Andromeda: what Meta's new engine changes for your ad creatives

If you follow online advertising news, you have come across the name: Andromeda. Plenty of advertisers talk about it without knowing exactly what it is. Here is what I take from it, and what it changes in practice.

I stick to what is established. Meta says little about the inner workings of its systems, and a good part of what circulates comes from blogs extrapolating.

What it is

Andromeda is the Meta system that makes the first selection of ads. Meta presented it at the end of 2024.

For a given person, millions of ads could be shown to them. Andromeda picks the ones that deserve to enter the race, a much shorter list. Only then does the auction rank those candidates and decide which one is displayed.

In other words, Andromeda decides which ads have a chance of winning, and the auction then picks the one that wins.

Why variety matters

Andromeda tries to match each ad to the person it speaks to. To manage that, it needs material: ads that genuinely differ from one another.

The reasoning is simple. With three ads, the system picks the best of three. With thirty different ads, it can find one that speaks to each type of person. And the one that works for one person leaves another indifferent.

It shifts the work. For years the job was targeting well. Fine targeting has lost most of its weight: it is now the content of the ad that determines who it is shown to. The creative does the targeting.

Vary for real, not just change the text

This is the point most advertisers miss. Taking the same video and rewriting the text above it is not enough: to the system, it is almost the same ad.

What creates a real difference is what you see and hear.

• The hook. The first three seconds, with a genuinely different opening.
• The person on screen. Owner, employee, customer.
• The setting and the scene. Another site, another room, another light.
• The format. A demonstration, a testimonial, a before and after, a list.
• The angle. Price, guarantee, timescale, quality of the work: each speaks to somebody else.

That last point is the most important. A visual variant of the same message remains the same message. Two different angles are two ads.

What it means for your budget

Several distinct creatives mean producing more content. It is the hidden cost of this shift, and it is where many advertisers stall: one video a month does not feed this system.

Two practical consequences.

A little less budget and more creatives beats one heavily run video. A single creative wears out fast, and ad fatigue arrives that much sooner.

Production has to be thought of as a flow, not a project. A half-day shoot can yield material for several weeks of variants, provided you film it with different angles in mind.

What not to conclude from it

Andromeda guarantees no results, and it replaces neither a good offer nor correct tracking. A varied ad pushing a weak offer is still an ad that does not sell.

I am also wary of the precise figures you read here and there: similarity thresholds, the ideal number of variants. They come from secondary sources, and nobody can check them on Meta's side. The principle, though, stands up: give the system real differences to work with.

Why I say this

It is one of the reasons I do not bill creatives one by one. A client who hesitates before asking for a new video ends up running a single one for too long. When editing variants is included, the question does not arise.

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Further reading: Why your ads cost more and more and AI video or a real shoot: how to choose.

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