How to duplicate an ad set with the same targeting

When you want to scale a winning ad set, you rarely want to rebuild its targeting from scratch. uplads lets you clone an existing ad set's targeting into a brand-new ad set without leaving the launch wizard — then drop your creatives straight into the copy. This article walks through the ad set duplicator in the Targeting step.

Opening the ad set duplicator

The duplicator lives in the Targeting step of the bulk launch wizard. First pick your Page, campaign, and ad sets as usual — once you choose a campaign, the Ad Sets section appears.

1. In the Targeting step, select the campaign that holds the ad set you want to clone.
2. Look at the Ad Sets header. Next to New ad set, you'll see a Duplicate ad set button (with a copy icon).
3. Click Duplicate ad set to open the dialog.

The duplicator only copies within the same campaign — the cloned ad set lands in the campaign you've currently selected.

Choosing the source ad set to clone

In the Duplicate Ad Set dialog:

1. Open the Source Ad Set picker (placeholder reads Select ad set to copy) and choose the ad set whose targeting you want to reuse. The list shows every ad set in the current campaign.
2. uplads auto-fills the New Ad Set Name field with <original name> - copy. Edit it to whatever you like — a clear, descriptive name makes the new ad set easy to find later. (If you switch the source, the suggested name updates automatically, but any name you typed yourself is kept.)
3. Click Duplicate. A spinner shows while uplads reads the source settings from Meta and creates the new ad set.

What is copied vs. reset

The duplicate carries over the settings that define who and how the ad set targets — but it always comes back fresh and safe to review:

Copied from the source:

• Full targeting (locations, age, gender, detailed targeting, custom audiences, placements)
• Optimization goal and billing event
• Bid amount, plus the daily or lifetime budget
• The promoted object (e.g. pixel/conversion event)
• The Dynamic Creative flag, so multi-text and asset-feed ads keep working

Reset on the copy:

• Status — the new ad set is created PAUSED, so nothing spends before you're ready.
• Name — set to your new name, never a duplicate of the original.
• Ads and creatives — the copy starts empty. It clones targeting only, not the ads inside the source ad set. Your launch fills it with the creatives you've chosen.

uplads also normalizes the targeting it reads back so older, grandfathered placement combinations don't get rejected when Meta recreates the ad set.

Selecting the new ad set for the launch

After the dialog closes, the Ad Sets list refreshes automatically and the new ad set appears (marked paused).

1. Find the freshly created ad set in the list.
2. Tick its checkbox to include it in this launch. Duplicating does not auto-select it — you choose whether to launch into it.
3. Continue through the wizard. Your creatives will be created as ads inside the new ad set.

Because the copy starts paused, remember to set the right status when you set ad status and schedule the launch, or activate the ad set in Ads Manager afterward.

When ad set duplication is useful for scaling

Reach for the duplicator when you want to:

• Scale a winner — clone a proven ad set's targeting into a fresh one and launch new creatives or a higher budget against the same audience.
• A/B test cleanly — keep identical targeting across two ad sets so the only variable is the creative.
• Restart learning — give Meta a clean ad set (fresh delivery history) while keeping the audience that's working.
• Split budgets — spread a high-performing audience across multiple ad sets without re-entering targeting each time.

If you'd rather build targeting from scratch instead of cloning, use New ad set in the same Targeting step. To duplicate or delete ad sets outside a launch, see duplicate or delete campaigns, ad sets and ads.