements - adding overlays can become visually busy or redundant.
Small images or placements where text overlay covers too much or becomes unreadable (mobile feed, Stories, small ad slots).
Brand messaging where consistency and control over font, placement and message matter - you want everything aligned with your brand style.
When measuring creative performance or testing messaging - overlays muddy the clarity of what element is working or not.
When might Ad Overlays help?
There are valid scenarios where overlays may be beneficial:
If you have simple image creatives without any text or branding, overlays can add a highlight or CTA without redesigning the image.
Campaigns aiming for quick visibility of a promotion (sale, discount) where overlaying “20% off” or similar might catch attention.
If you don’t have design resources and the automatic overlay is better than nothing.
If you find overlays helpful in your campaign, you can leave them enabled and dismiss the Improvement.