Andromeda.

When I was a kid, we had this set of hardcover books at home.
One on galaxies.
One on dinosaurs.
And a few others in the same series.

That was probably the first time I came across the word Andromeda.

Years later, while managing ads for a luxury women’s fashion brand,
the name came up again.
They had a collection inspired by the stars
one of the pieces was called Andromeda.

Back then, when I heard the word, it felt like art.
A creative name.
Something abstract.
Something that lived in the imagination.

But this year, it feels different.
The word now carries a different weight.
It sits deep in Meta’s ecosystem, not just as a name,
but as a structure, a new direction.

For years, advertisers have been in ‘complete’ control.
We set the targeting.
We split the budgets.
We tested audiences and ad copies like experiments.

That control is now fading.

Meta’s new Andromeda update changes everything.
It’s not another “feature.”
It’s Meta trying to take over the steering wheel.

And this time, you either trust it or get left behind.

Andromeda is Meta’s way of moving ads into full automation.
Instead of letting you pick every setting,
it wants to read how people behave,
and then decide on its own who sees what.

Think of it as Meta saying,
“You focus on the message.
We’ll handle the targeting.”

If you’ve used Advantage+ Shopping or App campaigns,
you’ve already tasted this.
Andromeda just pushes it to a bigger scale.

How did we get here?

Apple’s privacy updates changed everything in 2021.
Meta could no longer track people like before.
Interests, custom audiences, and tracking data
Gone or unreliable.

So Meta built new systems that depend less on what you tell it,
and more on what it can learn from people’s actions.

Advantage+ was the first step.
Andromeda is the next.

It connects your ads, engagement, and conversions,
reads every interaction,
and keeps learning as people respond.

You’re no longer the one adjusting campaigns.
The system learns and adapts automatically.

If you’ve been around long enough,
you remember Power Editor.
You remember setting daily budgets for each ad set.
You remember CBO; Campaign Budget Optimization
the feature that decided where to spend based on results.

Andromeda is the evolution of all that.
It strips away manual control completely.
It lets Meta’s algorithm do the work from start to finish.

But this doesn’t mean you’ve lost every lever.
You can still set placements, budgets, age, and gender.
What you can’t do anymore is dictate targeting in detail.
Interests and lookalikes are now suggestions, not rules.

Meta decides what matters most based on signals.

Frustrating? Maybe.
But Meta’s logic is clear:
Advertisers act emotionally.
Algorithms don’t.

In Meta’s world, a “signal” is data.
Anything that helps predict who’s likely to act.
A click.
A scroll.
A video view.
Even how long someone looks at an ad.

Andromeda collects these micro-signals and builds patterns from them.
That’s how it finds your audience.

The better your creatives perform,
the stronger your signals.
The stronger your signals,
the smarter your targeting.

You lose control but you gain intelligence.

So who wins here?

Big advertisers.
They already have the data volume, Andromeda needs to learn fast.
Their systems adapt quicker,
their performance stabilizes faster.

But small advertisers shouldn’t panic.
This update still works for you if your creative is strong.
Meta is now rewarding clarity, engagement and quality.

You don’t need ten ad sets anymore.
You need one message people care about.

Andromeda isn’t a bad thing.
It’s just Meta preparing for a world where tracking is dying.
Where privacy laws get stricter.
Where data is harder to get.

So instead of tracking, Meta is predicting.

You’ll have less control, yes.
But you’ll also spend less time guessing.

The new game isn’t about who knows targeting best.
It’s about who understands people better.

That’s the real advantage now.

So,

You can’t rely on a few winning ads anymore.

You need to think more strategically.
More angles.
More creative directions.
More testing.

If you were running 3 to 5 ad variations before, you should be thinking in tens.
Because Meta now rewards signals that come from diverse creatives, not just one good one.

The real edge is no longer in your targeting.
It’s in how fast you can test and refresh your creatives.

So while automation and AI may change the way we buy media, creativity still drives performance.
And the best media buyers will be the ones who understand both sides deeply.

On a lighter note

I don’t usually get this technical with my yearly drops, 

But this year just felt… different.
If I get another wave of inspiration before the year ends, I’ll gladly share.

Until next time,
Stay frosty.

C.