How to Remove the Call Now Button on Facebook Ad

Running a new Facebook ad campaign only to find that a "Call Now" button has mysteriously appeared is a classic marketing headache. You’ve curated the perfect ad copy and visuals to guide users to your website, but Facebook decided to add an entirely different call to action. This article will show you exactly why this happens and provide clear, step-by-step methods to remove that unwanted button for good.

Why Does Facebook Automatically Add a 'Call Now' Button?

First, it’s important to understand this isn’t a bug - it’s a feature, albeit a frustrating one. In its quest for optimization, Facebook's system often tries to offer users the most direct path to whatever it perceives as an action. If you're running a campaign (especially a Traffic campaign) that directs to a landing page with a phone number on it, Facebook assumes a phone call is a valid and helpful conversion path for your audience.

This automatic "enhancement" appears most frequently in certain ad placements, especially the Facebook Audience Network. The Audience Network consists of thousands of third-party apps and websites where your ads can run, and the ad formats can be less standardized than on the main Facebook or Instagram feeds. Facebook often takes more liberties here to "optimize" your ad creative to fit the app's native experience, which sometimes means adding a call button.

So, why is this an issue?

It Hijacks Your Goal: If your campaign objective is to drive traffic to get form sign-ups or educate customers, random phone calls get in the way.
It Attracts Low-Quality Leads: Many "Call Now" clicks are accidental. Users aren't prepared to have a conversation, leading to confusion, hang-ups, and wasted time for your team.
It Wastes Ad Spend: Every click on that button costs you money, and if those clicks aren't leading to your desired outcome, it’s hurting your return on ad spend (ROAS).
It Skews Your Data: It becomes hard to tell if your campaign is truly successful when it’s generating outputs you never intended to track.

Now that you know the 'why,' let's get into the 'how' and reclaim control of your ads.

Method 1: The Essential "No Button" Trick

This is the most direct and widely effective way to solve the problem, especially for Traffic campaigns. The solution involves changing the call-to-action (CTA) button in a way that might seem counterintuitive at first glance, but it works wonders.

Step-by-Step Guide:

Navigate to Your Ad in Ads Manager: Open your campaign, click on the relevant ad set, and then select the specific ad you want to edit.
Go to the "Ad Creative" Section: Scroll down to where you set up your images/videos and text. You'll see the "Call to Action" dropdown menu.
Select "No Button" from the CTA Dropdown: Most marketers default to selecting "Learn More," "Shop Now," or "Sign Up." The problem is that Facebook can override this on certain placements with a "Call Now" button if it finds a phone number. By selecting "No Button," you are explicitly telling the platform not to add a primary CTA button at the bottom of your ad.
Place Your Link in the Primary Text: Here's the key step. Since you no longer have a button to send users to your website, you need to provide the link elsewhere. Place your website URL directly within your ad’s "Primary Text." You can write something like, "Find out more at www.yourwebsite.com" to make it feel natural. Users are accustomed to clicking links in ad copy, so your click-through rate shouldn't suffer.
Check Your Ad Preview: Once you've made the changes, use the preview tool on the right side of the editor. Click the dropdown to see how your ad looks across different placements like the Facebook feed, Instagram stories, and, most importantly, the Audience Network. You should see that the nagging "Call Now" button has vanished, but your ad card in many formats is still clickable to the URL you provided when you created it, in the 'links' section under media.

This method forces Facebook's hand. By removing the dedicated CTA button space, you eliminate the very place where the automated "Call Now" button would appear, giving you full control over where your clicks go.

Method 2: Remove Problematic Placements

If the "No Button" trick isn't ideal for your creative strategy, your next best move is to get surgical with your ad placements. As mentioned earlier, the Facebook Audience Network is the most frequent culprit. Simply removing it can solve the problem instantly.

How to Edit Your Placements:

Select Your Ad Set: Placements are controlled at the ad set level, not the individual ad level. Find and click "Edit" on the ad set that contains your ad.
Navigate to the "Placements" Section: Scroll down and switch from "Advantage+ placements" (the default) to "Manual placements." This gives you a complete list of where your ads can appear.
Disable the Audience Network: The list will be divided into Platforms (Facebook, Instagram, Audience Network, Messenger). Simply uncheck the box next to Audience Network. To be safe, some marketers also uncheck Messenger, as ad formats can be less predictable there as well.
Review and Publish: By restricting your ads to run only on Facebook and Instagram properties (like feeds, stories, and reels), you’re working within a more controlled environment where unwanted CTA buttons are far less likely to be automatically added.

Combining this method with a specific CTA choice like "Learn More" is a powerful one-two punch for keeping your ads behaving exactly as you designed them.

Method 3: Check Your Campaign Objective & Destination

Sometimes the issue is rooted in a slight mismatch between your true marketing goal and the campaign objective you selected. Facebook takes your chosen objective very literally.

Traffic Campaigns vs. Conversion Campaigns

The Traffic objective optimizes for getting the cheapest possible clicks to an off-Facebook destination. To achieve this, the algorithm will use every tool at its disposal - including adding a "Call Now" button if it believes that will accomplish the goal more efficiently. It doesn't really care what users do once they get to your website, just that they click to leave Facebook.

If your ultimate goal is for users to take a specific action on your website (like filling out a form, making a purchase, or signing up), then a Leads or Sales (formerly Conversions) campaign is almost always a better choice. When you optimize for a specific conversion event (e.g., Lead, Purchase) with the Meta Pixel correctly installed:

You give Facebook a much clearer goal.
The algorithm focuses on finding users most likely to complete that specific action, not just click aimlessly.
It is far less likely to add a conflicting CTA like "Call Now" when its primary goal is to generate, for instance, a website "Purchase" event.

A simple check is to look at where you're sending traffic. In the ad level's "Destination" settings, ensure your website is chosen and that links are leading exactly where you want them to. Sometimes errors here can trigger odd behavior from the system.

A Quick Troubleshooting Checklist

If you're in a hurry and just want to fix your running ad, run through this list from top to bottom. The first one alone almost always does the trick.

Edit the CTA button: At the ad level, change the "Call to Action" dropdown to "No Button." Be sure to put your link in the primary text.
Switch to Manual Placements: At the ad set level, switch to "Manual placements" and deactivate the "Audience Network." This is the best preventive measure.
Confirm Your Campaign Objective: Does your campaign's true goal align with the objective you chose? If you want website form fills, a "Leads" campaign is often better than a "Traffic" one.
Inspect the Preview: Always use the ad preview tool to verify your changes across different placements before publishing. Check the mobile and desktop views to be sure.

Final Thoughts

While Facebook's automated "Call Now" button is created with good intentions, it regularly disrupts carefully planned campaigns. By taking control over your ad's CTA, placements, and overall objective, you can ensure your budget goes toward the results you're actually after and steer customers towards the right conversion path.

Wrestling with confusing settings in platforms like Facebook Ads Manager is just one part of the data challenge. After you've spent all that time optimizing your campaigns, you still have to pull the reports to see what worked. We built Graphed to remove this manual reporting work. You can securely connect your Facebook Ads, Google Analytics, and Shopify accounts in seconds. Then, you simply ask for what you need in plain English - like, "Compare my ad spend vs. revenue from Facebook for this month" - and Graphed creates a real-time, shareable dashboard instantly. It helps you spend less time dealing with platform quirks and more time focusing on results.