Quick question: If you upload five different video ads with five different hooks, how many ads does Meta actually see?
Most founders would say five.
The answer is often one.
Let me explain.
In mid-2024, Meta started rolling out an algorithm update called "Andromeda." It fundamentally changed how the platform decides which ads to run.
The old way: Meta looked at your targeting settings and your ad copy to figure out who should see your ad.
The new way: Meta assigns an "Entity ID" to your ads based on visual similarity. If your ads look too similar, Meta treats them as the same ad ... and it may ignore most of them.
Here's what that means in practice.
Let's say you film five different influencers talking about your product. Different people. Different scripts. Different hooks.
But they're all standing in a kitchen. They all have short brown hair. They're all holding the product in their right hand.
Meta sees those five ads and says, "These are basically the same thing." It assigns them the same Entity ID, picks the one it thinks will perform best, and gives the other four minimal spend.
You think you're testing five ads. Meta thinks you uploaded one ad five times.
This is why creative diversity is now mandatory.
You can't just test different hooks on the same video anymore. You need visual diversity.
Different backgrounds. Different people. Different formats (video vs. static). Different colors. Different camera angles.
A pet supplement brand learned this the hard way. They uploaded 12 new video ads in one week. All of them were testimonial-style videos shot in customers' living rooms.
Meta spent 90% of the budget on two of those ads. The other ten got almost nothing.
They re-shot the creative with different environments ... one in a park, one in a vet's office, one as a simple graphic with text overlay. Suddenly all the ads started getting spend. Their reach jumped 34% without increasing the budget.
Here's the counter-intuitive part: You don't optimize by turning off bad ads anymore. You optimize by adding new ones.
In the old days, you'd launch five ads, kill the three losers, and scale the two winners.
Now? That destabilizes the account. Meta's machine learning needs a big pool of options to route budget efficiently.
The new strategy is to launch 50 to 150 ads at once. Meta will then automatically route budget to the winners (that have creative diversity). You don't need to micromanage the "off" switch any more. You need to aggressively manage the "new input" switch.
I know that sounds insane. "Where am I supposed to get 150 ads?"
Tomorrow I'll show you how to produce high volumes of visually diverse creative without a Hollywood budget. (Hint: Some of the best-performing ads I've seen lately are literally just screenshots of the product page.)
My question for you: How many of your current ads look visually similar? Same person, same background, same format ... just different hooks?
Hit reply and let me know. If the answer is "most of them," you're not alone. But it's costing you reach.
See you tomorrow,
Jeremiah
P.S. If you want help auditing your creative for diversity issues, just reply to this message and we can take a look together.
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