The Meta algorithm update 2025, known as Andromeda, has caused the recent volatility that many brands are seeing in their campaigns. Meta first hinted at this shift toward AI-driven retrieval at the end of 2024. It began rolling out quietly in early 2025 and by mid-year it had reached enough accounts for the effects to become impossible to ignore.
We have spent the past several months analysing how it behaves across a wide range of brands and budgets, and the pattern has been consistent. Reliable campaigns lost stability, costs shifted without warning, and creative performance became far more sensitive than before.
If your Meta ads have been feeling unpredictable lately, you are not imagining it. This dip in stability has a cause. Meta rebuilt the engine that decides which ads appear, who sees them and how performance is calculated. That rebuild is called Andromeda, and if you run an e-commerce business or lead a marketing function, this update affects you directly. Even if your metrics still look stable, the shift is already shaping what will and will not work in 2026.
Here is what we have learned from months of adjusting to the shift, and how your strategy needs to evolve for 2026.
WHAT IS ANDROMEDA?
Meta’s official documentation describes Andromeda as:
An AI-driven retrieval system designed to improve ad relevance through multi modal modelling, large scale signal processing and real time optimisation. It focuses on identifying and retrieving the most relevant ad for each individual user based on a wide combination of behavioural, contextual and predictive signals.
This makes the Meta Andromeda update the most significant change to Meta’s retrieval system in years.
To put it simply, Meta rebuilt the part of its advertising system that decides which ad appears in front of a person at a given moment. Instead of relying heavily on audiences, interests or the structure of your campaigns, Andromeda evaluates the individual user in real-time and selects the ad that is most likely to achieve the outcome you care about.
The emphasis has shifted away from who you think your audience is and toward how relevant your creative is to the person Meta sees in that moment.
This shift rolled out gradually through 2024 and 2025. During that time, more advertisers began noticing volatility, inconsistent reporting and changes in winning creative patterns. By late 2025, Andromeda became the default retrieval system across Meta’s ad ecosystem, and by 2026 it is fully embedded into how campaigns reach people.
The important takeaway is that Meta no longer prioritises your targeting structure. It prioritises the quality, clarity and diversity of your creative.
THE MECHANICS OF THE UPDATE
Meta has always been a powerful product discovery platform for customer acquisition, but Andromeda strengthens this behaviour by relying more on real-time intent and creative relevance instead of predefined audiences. The core updates below help explain why your old structures might feel less stable and why new patterns are emerging.
1) A new retrieval engine at the core
Meta rebuilt the mechanism that fetches ads for each user. The system can now process more signals at once, interpret them faster and compare a wider pool of creative options before deciding which ad appears. It is designed to select the most relevant creative, not the most accurate audience definition.
2) Retrieval takes priority over traditional targeting
Instead of ranking ads inside predefined interest groups, Meta now retrieves ads based on what a person is showing interest in right now. This means your audience settings carry less weight than they used to, and Meta may choose an ad you did not expect if the creative aligns more closely with a user’s current behaviour.
3) Optimisation shifts to the individual
Meta evaluates a person based on their recent behaviour, the content they are engaging with and the patterns they are showing in the moment. Interest targeting that was created months or years ago holds far less influence. Relevance and recency matter more.
4) Creative becomes the deciding factor
The update gives preference to ads that feel natural, helpful or interesting to the person seeing them. Creative with distinctive hooks, clearer messaging or more relatable visuals is more likely to be selected. Minor variations of the same asset no longer provide enough differentiation for the system to work with.
5) Simple account structures work best
The new system compresses overly complicated setups. Extensive exclusions, stacked targeting layers and hyper-specific segmentation are frequently ignored because they reduce the pool of ads available for retrieval. Clean structures give the algorithm more freedom to match creative to the right people.
WHAT THIS MEANS FOR BRANDS
The most important shift is this. Meta has become a discovery engine that prioritises creative impact over targeting precision. This is why many brands are noticing changes long before they hear the word Andromeda.
Some major changes include:
Tight targeting is declining in effectiveness
Interest-based micro audiences that once performed well are now being outperformed by broader setups. Meta’s understanding of a user’s real-time intent often surpasses the assumptions baked into narrow targeting.
The old creative rules no longer apply
A few light variations of an ad are not enough. The system needs distinct concepts to work with. Brands that perform well are creating a wider range of angles, messages and formats so the retrieval engine can match the right creative to the right moment.
Performance volatility is becoming common
Sudden spikes in Cost-Per-Acquisition (CPA) or drops in Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) are often linked to two things. Creative losing relevance faster than expected, or data signals becoming inconsistent. The system now responds more noticeably to both.
Creative quality and tracking accuracy drive most of your results
If your ad account feels unstable, it often comes back to these two areas. Strong creative produces more consistent delivery. Reliable tracking provides cleaner signals to the system and supports optimisation. When either one is weak, performance becomes unpredictable.
The gap between adaptive and stagnant brands is increasing
Brands that embrace creative diversity, streamlined structures and solid measurement are scaling efficiently. Brands that rely on older tactics are spending more for weaker results. This divide will continue to widen through 2026.
HOW YOUR AD STRATEGY SHOULD ADAPT
Understanding the Facebook ads algorithm update is essential because the new retrieval logic affects how your campaigns stabilise and scale. Your paid social strategy now depends far more on creative relevance and clean data than manual adjustments, so the brands that adapt early will get the clearest advantage.
Here is what that looks like in practice.
Make creative variety the core of your strategy
Creative is now the deciding factor in whether your ads are shown at all. Having a wide range of concepts gives the system more options to retrieve the right message for the right person.
This is especially important for e-commerce brands where the same product can appeal to multiple motivations. More creative concepts give Meta more routes to find the buyer.
Adopt a social-first creative mindset
This is the shift many business owners find most difficult. People open Instagram, Facebook and TikTok to relax, scroll and escape. They are not sitting there waiting to buy something. Even strong direct response content will struggle if it does not fit the environment.
A social first strategy respects the setting. It means creating content that blends into the feed and earns attention before it earns a click. Simple demos, real customer moments, behind-the-scenes clips, founder presence and creative that mirrors native behaviour consistently outperform heavy sales messaging.
Always remember, once interest exists, stronger conversion channels like search, email and your on-site experience can take over.
Use your first-party data to guide Meta
Your customer list is now your most valuable first-party data source. When Meta understands who actually buys from you, it builds far stronger modelling for New Customer Acquisition.
Clean pixel events, correct purchase values, accurate custom audiences, high-quality leads and consistent conversions strengthen Meta’s understanding of who your true customers are.
A strong data foundation improves modelling, stabilises delivery and stops the system from relying on weak public signals.
Think about it like this. Meta knows how people behave on the platform, but only you know who actually buys. Combine those two and the system becomes far more efficient.
Refine your budget allocation so your signals stay strong
The new retrieval system depends heavily on clarity. When budgets are split across too many campaigns, too many objectives or too many variations, the signals become thin. Weak signals slow learning and make performance unstable.
The safest approach is to fund fewer, stronger campaigns that give the system enough volume to understand who your best customers are and how they behave.
A single objective per campaign is also important. Mixing objectives in the same account structure can confuse the system and make it harder for Meta to understand what outcome you actually value.
Keep your structure simple to avoid signal dilution
Complex setups that once felt strategic now work against you. Heavy exclusions, stacked layers, niche audiences and endless ad sets dilute the very signals Meta needs to retrieve the right creative.
A cleaner structure gives the platform more freedom to match your ads to high-intent users. Simplicity here is not a trend, it is a direct response to how retrieval works.
Build for stability, then scale
Fewer campaigns, stronger signals, better creative and clean data make scaling far easier.
When retrieval understands your best customer profile, your cost per result becomes more predictable and your budgets work harder.
Brands that adapt early will see the benefits fastest, and those who delay will pay more for the same outcomes.
Look beyond Meta and consider the full customer journey
Andromeda is only one part of a much bigger shift happening across e-commerce marketing. Because of this, product discovery, buying behaviour and consumer expectations are evolving at the same time, which means your Meta strategy cannot operate in isolation.
The system now reads what happens after the click, so any friction on your product pages, slow load times or checkout issues feed back into how your ads are delivered. When the journey breaks, Meta cannot tell whether the creative was weak or the site let the user down, and costs climb as it keeps sending traffic into unclear signals.
This is especially important for New Customer Acquisition campaigns that depend on strong, consistent conversion behaviour to learn who your best buyers are. If the first visit does not match the expectation your ad created, Meta learns the wrong patterns and struggles to find the right customers next time. A clean, dependable journey from first impression to purchase strengthens your signals and reduces wasted spend.
IN SUMMARY
The Meta algorithm update 2025 is here to stay, and the brands who adapt early will gain a clear performance edge. Advertising is more volatile today than it has been in years and the brands who thrive are the ones with teams who stay close to the changes, test often and adapt quickly.
You do not need to navigate this alone. At EXPAND, we treat your brand like a partner, not a project. If your Meta performance feels unstable or you want to future proof your strategy before 2026 tightens the gap even more, reach out.
Contact EXPAND today and we will help you identify the first three fixes that will improve performance right away.