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Happy Sunday, Everyone!
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I trust youâre all enjoying Fallâs prime - the changing leaves,
the brisk mornings, the football-filled weekends and the
never-ending onslaught of conferencesâŚall taking place in the
shadow of Q4 goals + BFCM. Somehow, Thanksgiving is already on
the extended forecast (the really, really extended one, but
still), with the winter holidays and 2026 not far behind.
During the first run of Fall conferences, I had the opportunity
to meet with several folks from Meta, who were kind enough to
share some insights on both the future of the Meta ads platform,
as well as specific insights on what theyâre seeing perform since
the full-scale roll-out of GEM, Lattice & Andromeda over the past
~6 months.
If youâre not familiar (or frantically Googling, âWhat is Meta
Latticeâ), let me save you the trouble:
* GEM = This is Meta Adsâ âbrainâ â it ingests trillions of data
points (everything from ad creatives, messages and offers to
offline events, behavioral sequences, personal characteristics
and more), maps the relationships between each one, then
leverages the model created by this process to predict which ads
are most likely to produce a desired action from each person, all
in near-real-time.
* Lattice = The easiest metaphor for Lattice is the Library of
Congress. Where most towns operate a library (or several), each
with some combination of the classics, some regional favorites,
and some picks from the librarian, the Library of Congress
contains copies of every single printed publication in the
history of the US. Before Lattice, Metaâs ad library operated
very similarly to those regional libraries - each one held ads
based on geo, objective, surface (IG, FB), industry. Lattice has
combined them all into one, super-massive library that can be
readily searched and analyzed by Metaâs ad systems. The end
result? Meta has a richer understanding of how different ads work
across objectives, and can more accurately predict which
creative(s) are more likely to convert.
* Andromeda = Andromeda is (as Meta describes it) a âpersonal ads
conciergeâ that leverages staggeringly sophisticated machine
learning to refine the pool of ads available to be shown to you
to only the ones most likely to resonate with you, based on your
tastes, preferences, behavioral history, connections,
relationships, etc. Think of it like your personal,
fully-customized ad filter: Andromeda uses its accumulated
knowledge about you to filter out billions of ads (literally),
leaving only a few thousand that are most likely to be relevant
to you. Only the ads that make it through Andromedaâs filter are
eligible to be served to you by Metaâs ad systems.
Each of these three systems is interconnected, working together
(along with sequence learning, which is a system that allows
every Meta ads model to consider the order in which events happen
before and after an ad exposure in order to enhance delivery +
relevance) to improve Metaâs ad delivery systems. At first
glance, each of these three systems probably seems quite good for
advertisers â after all, getting more relevant ads delivered
sounds like a huge win. Meta having a âbetter understandingâ of
what ads are most likely to lead to certain outcomes probably
seems like exactly what we want â but the devil is in the
details.
And thatâs what brings me back to the conversations with several
senior members of Metaâs Ads team. The big takeaway is that,
through these three systems, Meta is fundamentally rethinking
what it considers a âuniqueâ or âdistinctâ ad. The days of
driving creative diversity via uploading step-change, iterative
variants of a winning ad are over. Thatâs a big deal (aside -
itâs also something I warned was coming way back in 2023 (
))
But the bigger deal? Meta is finally beginning to leverage the ad
set audience as the primary lever for creative diversity. The
impact of this change can not be overstated. It is a tectonic
shift in the Meta ads landscape.
And itâs happening right now. If youâve been in Ads Manager over
the last few days/weeks (rollouts take time), youâve likely seen
several changes to the ârecommendationsâ section: (1) Creative
Similarity (the exact text: âUsing creative that doesnât appear
visually similar in your ads can help those ads resonate better
with audiencesâŚâ) and (2) Ad Fatigue (âcreative fatigue occurs
when an audience has seen the same creative too many times.
People may be less likely to engage with your ad, which can
increase your cost per resultâŚâ). These are direct, downstream
effects of the above big changes to Metaâs ad systemsâŚ.and weâre
still early in the rollout + fallout.
For todayâs issue, I want to share what Iâve heard directly from
several Meta Product Leads, alongside data from accounts that
corroborates what Iâve been told and how weâre thinking about
modifying our creative strategies moving forward in response.
Letâs dig in.
The immediate implications of this are direct from Metaâs team:
Lattice + Andromeda functionally compress the number of ads
available to be served (Lattice accesses billions of ads in a
single library - meaning Meta can now âseeâ every single ad in
one view; Andromeda âdedupesâ all of the similar ads then
filters/curates based on your tastes/preferences/history). The
primary reason for this is that it saves compute while
maintaining a viable set of available ads. The logic seems to be
that if Meta combines all the âsimilarâ ads first, then filters
them, it (essentially) guarantees that it will have a
sufficiently large set of potential ads to enter into the
auction.
That means that Meta categorizes two ads as âidenticalâ if they
share the same visual aesthetic (statics/carousels) OR a similar
first 3 seconds (video ads). Both Lattice + Andromeda are
visual-first systems; ads with similar visuals are considered
identical even if the copy or offer is wildly different.
Yes, you read that correctly.
Visual similarity now dominates narrative variation in Metaâs
assessment of distinctness across all ad formats (statics,
carousels, videos).
The implications for that change are staggering:
* Different copy/CTA on same visual = same ad
* The same creator (UGC, founder, VSL, whatever) in the same
scene (i.e. office
background, in front of a mirror, etc.) = same ad
* The same hook followed by two different stories = similar or
same ad (depending)
Itâs abundantly clear that these changes are a direct response to
how advertisers tried to âgameâ Metaâs old ad system: find a
winning ad, create 30 variants of it, load âem all into ads
manager, profit. Well, thanks to Andromeda, those 30 variants are
now treated as 1 ad. This puts the onus back on advertisers to
create truly diverse, differentiated creatives for the system to
consider.
-------------------------------
Creative Relevance Is the Lever
-------------------------------
For what feels like ever, weâve heard that creative is the
targeting lever for Meta. The implication of that was: donât
worry about the audience, donât worry about interest/lookalike
targeting, just go broad with creative and Meta will figure it
out. Obviously that was not (and is not) entirely true â but (as
with most things), it was half true. What weâve found is that
creative relevance - the connection between creative and audience
- is the thing that matters. Align your creative - offer -
audience - experience (i.e. creative relevance) and youâll see
improvements in engagement (CTR) and action (CVR) rates.
This isnât new. If anything, this is Meta algorithmically
implementing a core tenet of behavioral economics: contextual
relevance drives engagement more than precision targeting. Users
respond when they see themselves - visually, emotionally and
motivationally - inside the ad. This is validated by three
behavioral economics principles: (1) the Self-Referencing Effect;
(2) Framing Theory and (3) the Mere Exposure Effect.
However, this does not imply that ad set-level targeting is
obsolete. In fact, persona-based ad sets, structured around a
behaviorally-defined audience, make more sense than ever when
paired with true creative diversity.
If each ad set targets a distinct persona and includes multiple,
visually divergent ads tailored to that personaâs fears, hopes,
dreams, challenges and/or motivations, the system has a clearer
signal to work with - Andromeda can then match the right angle to
each individual member of the targeted audience segment.
Ironically, the alignment of behavioral/audience-based targeting
and informed creative relevance improves ad relevance and drives
deeper personalization.
On the flip side, broad targeting remains useful for maximizing
reach with diverse creatives, but tight persona-level targeting
gains power when matched with informed, intentional creative
differentiation at the ad set level.
-------------------------------------------------------
When New Things Happen, Sometimes The Old Ways Are Best
-------------------------------------------------------
When big things change (and this certainly counts as a big thing
changing in a big way), my default strategy is to go back to what
never changes. It sounds crazy and counterintuitive, but often
thereâs an answer for todayâs crazy challenges in yesterdayâs old
truths.
Case in point: as I was thinking about how to respond to these
changes, I wound up calling (yes, on the phone) a good friend,
Rabah, to catch up. Somehow, we ended up spending 30+ minutes
talking about the classics - Ogilvy, Bernbach and Burnett - the
old-school, mad men era guys. And ironically, I found the lessons
from those long-gone advertisers to be more applicable now than
they were back when they were first shared. In fact, how Iâm
approaching the Andromeda era is actually shaped by some of their
lessons/principles:
âCreative is not creative unless it sells.â
One of my favorites. Ogilvy insisted that advertising must
ultimately drive results. Endless experimentation that doesnât
scale or endure is not real creativity. In the current landscape,
your creative needs to do two things: immediately attract
attention and sustain relevance to the target audience over time.
That does not mean the ad needs to appeal to everyone - in fact,
the opposite is true: your creative should NOT appeal to people
outside your target audience. It does mean that your ad must
stand the test of time to earn sustained delivery â the quick,
flash-in-the-pan meme ads arenât likely to sustain your account.
Focus on creating ads that are likely to work for a while, not a
minute.
Write Ads For Your Audience, Not For Everyone
Ogilvyâs most enduring lesson is brutal in its simplicity: pick a
position, pick a person and speak in their language. The most
effective advertising reads like a one-to-one letter, not a
stadium announcement. It uses the target audienceâs words, frames
and fears to make a single promise unmistakably relevant to them.
When you create ads for âeveryone,â you sand off the edges that
signal meaning to someone; relevance collapses into generality,
and generality doesnât sell. Choose the audience, honor their
vocabulary and context and make the ad feel made-for-me to them -
because if it isnât for a specific person, it isnât for anyone.
If you canât tell immediately who the ad was created for or who
it is speaking to, it is too generic.
The customer is not a moron.
Ogilvy famously cautioned against advertising that underestimates
or condescends to the audience. With audience-driven ads, respect
cognitive complexity. Donât default to shouting features or
parading out awards/recognition. Instead, focus your ads on
meeting the audience segmentâs emotional and identity-level
needs; assume the audience is intelligent, somewhat informed and
capable of understanding how your product/service can improve
their lives.
Focus on the Fundamentals of the Human Experience
One of Bernbachâs most enduring observations was that while
everything else may change, people donât â weâre still motivated
by the same handful of things that we always have been. The
durable advantage is creating ads based on a single, timeless
human drive, then expressing it in the audienceâs language,
visuals and context.
Survival: turn fear into agency
Identify a real, near-term risk, then show the path to safety
(via your product/service).
* Hook: the avoidable mistake or looming loss.
* Visuals: problem-first, high-contrast; fast cut to resolution.
* Proof: demo the safeguard; reassure with clarity (guarantee,
fail-safe).
Admiration: signal status
Show (donât tell) how the product/service confers belonging to
an admired group.
* Hook: âfor the ones whoâŚâ (set the bar, lead the field).
Visuals: elevated design, distinct palette, aspirational
archetypes.
* Proof: tasteful third-party signals; social proof as texture,
not trophies.
Success: show transformation
Walk the viewer from ânowâ to ânext,â with measurable progress.
* Hook: time, money, or outcome delta (âGo from 3 hours to 15
minutes,â â+27% ROIâ).
* Visuals: timelines, side-by-sides, dashboards, time-lapse.
* Proof: specific numbers and receipts; the user is the hero,
product/service the enabler.
Love: create connection and belonging
Make the audience feel seen, supported and not alone. This
doesnât have to be purely romantic love - but rather any form of
connection and belonging.
* Hook: empathetic mirror (âIf this sounds like youâŚâ).
* Visuals: lived-in settings, real people, warm tone;
micro-moments > polish.
* Proof: authentic testimonials, DMs, UGC clips; speak plainly.
Protection: defend the tribe and its values
Draw a line around standards, origins and what you wonât
compromise.
* Hook: conviction (âMade for [community], not for everyoneâ).
* Visuals: craft, provenance, badges; behind-the-scenes rigor.
* Proof: guarantees, certifications, founder voice; expect
(healthy) polarization.
Test For Insights & Learning, Not P-Values
Ogilvyâs enduring lesson on testing remains urgent in the
Andromeda era: experimentation must be systematic, intentional,
and designed to uncover insight, not to chase statistical
significance. The goal is not to prove that one variant âwinsâ at
the 95% confidence level, but to understand why an ad resonates,
with whom and under what contextual or emotional conditions.
Modern creative testing should function as behavioral research:
mapping motivators, decoding visual triggers and refining
hypotheses about audience psychology. In other words, data should
fuel creative intelligence, not just validate it.
From those principles, weâve evolved our approach to creative
strategy:
Creative Must Be Audience-Centric
---------------------------------
The primary reason why Iâm obsessed with audience understanding
isnât because I love SparkToro (though I do) or doing research
(which I donât) â itâs because understanding the audience at a
deep, human level massively increases the odds of creating hit
ads. Itâs really that simple.
From a practical standpoint, that means that we spend an
inordinate amount of time on audience understanding + insight,
then design ads around psychographics, motivations + audience
preferences (what sources do they trust? Where will they get this
information? Do they care about third party credibility or
prioritize personal relationships?) â not visuals or messages.
Thatâs a radical departure from how most agencies manage creative
(which is disproportionately focused on output + iteration) - but
one that is now being rewarded by both audiences AND platforms.
If you donât truly, madly, deeply, viscerally understand your
audience - to the point where you can empathize with them,
predict their responses, speak directly to their pains,
challenges, hopes and dreams - youâre not going to be able to
generate the caliber of diversity Meta is seeking.
If youâre curious about how we conduct audience research, I wrote
about that here (
).
Immediate Visual Diversification Of âHitâ Ads
---------------------------------------------
When a âhitâ ad emerges, the natural tendency for most
advertisers is to immediately begin making small, incremental
changes to it â a slight adjustment to the hook, a different CTA,
a new value prop, alternative proof points, whatever. Thatâs
never been something Iâve gravitated toward, because
(overwhelmingly) my thesis is that climbing a little higher on
that particular mountain isnât likely to be a positive expected
value bet â Iâm more likely to spend a bunch of time/money/energy
to get a bunch of derivatives that perform pretty much the same
as the original.
In fact, a few issues ago, I shared how we often will take the
script from a âhitâ ad, upload it (alongside our target audience
details) to an AI system (Gemini or GPT), and have it create 5-10
diverse, new scripts based on the script + insights it can mine
from the audience profile we provided. Weâll then give those
scripts to different creators.
* Swap locations (indoor to outdoor, studio to field)
* Change spatial composition (wide, tight, split screen, motion)
* Replace set, camera style, framing
* Swap creators + formats
* Modify the drive (same audience, different approach)
In each case, weâre treating the original âhitâ ad as the
creative center of gravity, then branching out to different
worlds via diversification. Thatâs a radically different approach
vs. simple iteration on a winner (i.e., treating the winner as a
template to be copied).
Spend 80% Of Your Effort on the Hook
------------------------------------
One of the primary takeaways from the Meta team on Andromeda is
that the system disproportionately determines âsamenessâ based on
the hook - the first ~3 seconds of the ad. This creates a massive
opportunity for advertisers to unlock new segments of your
audience simply by adjusting the hook. The rest of the ad can
change slightly, but (as I wrote here (
)), spend 80% of your time focused on the hook.
Proactively attempt different hook styles - immediate action,
result-and-rewind, secrets, stories, non-traditional narrative
arcs, hopeless-until-solution, before-and-after, bold statements,
whatever - to the fullest extent possible.
As a bonus, the beautiful thing about a hook-first approach is
that the hook will dictate much of what follows, restricting your
set of possibilities in the middle/end of the ad from a
narrative, logical and tonal perspective.
The analogy Iâve used before (and which still holds) is that of a
chess game: the hook is your opening. It shapes what happens in
the mid game, which (in turn) dictates the end game. While a
fantastic opening does not guarantee victory in chess (and,
conversely, a brilliant hook does not guarantee the ad will be a
hit), it certainly does improve the odds.
Smart Iteration + Repackaging
-----------------------------
About 50 issues ago, I shared our creative matrix â how we think
about Structural Iteration in ads (you can view the full article
here (
)):
And this framework is more valuable today than it was when I
shared it years ago, simply because it leans in to the three
things that will thrive in the age of Andromeda: (1) audience
centricity (the inputs + idea generation); (2) the concept of
tokenizing ads into component parts (i.e. the red part of the
diagram above) and (3) recombining those components to create
maximum diversity while minimizing creative costs.
If I was going to add anything to this, it would be to add format
as an axis for diversity (something I wrote about here (
)) â more brands should be trying more different types/styles of
ads. Too many brands are too stuck in their ways, with each new
creative following a relatively established, semi-predictable
script. The brands with true diversity scrap that convention +
create ads that are wildly different, to the point where the
audience is surprised theyâre all from the same brand.
Create Worlds Where Your Ads Can Take Place
-------------------------------------------
Another big shift weâve begun to adopt is the âworldsâ framework.
This is born out of the observation that differentiated creative
must simultaneously create distinctiveness and separability for
Meta while maintaining salience for the audience (basically,
people like familiarity - just not too much).
For small teams, achieving that balance can be somewhat easy â
the same creatives tend to work on the same projects, so they can
reference/create that feeling of consistency. As you scale, doing
that becomes much more difficult. The answer to that is worlds. A
world is a repeatable, rules-based environment that governs how a
creative concept looks, sounds, feels and operates. Itâs the
combination of setting, lighting, palette, cast (including
creators/talent), voice, camera, symbols/artifacts and proof
style. Each world has its own set of rules that dictate where and
when it lives (setting, time of day), how it feels to the
audience (palette, lighting, cut cadence), who speaks and how
they speak (cast, dialect, cadence, language), what carries
meaning (props, iconography) and how truth is shown (demo,
receipt, stopwatch, testimonial).
Examples of this might be: âThe Kitchen Table At Nightâ or
âMorning Mirrorâ or âWorkshop Deskâ or âThe Corner Office in the
Afternoonâ â each one immediately creates a specific feeling,
while giving you endless opportunities to express the same core
concept in materially different ways.
The inspiration for this was sitcoms â weâve all watched Big Bang
Theory and immediately knew what kinds of things might happen in
Leonard & Sheldonâs apartment, or the Cheesecake Factory or the
Comic Book Store (in fact, if you watched BBT, you can probably
picture each of those scenes in your mind right now). The reality
is that what happened in each of those places in each episode was
quite different - but the âworldâ where the action took place
created a sense of both narrative and visual coherence and
familiarity.
Thatâs exactly what weâre doing here - but instead of a show,
itâs your advertising. From Metaâs perspective, two ads that
share the same copy/messaging but live in different worlds are
distinct â Andromeda + Lattice wonât collapse them into the same
concept. That provides you with the ability to scale while
maintaining audience familiarity.
Adopt A Perpetual Creative Graph
--------------------------------
Linear campaign planning assumes finite stories, fixed audiences
and a platform that rewards cadence (i.e. shipping more ads over
a certain period of time). But, Meta now rewards something very
different: differentiation, specificity and diversity.
Fundamentally, that means the operating model we use to plan +
execute must evolve.
Instead of the old, outdated âcampaign planningâ approach, think
of your creative system as a perpetual graph - a living network
of ideas and evidence - rather than a sequence of launches or
iterations.
The building blocks become nodes: the audience, the concept (big
idea), the human drive it taps, the hook, the world, the proof
type and your distinctive brand cues. The edges, then, are the
relationships between those nodes. âHook A Ă Survival Drive Ă
World 2 Ă UGC Ă Bundle Offer 6 produced a âhitâ ad for the
Stressed/Overworked Toddler Mom Audience in Q4â isnât some random
thing; itâs actionable audience insight. Over time, the edges
become IP: a proprietary map of what works for whom, when and
why.
The result of this is that you stop âlaunching campaignsâ and
start âquerying the graphâ â given a specific audience and
objective (sell product X or generate leads for service Y), you
ask: What is the next best expression Meta will immediately
recognize as new, relevant and distinct? The answer returns a
small set of combinations - hook Ă drive Ă world Ă format Ă
Product/Service/Offer - that are both available (i.e. we have or
can get the assets) and untested (we have not created an ad like
that yet). Those become the next creatives for the ad account.
This also fundamentally changes how we evaluate what to create
and launch in the ad account â the tests now are simple:
* What is the probability that Meta will recognize this as
meaningfully different from the existing creatives in this ad
set?
* Does this combination align with our understanding of this
audience? If not, is there something we could have missed in our
research that suggests it is worth a try?
* Even if the performance of this concept is merely average, does
testing the combination generate learnings we can leverage later?
This completely flips how you approach creative production â
because instead of focusing on raw output or creative iteration,
weâre now solving for two things: (1) expected value and (2)
learning. The end result is a compounding advantage. As you map
the edges in the graph, the areas of opportunity become more
obvious. True creative differentiation becomes easier. Results
become more predictable.
The Bottom Line:
----------------
The entire goal of Andromeda (and Lattice, and GEM) is to force
advertisers to get back to being advertisers â to create truly
unique, differentiated ads that actually resonate with different
sub-segments of their target audience. Fundamentally, that means
the days of small, incremental tests are over. The accounts that
will thrive are the ones that can blend bold, big-picture
variation with structured experimentation.
If and when you see some of your ads stop performing (or your
iterations never serving), know that it is not because Meta is
broken. That is the system working exactly as intended. It is
more discerning + more selective.
In the new landscape, creativity is not more important than
before - itâs importance is just more obvious. The key to winning
is not to do some new-fangled thing or try to âhackâ the system;
itâs to go back to the old-school, tried-and-true principles.
Meta just wants advertisers to go back to being advertisers â and
theyâre aligning incentives + systems accordingly.
Sometimes, the path of least resistance AND the right thing to do
are the same thing. This is one of those times.
Until next week,
Sam
This weekâs issue is sponsored by Optmyzr.
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