How the Andromeda Update Is Affecting Your Meta Activity

In October 2025, Meta rolled out what many advertisers refer to as the Andromeda update a significant change to how the platform delivers ads and optimises campaigns. While updates like these are common, this one has had a noticeable impact on campaign performance, audience targeting, and advertising costs.

If you've noticed your Meta campaigns becoming more expensive or behaving differently, you're not imagining it. Here's what the update means and how you can adapt your strategy.

What is the Andromeda Update?

The Andromeda update is part of Meta's continued shift towards AI-powered advertising. Rather than relying heavily on manually built audiences and highly specific targeting, Meta is encouraging advertisers to give its machine learning more freedom to find the right people.

The platform now places greater emphasis on automation, predictive targeting, and creative performance, allowing its AI to determine who is most likely to convert based on user behaviour.

How is this affecting your ads?

One of the biggest changes many advertisers have experienced is an increase in CPMs (Cost Per Thousand Impressions).

As Meta's AI competes for the highest-quality users and advertisers rely more heavily on automated campaign types, competition has increased across many industries. This means businesses may find themselves paying more to reach their audience.

However, a higher CPM doesn't necessarily mean worse results. If campaigns are optimised correctly, improved conversion rates can still produce a strong return on ad spend.

How to work with the update - not against it

Instead of trying to fight Meta's new direction, it's far more effective to embrace it.

• Use broader targeting

The days of layering dozens of detailed interests together are becoming less effective. Meta's AI performs best when it has room to learn. Campaigns using Advantage+ Audience or broader targeting often outperform tightly restricted audiences because the system has more opportunities to find people who are likely to act.

• Let creative do the heavy lifting

Creative has become one of the most important factors in campaign success. As targeting becomes more automated, your images and videos are what differentiate your business from everyone else competing for attention.

Some of the best-performing creatives today are:

• Short-form, engaging videos

• User-generated content (UGC)

• Behind-the-scenes footage

• Founder-led content

• Authentic, less polished ads that feel native to social media

Consumers are becoming increasingly resistant to overly produced adverts. Content that feels genuine and entertaining often achieves stronger engagement and better conversion rates.

• Trust the algorithm

Many advertisers still make frequent edits to campaigns, restrict targeting too much, or duplicate ad sets unnecessarily.

With the Andromeda update, patience is becoming more valuable. Giving Meta's algorithm enough data and time to optimise can often produce better long-term performance than constantly making manual changes.

Lastly, Meta's Andromeda update represents another step towards AI-driven advertising. The key is to stop relying solely on detailed targeting and instead focus on creating compelling, engaging creative that resonates with your audience. Pair that with broader targeting through Advantage+ and allow Meta's AI to do what it was designed to do.

The advertisers who embrace these changes rather than resist them will be in the strongest position to build scalable, profitable campaigns in the months and years ahead.