The Andromeda galaxy is 14,900,000,000,000,000,000 miles away from us and is heading towards our Milky Way galaxy at a rate of 246,000 miles per hour, or roughly the UK’s national speed limit on a motorway per hour, but per second. Personally, I think ‘Andromeda’ is a much cooler name than ‘Milky Way.’ but I am incredibly partial to Milky Way chocolate bars.
As our galaxies move closer together, that speed will increase by 4x because of gravity.
And perhaps Meta named their latest update Andromeda because it signifies how rapidly the Paid Ads landscape is about to change.
Let me explain.
What is the Andromeda update?
The Andromeda update was announced in April of this year and launched in July. To say it ‘launched’ in July is slightly incorrect though because Meta Ads updates aren’t static. Meta Ads and the algorithm behind it isn’t just updated every-so-often and then left alone, rather each update is dynamic and is constantly being updated. Even when there isn’t an announced change, the algorithm is constantly updated and changing both by itself and through human intervention. Big updates like Andromeda indicate a much larger-than-normal case of human intervention. Think of it this way: a plane can be 1 degree off course on a 1500 mile journey and end up 26 miles away. If you wanted to go to Heathrow, you’ll be in London City. The destination is still the same because, either way, you’ll end up in London. That’s how modern ad and search algorithms usually update. Small changes, constantly. Updates like Andromeda are like taking the plane 100 degrees off course and travelling 4x the distance – it’s an entirely new destination.
What’s the destination?
AI will own your campaigns.
Andromeda is a huge step towards Mark Zuckerberg’s vision of ads being completely controlled by AI. He wants that to happen by 2026. See this article for more info on that: https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/meta-aims-fully-automate-advertising-with-ai-by-2026-wsj-reports-2025-06-02/
From the 16th of December, Meta AI chats will change ad delivery. Personally, I don’t know anyone who uses Meta AI. Meta says more than 1 billion people use it per month. How many of these are just people accidentally tapping the Meta AI buttons under Facebook posts? I don’t know. I’d guess… quite a few. If you use Meta AI, tell me. I want to know what the use-case is and why you’d ever use it over Perplexity, ChatGPT, Claude, or even Copilot.
Andromeda is Meta telling us advertisers that we don’t run the campaign. The machine does. We just feed it creative. Really it’s been like this a for while – both Google Ads and Meta Ads will step outside of the campaign parameters you set if their machine deems it suitable.
Narrow audience targeting? That’ll disappear. For years it’s been much more of a suggestion to the algorithm than a rule. Meta’s putting a lot of trust in their AI and machine learning if they think it can know your audience better than you can.
For some people, that’s true. If you run an e-commerce store, I would completely trust that Meta knows everything about my target audience – their eating habits, their political views, even the time they spend on the toilet.
For small niches? Uh oh.
Server-side tracking through Conversions API
You’ll probably want to invest in implementing CAPI so that Meta’s AI can understand the signals and events that lead to conversions.
Without it? You’re leaving even more of your fate up to the dice rolls of predictive AI.
The inevitable consequence of AI, machine learning, and LLMs
Artificial general intelligence (AGI) isn’t real. It doesn’t exist. Every AI system we have is based on predictions and probability.
In my day job, I promote a hybrid Level 2 qualification called Retrofit Skills to contractors and tradespeople. That’s a very specific audience and no AI seems to really understand the product or the people I’m promoting it to. Not only that, because it’s a unique product and niche audience, the AI exaggerates product qualities. It has to because it has very little data to go on.
It’s authored by one of the authors of the PAS 2035 standard, which is a standard regulating building efficiency upgrades in homes. ChatGPT for example (Claude does this too) will take this and turn it into a headline like “Your Gateway to PAS 2035 Compliance.” Nothing in the landing page signifies this and it’s entirely wrong. Meta’s Advantage+ will try to create headline and primary text variations about how this will make you a Retrofit Coordinator, which is massively incorrect as that requires a Level 3 in a related subject as well as a Level 5 diploma. But because Retrofit Skills and Retrofit Coordinator share the word ‘Retrofit’ and because of how niche the product and audience are, it tries to come up with something.
If I don’t narrow the audience parameters, chaos happens. And I’m willing to bet this happens for a lot of small niches. That’s not even the worse part…
If AI will take control over audience targeting, CPMs go up. As they already have. When AI takes over creative, imagine how much higher CPMs and CPCs will go because Meta’s AI gets to dictate bidding competition and delivery?
Hopefully, that isn’t anytime soon and perhaps government organisations will step in to regulate this. The UK’s CMA and the US’ DOJ and FTC have already stepped in before to make Google Ads advertising more transparent.
This could genuinely destroy paid advertising for small businesses with niche audiences. It also will probably greatly benefit e-commerce businesses with a high amount of repeat customers. I imagine that’s who Meta get most of their income from and it will benefit Meta hugely to have a great degree of control over their advertising.
Key Takeaways
- Andromeda places individual ad creative over ad set and campaign
- Bigger emphasis on Reels
- We’re moving towards Advantage+ being the default (and likely only) option
- From the 16th of December, Meta Ads will rely on signals from Meta AI conversations to dictate ad delivery
- Small businesses targeting niche audiences will likely be impacted very negatively by this
- E-commerce stores with a good monthly spend will likely benefit from this, especially if they have a lot of repeat purchases
Has Andromeda affected your advertising yet?
Best,
Tyler L. Sinclair