How to relaunch existing Facebook ads

Already have a winning ad running in your Meta account? You don't need to re-upload the file or rewrite the copy to put it into new ad sets. uplads can pull your existing ads straight from the Graph API, let you sort them by performance, and recreate the best ones into whatever campaigns and ad sets you pick.

This article covers how the Existing Ads flow works inside the bulk launch wizard. If you're new to the wizard, start with Understanding the bulk launch wizard steps.

Opening the Existing Ads tab

Relaunching happens inside the normal launch wizard, on the Creatives step.

1. Start a new launch and connect your Meta ad account (see How to connect your Meta account if you haven't yet).
2. On the Creatives step, switch to the Existing Ads tab instead of the media library.
3. uplads queries your account and loads your ads, ranked by spend, so your real spenders appear first.

You don't pick files here — you pick live ads that already exist in your account.

Searching, filtering and sorting

The Existing Ads tab gives you a full performance table so you can find the right ads to reuse without bouncing into Meta Ads Manager.

• Search by typing in the box at the top — it matches the ad name, campaign name and ad set name.
• Date range controls the metrics columns. Choose Lifetime, Last 7 / 14 / 30 / 90 days, This month or Last month. Changing this re-fetches fresh numbers for that window.
• Status filter lets you show All statuses, Active only or Paused only.
• Campaign filter appears when more than one campaign is loaded. A green dot means at least one ad in that campaign is delivering; an amber dot means the campaign is fully paused.
• Sort by clicking any column header — Spend, Impressions, Reach, Clicks, CTR, CPC, CPM, ROAS, Purchases, Cost per purchase, Leads or Cost per lead. Click again to flip the direction.

Hover any ad thumbnail and click the eye icon to preview the live ad before you decide.

Selecting ads to relaunch

Tick the checkbox on any row (or click the ad name) to add it to your relaunch selection. A few things worth knowing:

• The Select all checkbox in the header selects every ad matching your current filters — not just the visible page.
• A "N selected" counter appears once you've picked at least one ad, with a small X to clear the whole selection.
• All money columns show metrics in the ad account's original currency, not a hardcoded dollar sign — so a EUR account reads in euros.

The relaunch method (copy as a new ad vs. reuse the original Post ID) is auto-detected when you select an ad, and you confirm or override it later on the Review step. You don't need to set anything here beyond picking the ads.

Auto-selecting ads with a deep link

You can jump straight into relaunching specific ads using a ?relaunch= link on the wizard URL — for example /launch?relaunch=<adId1>,<adId2>. The optimization tools use this to send you directly into relaunching your top performers.

When the wizard opens with that parameter:

1. The Creatives step opens on the Existing Ads tab automatically.
2. Each listed ad whose id is in the link is pre-selected as the list loads.
3. A note confirms how many were preselected. If some ids aren't found in the loaded window (very large accounts load a top-spender window), the note flags exactly how many couldn't be matched.

Why the Text step is skipped and the Page is optional

Relaunching is different from a fresh launch, so the wizard adapts:

• The Text step is skipped. A relaunch reuses the original ad's copy, headline, URL and CTA exactly as they ran — there's nothing to re-author. If you want to change the copy, write a new ad instead (see How to write ad copy, URLs and CTAs).
• Page selection is optional. Each existing ad's post or creative already carries its own Facebook Page, so you don't have to choose a Page on the Targeting step to continue. You still pick your campaign and ad sets there — see How to select your Page, campaign and ad sets.

Respecting the 50-ad-per-ad-set limit

Meta caps every ad set at 50 ads, including paused and archived ones. On the Review step, uplads checks each target ad set's current ad count plus the ads you're about to add. If any ad set would go over 50, you'll see an amber warning listing the affected ad sets and the projected totals (existing + new).

You can still launch — only the ads beyond the cap will be rejected by Meta, and uplads tells you which ones. To avoid losing any, spread your selection across more ad sets or trim the count first. For more on this, see Ad set limits and common Meta errors explained.

Next steps

Once you've launched, follow along on How to track launch progress and read results. To duplicate an ad set's targeting as a fresh relaunch target, see How to duplicate an ad set with the same targeting.