Before you push anything live, Preview is the last check we'd never skip — it shows you every ad in a launch task, laid out the way it'll actually go out. Here's what it can tell you, and, just as importantly, what it can't quite tell you yet.
You'll find it as the Preview button in the top-right corner of a launch task, inside Analytics & Launch → Launch. Click it and Atria opens a gallery of every ad in that task, so you can scan the whole batch before you commit to any of it.
The gallery — scanning the whole batch
The gallery view lays out one card per ad. Each card shows the creative, the primary text, the headline and the CTA, so you can run your eye down the batch and catch the things that only show up in comparison — a headline that's wandered off-message, a CTA that isn't consistent with the rest, a stray bit of copy. This is the view we'd use first, before drilling into any single ad.
A single ad, in detail
Click the preview icon on an individual ad row to open its detailed preview panel. The left side shows the ad itself; the right side lists all the metadata behind it — ad name, primary text, headline, description, CTA, URL and display link. If a number or a link looks wrong later, this panel is where you'll spot it before Meta does.
Checking placements
Use the placement selector at the top of the panel to switch between placements — Feed and Stories among them — and check the creative still holds up in each. A square that looks perfect in Feed can lose its bottom third behind the Stories UI, and this is where you catch that before you launch, not after.
Cycling through creative assets
If an ad carries more than one creative, cycle through them here to see how each one renders in place. Worth doing whenever you've grouped several assets into one ad — it's the quickest way to catch the one that didn't crop the way you assumed.
Mockup vs Live — and why Live isn't the last word right now
Top-right of the preview panel there's a toggle between Mockup and Live. People read a lot into this toggle, so let us be precise about it.
Mockup is generated by Atria, locally and instantly. It's an approximate layout — the right pieces in roughly the right places — and it's ideal for checking your copy, headline and CTA read correctly before you commit.
Live is fetched in real time from Meta, so it takes a moment longer to load. The intention is that it shows the ad as Meta itself would render it.
Now the honest part, and it's the reason we've rewritten this article: Live preview isn't reliably exact at the moment. For video ads and for partnership (branded-content) ads in particular, Live can come back blank or fall short of what actually renders on Meta. That's a known issue we're working on — not something you've done wrong. So treat Live as a strong indication rather than gospel, and for those two ad types especially, lean on Mockup plus the ad's own settings rather than reading anything into an empty Live panel.
| **Mockup** | **Live** |
Source | Generated locally by Atria | Fetched in real time from Meta |
Speed | Instant | May take a few seconds |
What it's good for | Checking copy, headline and CTA at a glance | Seeing the real render — when it loads. Currently unreliable for video and partnership ads |
Two things make Live work when it can:
Live needs Page access. Meta treats the Facebook Page an ad runs from as a separate object with its own permission, so Live can only render once Atria has access to that Page. If you see a Grant Page Access to Preview panel where the creative should be, click Edit Settings inside it — don't skip that step, it's the one everyone misses — then opt in to all Pages on Meta's screen and come back. The full walkthrough, including the cases where granting won't fix it (a Page you don't manage, Instagram-only media, an ad that's been deleted in Meta), lives in Page permissions in Analytics reports. If Live keeps coming back empty, read that next — it's the same grant behind both surfaces.
Give it a second. Live fetches on demand, so a brief pause before it loads is normal, not a fault.
If a preview looks wrong and you can't tell whether it's the ad or the preview playing up, send us the launch task and the ad name and we'll look at it with you — shout any time.