Edu here. Since Meta published an engineering post about Andromeda on October 28, I keep seeing posts that say "Andromeda 2.0 is here" and that brands need to rebuild their ad accounts. Is that true? So I went to Meta's own post to see what it actually says (it never says 2.0, by the way).
My first instinct was the boring answer: there's no new button, so there's nothing to rebuild. But the more I read, the more I think this update makes an old problem bigger, and that problem has nothing to do with settings. Most brands just don't have many different things to say.
Key Takeaways
- Meta's October 28, 2026 post describes a rebuilt Andromeda that scores every eligible ad, at over a billion ads per second. There's no new setting to turn on.
- Meta says Andromeda has raised Facebook conversions 2.4% since 2025, but it doesn't say how that was measured.
- Meta's advice is creative diversification, and it warns that ads which look too similar may be shown to the same people.
- A new format isn't a new reason to buy. In our electrolytes study, sport was only about 11% of the reasons people gave.
What changed in the Meta Andromeda update?
Andromeda is the first step in how Meta picks an ad for someone, and most advertisers never see it working. Out of all the ads that could be shown to one person, it builds a shortlist, and only that shortlist goes on to ranking and the auction. Meta first described it in December 2024.
The October 28 post is mostly about chips and models, so most of it won't matter to a brand. The part that does is that the new version scores every eligible ad in the pool, and Meta says it handles over one billion ads per second. Meta calls it "the 2026 Meta Andromeda", so "Andromeda 2.0" is just the name people gave it online.
Meta's engineering post of October 28, 2026 says: "Since 2025, Meta Andromeda has delivered a 2.4% increase in conversions on Facebook". It gives no baseline, method or time window (and no Instagram figure). So I'd read it as Meta's own average across all advertisers, and I wouldn't use it to forecast one account.
On the same day, Social Media Today reported a different Meta number: 1.4% more Facebook conversions in Q3 from Andromeda improvements. Maybe they cover different periods, I'm not sure, and Meta doesn't explain either one.
What does Meta tell advertisers to do?
The engineering post gives advertisers no advice at all, and that surprised me a bit. But the advice does exist on Meta's business pages, and it hasn't changed since late 2024. Meta calls it creative diversification. Its April 2025 post defines it as "creating a wide range of ad creatives with different themes, messages" and visuals, so each group gets something that fits.
Meta's warning is on its creative differentiation page (the small business section): "When ads look too similar, engagement can drop and lead to less sales". It also says that with similar content, "our system may not recognize it as different and could deliver it to the same sets of audiences." You can see if this is happening in the Delivery column in Ads Manager.
So I looked for where Meta says those different messages should come from, and I didn't really find it. The same page offers ten prompts for Reels ads, and the ones I could see were all formats: a listicle, a Q&A, a product demo, a POV video. Those are useful, but they're ways of saying something. A listicle and a demo that both say "hydrates you fast" are still one message, I think. Meta's November 2024 guide goes a bit further and splits by age (deals for younger shoppers, reviews and demos for older ones). But age is still a guess about people, and it doesn't come from anything they said.
Where do different ad messages come from?
They come from the different reasons people buy the same product. That sounds obvious, but most founders I talk to know one or two of their reasons (usually the ones from the launch deck). The rest are sitting in reviews and Reddit threads.
Here's a real example from our electrolytes study from July 2026. We analyzed 2,500+ comments where people talk about electrolyte powders, tablets and drinks, and we coded what they use them for. Sport, the reason the whole category was built on, came in at about 11%, tied with plain everyday energy.
Each bar is a different person in a different moment. One is on Zepbound, drinking plenty of water and still getting a headache the day after the shot. Another is on day three of a fast and feels their heart flutter, and another works outside in July and sweats through everything. If Meta can only tell your ads apart when they really differ, these are three ads that really differ, and none of them needed a new format to get there.
And the words for each ad are already there. Here's the heat and work version, from someone who doesn't mention a gym at all:
"Because I've been working on boats for a living in south Texas and I sweat to the point that I leave a puddle wherever I go in the summer."
Can you put those reasons straight into a Meta ad?
Not word for word, at least not the health ones. Meta's ad standards don't allow ads that assert or imply personal attributes of the viewer, and health conditions are part of that. So "On Ozempic and getting headaches?" will probably get rejected. A line about why so many people on GLP-1 medication add electrolytes says the same thing, and it doesn't tell the viewer what they have. I'm not a policy expert, so check the current wording before you launch. Still, the customer's own version is the best brief for that ad, even if it never appears in it word for word:
"I get day after shot headaches if I haven't had my electrolytes. At first I thought it was a coincidence, but 5 months in, every time I forget electrolytes the day of shot, like clockwork have a severe headache the next day."
How would I plan creative for Andromeda?
Let's keep it simple. Start with the reasons and pick formats after that. A team of one or two can't make 50 ads a week anyway (and I'm not sure it needs to). With the electrolytes data, the plan would look something like this:
| Reason to buy | The moment people describe | Words to borrow | One ad concept |
|---|---|---|---|
| Weight-loss medication | The day after the injection | "day after shot headaches" | Why so many people on GLP-1 medication add electrolytes |
| Fasting and keto | The first days without carbs | "catches so many people off guard" | What nobody tells you before your first long fast |
| Heat and work | A long shift in summer | "leave a puddle wherever I go" | A worker at the end of a hot day, no gym anywhere |
| Everyday energy | Carrying a huge bottle all day | "5 gallon Yetis and Stanleys" | The giant water bottle everyone carries now |
| Sport | Heavy training weeks | "50-60km/week" | The classic sports ad, kept as one concept out of five |
That's five concepts, and each one can have two or three formats under it (say a demo, or a creator talking to camera). The formats are the variations, and the reasons are what should keep the ads from looking the same to Meta. Also, each reason comes with its own words, so a good part of the copy is already written (the idea behind writing ad copy in your customer's language).
If you don't have a study, reviews, support emails and Reddit threads in your category are the usual places to look, and this guide on finding customer words shows how. Count them roughly, so you know which reason is big and which one is just one loud person.
Does Andromeda look at the words or at the visuals?
I don't know, and Meta doesn't say. Many agency posts talk about an "Entity ID" and a 60% similarity score, but as far as I can tell those come from third-party tools and not from Meta. So maybe Andromeda mostly sees the visuals, and five reasons inside the same template still look like one ad to it. Or maybe the words count more than people think. I haven't tested it. If anyone has a clean before-and-after, I'd really like to see it.
All in all, the update doesn't ask you to do anything new in Ads Manager, but it does make having only one thing to say a bit more expensive. So how many real reasons to buy could you list for your product right now?
How many reasons do your customers have?
Insightios researches the conversations where people explain why they bought, what worried them and what they compared. You get each reason with the original quotes, ready to turn into separate ad concepts.
Explore audience researchFrequently asked questions
Is there a Meta Andromeda 2.0?
Not officially, because Meta's October 28, 2026 post calls it "the 2026 Meta Andromeda". "Andromeda 2.0" is a name marketers gave the rebuilt version online.
Do I need to change anything in Ads Manager after the Andromeda update?
Probably not, because there is no new setting to turn on. Meta's advice since late 2024 has been creative diversification, so what changes is the ads you give the system, and the account setup can stay as it is.
What does creative diversification mean on Meta?
Meta defines it as creating a wide range of ad creatives with different themes, messages and visuals. It also warns that when ads look too similar, its system may not recognize them as different and could show them to the same people.
How many ads should I run after the Meta Andromeda update?
Meta's November 2024 guide suggested keeping at least 20 diversified ads in Advantage+ shopping campaigns. For a small brand, how many genuinely different reasons to buy those ads cover probably matters more than the total count.
Sources
- Engineering at Meta, Meta Andromeda: Powering the Next Generation of Ads Retrieval Through Model-System Co-Design, October 28, 2026. Retrieved 2026-11-02. Post.
- Engineering at Meta, Meta Andromeda: Supercharging Advantage+ automation with the next-gen personalized ads retrieval engine, December 2, 2024. Retrieved 2026-11-02. Post.
- Meta for Business, The Creative Advantage: Unlocking the Power of Diversification with Meta Andromeda, April 22, 2025. Retrieved 2026-11-02. Article.
- Meta for Business, Three steps to optimize your performance with creative diversification, November 19, 2024. Retrieved 2026-11-02. Article.
- Meta for Business, Maximize conversions with differentiated ad creative. Retrieved 2026-11-02. Page.
- Social Media Today, Meta says its expanded processing capacity is driving ad results, October 28, 2026. Retrieved 2026-11-02. Article.
- Meta Transparency Center, Privacy violations and personal attributes. Retrieved 2026-11-02. Policy.
- Insightios, electrolytes study, July 2026. Retrieved 2026-11-02. Study and methodology. Use-case shares and customer quotes above come from this existing study; no new comments were collected.