How to make Meta creative after the algorithm changes

A few years ago success on Meta depended heavily on targeting: interests, demographic filters, lookalike audiences. Today Meta’s system, including its newer ad retrieval engine Andromeda, decides on its own who sees an ad. Targeting has become broad, and what the algorithm actually has to work with is the creative.

What changed in practice

Meta looks at the ad itself: the image, the copy, the message. From those it judges who is likely to respond. Different ads reach different people, even when the campaign settings are identical.

So ten near-identical banners where only the button color changes don’t give the system much. To it they’re almost the same ad, and they reach the same group of people.

Differences the algorithm can see

When we plan creative, we look for a real difference in at least one of these:

• The message: A different benefit, a different problem, a different reason to buy.
• The format: A static banner, a voiceover video built from stock footage, a UGC video, a carousel.
• The person and setting: Different ages, situations and ways of using the product.

In our tests, different formats often win with different people. Sometimes a simple static banner with one clear benefit sells for less than a video, and sometimes it’s the other way round. We don’t know in advance, so we test.

Price and offer must be obvious

The wider Meta shows an ad, the more people see it for the first time and without context. The offer has to make sense in a second. When we show a discount, we do it the same way across all ads: the old price crossed out, the new price clear, and always for the same unit, so there’s no confusion between the price per item and the price per pack.

How we structure campaigns

We test new ideas in campaigns with ad set budgets, so each one gets a fair chance. Winners move into Advantage+ campaigns with broad targeting, where Meta finds the people itself.

Inside the Advantage+ campaign we keep a healthy number of different creatives. When one stops selling, we replace it with a new one from testing instead of touching the settings.

What to do this week

Open your ad account and look at your active ads side by side. If most of them look alike, you don’t need more variations of them. You need two or three new directions: a new message, a new format or a new person on screen.