What 53,000 Ads Reveal About Meta’s Andromeda Algorithm

[00:00:00] Richard Gaffin: Hey folks. Welcome to the Ecommerce Playbook Podcast. I'm your host, Richard Gaffin, Director of Digital Product Strategy here at Common Thread Collective. And I'm joined by our VP of Paid Media, Tony the Chopper Chopp. Also my co-host on the DTC Hotline, but he is joining us today to talk a little Andromeda to Tony.

[00:00:16] Richard Gaffin: What's going on, man?

[00:00:17] Tony Chopp: Richard All is well.

[00:00:19] Tony Chopp: How about how about yourself?

[00:00:20] Richard Gaffin: Oh, it all is well with you, Tony. All is well with me. I'm gonna say I really like your shirt. I like the mandarin collar needs to come back. It's a good look and I'm inspired, but cool. Let's let's, let's jump straight into here. So like the purpose behind. Kinda what we're talking about today.

[00:00:34] Richard Gaffin: We're talking about Andromeda, and particularly we're talking about the ways in which the data that we gathered over BFCM encapsulates the vast difference in the current, in the landscape between then and now. So as we were just kind of looking into the timeline here on Andromeda, and it rolled out right after.

[00:00:50] Richard Gaffin: BFCM, which means we kind of have a clean comparison between what Black Friday looked like last year and what it looked like this year in terms of how the algorithm has changed our approach to [00:01:00] the platform. So what we got, Tony here, he's been gathering he's been gathering the clues, he's been analyzing them.

[00:01:06] Richard Gaffin: And what we're kind of looking at today is, is how. The Androy algorithm rewards, volume, format and strategy, particularly how it affects creative. So, Tony, why don't you dive into it. Give us like a, a little bit of background behind this sort of research project and, and kind of what we were hoping to get out of it.

[00:01:21] Tony Chopp: Yeah. Yeah. It was interesting to, to your point just before we got to talking, we, I, I remember like the Andromeda conversation starting in December of last year.

[00:01:34] Richard Gaffin: Yeah,

[00:01:34] Tony Chopp: we went and looked it up, and it was actually December 2nd of last year

[00:01:38] Tony Chopp: that they, they posted about it, meta posted about it on their engineering blog, which happened to be Cyber Monday.

[00:01:43] Tony Chopp: So we, so the idea for this sort of, kind of came out of that where, you know, we've talked about Andromeda a lot this year and, and how really it's a, a fundamentally different mechanism underneath the hood from a traditional media. Platform that [00:02:00] allows us to bid you know, using d different bidding methodologies and is around this relationship between the cost to acquire a customer and how much you bid and how much your budget is, et cetera, et cetera.

[00:02:13] Tony Chopp: Really traditional stuff to the the language that we've heard around Andromeda and that we use is it's, it's an AI driven content delivery. Machine. So, so it's all about this idea of pairing the exact right piece of content with the user that's most likely to respond to that content. And, and we've had some, some, some theories and some thesises throughout the year about what that means for, at sort of the type of ad and the, the amount of ads that you need. And we wanted to use this opportunity to compare. To really look at some year over year things on, on the B-F-B-F-C-M data set to, to see what we could tease out. So, so, the setup here is the analysis is on just over 53,000 [00:03:00] ads across to approximately 147 clients, which represent $127 million in revenue. And 14 and a half million dollars in media investment across Cyber five. So, that starting on, on Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday,

[00:03:17] Tony Chopp: that's the setup.

[00:03:18] Richard Gaffin: Okay, cool. Well then let's let's, let's roll into it and, and kind of try to understand exactly what changes have occurred here.

[00:03:25] Tony Chopp: Yeah. Yeah. So, a couple things really jumped out. So, the, one of the biggest things that. Popped out immediately is the, the just volume of ad production that went into this time of year. So, from approximately 13,000 ads that were launched last year for this data set to over 50,000 this year.

[00:03:46] Tony Chopp: So I'm gonna show you, we're gonna show you some some specific examples of how that breaks down and, and how the volume strategy paid off and why this idea of. Failing fast and creative velocity [00:04:00] is is paramount moving

[00:04:01] Tony Chopp: forward. But before we go into the creative piece, I wanna talk just a little bit about the ideas of, of bidding and how that actually played out in, in our dataset for for the weekend.

[00:04:14] Tony Chopp: So,

[00:04:15] Richard Gaffin: Okay.

[00:04:16] Tony Chopp: A couple things just, just to set the table. We analyzed that $14.5 million. Media spend across the different bid strategies that, that are available for us to use in meta. This is a remarkably difficult data set to get to.

[00:04:31] Tony Chopp: And the, the reason why is because well meta doesn't make it easy to extract this information and. The, the bidding can be set either at the campaign or at the ad set level, which, which makes it even, even funkier to get to either way. We were able to work with our data science team and, and pop this all out. And a couple things really stood out from this analysis. Number one, we had three main bidding objectives that represented the [00:05:00] vast majority of the spend.

[00:05:01] Tony Chopp: So, highest cost lowest cost, highest volume. Minero and cost cap. Those three accounted for 99% of the investment. The thing that that stood out is lowest cost was for sure, for sure the volume engine. It represented the largest portion of the spend during that period. However,

[00:05:21] Richard Gaffin: Hmm.

[00:05:22] Tony Chopp: where it really gets interesting is on the a OV side.

[00:05:26] Tony Chopp: So.

[00:05:27] Tony Chopp: The difference between the a OV on lowest cost versus Monroe or cost cap is nearly three x.

[00:05:35] Tony Chopp: The average a OV on the lowest cost is approximately 15 $50. The average a OV on Monroe and cost cap was approximately $150. And so this is such a, this is such a core idea when we, when we think about how we apply the bidding principles and, and the relationship to. To Andromeda in, in this case, bidding doesn't just [00:06:00] change the, the ROAS or the CPA from from the outcome of your Meta Ads campaign, it fundamentally changes the type of customer that you acquire. I.

[00:06:12] Richard Gaffin: Okay. Yeah, no, I'm, I'm just kinda looking at the data right now. It's fascinating. So what we're looking at here is on mineral and cost cap the both of those bid strategies had at least double the CPA of the highest volume campaign. And then it also had triple the A OV roughly. So, I mean, I guess what that's pointing to is the mineral and cost cap bidding strategies are able to find, quote, unquote, better customers.

[00:06:33] Richard Gaffin: They're put in front of. Folks who wanna spend more, but what do you think is the, why is that happening? Like what's the, what's the sort of algorithmic trick that causes that bid style to find a better customer?

[00:06:50] Tony Chopp: Well, I think the. Part of what we believe to be true about Andromeda is the, the [00:07:00] signals that are being incorporated in the the bidding are things like watch time on videos and behavior for the individual around like who adds to cart more

[00:07:14] Tony Chopp: often who checks out more often. And both of these value-based bidding strategies and, and we'll throw, we'll throw highest value in there as well. 'cause I think this one is, is even more interesting. All of these value-based bidding strategies represent Meta's ability to actually tease out higher value customers.

[00:07:37] Richard Gaffin: Hmm.

[00:07:38] Tony Chopp: And I think where, where it becomes really interesting is I, I don't, I don't think there's a. I don't believe that there's a right or wrong bidding strategy,

[00:07:48] Tony Chopp: but it is very clear that they are different tools. And so, so for example, like if you are a brand that has a really big [00:08:00] difference in the a OV of your products, let's say you sell some things for $20 and you have other things for, you know, $200, you. You have to be really conscientious about how you structure your advertising account specifically to bidding. Because if you just lump all of if you just lump that all of your products into one campaign around lowest cost, using lowest cost, you are for sure going to drive the lowest value sales.

[00:08:29] Richard Gaffin: Mm-hmm.

[00:08:30] Tony Chopp: On the flip side of the coin, if you have a smaller group of products and sort of tighter. Ranges for your AOVs and even for your margin. For sure. Lowest cost and highest volume is a, is a bidding methodology that can get a bunch of delivery as illustrated by what happened in BFCM, where actually the majority of the investment went through, went through this lowest cost, highest volume set. So I don't think it's a, [00:09:00] it's a, it's not a question of right or wrong, it's

[00:09:02] Tony Chopp: a question, it's a matter of. It fundamentally understanding what these tools are for. And it's not that complicated

[00:09:11] Tony Chopp: because it's in, it's in the name.

[00:09:14] Richard Gaffin: Yeah. Sure.

[00:09:14] Tony Chopp: And it, it's, I think it's just really cool to see it borne out over, over this significant data set over 14 and a half million dollars of media spend.

[00:09:23] Tony Chopp: That that what, what is in the name is, is

[00:09:27] Tony Chopp: essentially what, what you're gonna get. The, the thing that, the thing that I'm sort of like curious to tease out and understand a little bit more is bidding around highest value, which you'll notice from the table had had the highest a OV, almost a $200 a OV but the lowest measure for braas, so like in, in the highest CPA,

[00:09:51] Tony Chopp: so. This, this feels like the part of the bidding stack that's like, hmm. Still a work in [00:10:00] development potentially. But if you have like a really high, if you have like a super high a OV product this feels like a, a good area of exploration into this highest value bidding. 'cause you're, you're gonna go find those, those customers that that resonate with that, that type of product.

[00:10:16] Richard Gaffin: Yeah, that's interesting. Yeah, so, so I mean, I guess like to, to your point earlier, you know, a mineross campaign is going to find a minimum ros. And so to some, in some basic level sort of makes sense that that would be the most efficient spend, right? Which is turned out to be 2.6. Well actually, sorry, it didn't turn out to be the most efficient spend.

[00:10:34] Richard Gaffin: It had a higher roas, but cost cap was actually even higher. But the idea behind the cost cap is you're, you're essentially saying, Hey. CPA or a maximum CPA of this, and there's a little bit of wiggle room on either side, but is there, what's the reason, do you think that that was able to draw out a higher a OV and actually perform more efficiently than, than the rest of the bid styles?

[00:10:56] Tony Chopp: Well, I think it's, it's by definition the most efficient [00:11:00] bidding. So it has the most

[00:11:01] Tony Chopp: constraint. So then I'm not surprised that cost cap has represents the largest, the, the highest Ross, because the difference between. The cost cap in minero bidding is cost cap's gonna sort of cap at a specific CPA and not go for anything above that

[00:11:18] Tony Chopp: where minimum minero, if you looked at a scatter plot of the outcomes of, of a minimum Ross campaign, some of the CPAs are gonna be higher, some of the CPAs are gonna be

[00:11:26] Tony Chopp: lower and it's gonna balance out to that Ross.

[00:11:28] Tony Chopp: So, but, but the flip side of that coin is, and the, the difference isn't, isn't huge. But there is a difference. There's more media spend delivered through ro what, what do you wanna call it? Maybe 10% more so that that 10% additional media spend that's going through RO is effectively the CPA, the CPAs that were above the cost cap threshold.

[00:11:51] Richard Gaffin: Right. Interesting. Well, this is, this is why you're the expert, Tony, and I'm not, but let's let's roll on to our next kind of section here, talking about spend, growth, ad [00:12:00] volume, scaling, but yeah, jump into it.

[00:12:02] Tony Chopp: Yeah, so thi this is when we look at these the different, different sort of relationships between the spend growth year over year and the add volume year over year, and this is where I believe the Andromeda effect becomes. Undeniable. So first things first, look at, look at the volume. So, creative production literally exploded year over year.

[00:12:21] Tony Chopp: So we, we increased static ad volume by 158% in video ad volume by 140, 141%. So both formats grew at a, a very similar rate, approximately 44% year over year. Okay.

[00:12:37] Tony Chopp: From about 15,000 total ads that were launched in 2024 to 45,000 in 2025.

[00:12:46] Richard Gaffin: Yeah.

[00:12:48] Tony Chopp: So both ad types grew the amount that we produced, and they both grew like three x. What I think is really, really interesting here [00:13:00] is as as spend scaled through the static ads. We observed a, a diminishing return. The ROAS actually dropped 8% year over year.

[00:13:12] Richard Gaffin: Hmm.

[00:13:13] Tony Chopp: Video ads showed a di a slightly different behavior where they absorbed nearly a million dollars in extra spend and the video ROS actually held and even slightly increased year over year. And so this, this is a confirmation of our thesis that in the RAA era video CRE creates. Denser data signals like watch time and engagement and allowing it to absorb scale without, without breaking efficiency. And so I had a, I had a thesis coming into this year well, let me back up a step. So every year we, for BFCM, static ads. Have traditionally represented, represented the majority of the scale, the majority of where the media [00:14:00] investment goes. And my theory was that maybe this year that relationship would shift. It would be more, more video than static than it has been in PA in years past. So that actually didn't bear out in this data set. But what did bear out is that video was able to absorb more of that, spend more efficiently. So

[00:14:21] Tony Chopp: next year.

[00:14:23] Richard Gaffin: Yeah. Yeah. So talk, talk to me a little about, I just wanted you to tease out this idea that like the video, video was able to absorb more spend because of the greater number of data points. So is that a question of the algorithm having more information with which to serve it to the right people or something like that and that creates additional efficiency?

[00:14:44] Richard Gaffin: Or what's kind of, what's going on there?

[00:14:46] Tony Chopp: yeah, exactly. That's

[00:14:47] Tony Chopp: exactly right. So yeah, so. The, well, let's use watch time as a for example.

[00:14:53] Tony Chopp: Okay? So video is going to send a signal back to, [00:15:00] to the Andro engine around let's say you get, you get served videos and for fender guitar videos, Richard, you

[00:15:11] Tony Chopp: watch that whole thing end to end,

[00:15:13] Tony Chopp: right.

[00:15:14] Tony Chopp: You never, you never click off it.

[00:15:16] Tony Chopp: But for Gibson guitar video. I

[00:15:20] Tony Chopp: shouldn't, I shouldn't be saying this. Gibson

[00:15:22] Tony Chopp: guitars are great, they're all great guitars, but let's use a different

[00:15:24] Tony Chopp: category for for whatever water bottles

[00:15:28] Tony Chopp: you just scroll. You just scroll right past.

[00:15:30] Tony Chopp: Okay. 

[00:15:30] Richard Gaffin: Couldn't care less, 

[00:15:31] Tony Chopp: So one is sending a really strong, intense signal and, and the other is sending a, a lesser intense signal for sure.

[00:15:39] Richard Gaffin: Gotcha. Okay. Cool. Any anything else on this slide you wanna hit?

[00:15:44] Tony Chopp: Well, I think the, the last thing is the, the scaling relationship.

[00:15:48] Tony Chopp: So, this, there's a obvious relationship between volume and scale. So

[00:15:54] Tony Chopp: accounts that produce more ads generally manage higher spend levels. But, there [00:16:00] is, in this particular data set, there was no low volume, high spend quadrant in the chart.

[00:16:07] Tony Chopp: Okay. So, Z zero zero situations where we had an account that spent a ton but only had a few ads.

[00:16:15] Tony Chopp: And I think this represents in, in years past where we would maybe get away with having one, one winner that's that scaled and allowed us to, to really meaningfully push into not only BFCM, but but throughout a year. And that didn't exist this year

[00:16:32] Tony Chopp: for our data set. 

[00:16:35] Richard Gaffin: Yeah. Yeah. Right. So, so the idea being that like in the past there's potentially scenarios where. You had a few, like winning ads that were able to maybe transcend, pull a bunch of spend in whatever. At this point, the relationship between volume and spend is, is sort of undeniably clear. Like, it's like more ads means more spend, and there's, that's sort of the long and the short of it and there's not a lot of nuance to it.

[00:16:59] Richard Gaffin: Okay. Cool. [00:17:00] Let's let's let's roll on here.

[00:17:01] Tony Chopp: So I got, I think this is where this is probably some of the most exciting stuff that, that

[00:17:06] Tony Chopp: popped out of it. So. Two parts to this idea, so

[00:17:10] Tony Chopp: just more teasing into the volume idea.

[00:17:14] Tony Chopp: We launched 39,000 ads that failed to spend $50,

[00:17:19] Richard Gaffin: Classic.

[00:17:20] Tony Chopp: About 1100 that drove 56% of the revenue.

[00:17:24] Tony Chopp: And so this idea of having to be willing to fail fast 98 most, most of the time is this is the world that, that we live in now.

[00:17:35] Richard Gaffin: Yeah.

[00:17:35] Tony Chopp: But if. We need thousands of shots on goal,

[00:17:44] Richard Gaffin: Yeah.

[00:17:45] Tony Chopp: which is a, which is an idea that we've been talking about forever and I think feels really dissatisfying

[00:17:50] Tony Chopp: to, to a lot of people. Where where should we, where should we aim? What is

[00:17:55] Tony Chopp: the, what gives us the best probability of making it to make, [00:18:00] having something, make it to the winner category?

[00:18:02] Richard Gaffin: Mm-hmm.

[00:18:03] Tony Chopp: The home run rate for UGC ads is absolutely your best bet for scale.

[00:18:09] Richard Gaffin: Hmm.

[00:18:10] Richard Gaffin: Interesting.

[00:18:11] Tony Chopp: an an individual. So an individual UGC ad based on this data set was nearly twice as likely to become a high spending winner than a standard a.

[00:18:24] Tony Chopp: Interesting. 

[00:18:25] Richard Gaffin: Yeah.

[00:18:26] Tony Chopp: If you wanna find the next concept that can handle 10,000 more, 10,000 or more dollars in spend, you absolutely have to be testing UGC video ads.

[00:18:36] Tony Chopp: So this isn't a, i, this is an important sort of, I wanna draw an important distinction here. This is not a, a hall pass

[00:18:47] Tony Chopp: to not go into the creative production necessity that the Andromeda system is going to continue to require.

[00:18:56] Tony Chopp: But it is an invitation [00:19:00] into the the type of precision that we're beginning to see coming out of BFCM with UGC content creator ads specifically. Another thing that popped out of the UGCA content creator thing, which relates back to this idea of higher value customers. The, the average order value, the a OV for UGC ads in this data set was $140 versus

[00:19:32] Tony Chopp: $84 on standard creative. So in. Meta language. We've talked about the hit rate of an ad forever, and this is like the, the most smoking gun that I've ever seen.

[00:19:45] Tony Chopp: It's, it's really hard to get to this, this data, this, this type of data because it's so big and so messy. So for example, we, in order to actually extract this out, we had to take the 55,000 rows of data that [00:20:00] we had around ads. And look for to de deduce UGC creator content white listing out of either the ad name or the ad set name or the campaign name. It's really tricky to get to this, this data set, but once we did the information just jumped off the page that if you, if you want to have a good bat at a winner, it's not a guarantee,

[00:20:21] Tony Chopp: but if you want to have a good bat at a winner, this type of content is really important for your media mix.

[00:20:26] Richard Gaffin: Interesting. Well, it's, it's such a actually the at bat analogy is pretty good because you know, 0.353 or whatever, and 0.195 are like the difference between a great, great, great baseball player, one of the best of all times, and. And that's kind of essentially the difference that we're looking for here.

[00:20:43] Richard Gaffin: I'm interested to, for you to tease out a little bit like what, what you mean on this particular slide. When you say that standard ads are, quote, safer efficiency plays, if what we're looking at for, is it that UGC is like feast or famine, like A UGC will either fail harder than a standard [00:21:00] or succeed more wildly, or is there something else at play here?

[00:21:03] Tony Chopp: Yeah, that's exactly right. So, so the average return on the standard, the, the standard ad set, the average row is actually higher than the UGC. So I think feast or fam is a, is a really good is a really good way of framing it, right. So, so what you shouldn't do with this information is only invest in UGC style content That would be really risky, right? And, and counterproductive and, and very much not in line with the, the guidance that we're getting from meta around creative diversity,

[00:21:41] Tony Chopp: et cetera, et cetera. But. What you absolutely need to do is invest in this style of content because over the course of 2026, what I can guarantee you is that one of your top spending ads next year will be a UGC ad for sure.[00:22:00] 

[00:22:00] Richard Gaffin: Yeah. Okay. Do real quick, and Corey, you can cut this part. Do you wanna jump back to the promo ads slide? Do you want to cover that one or No?

[00:22:20] Tony Chopp: Yeah, let's let's swing it back around.

[00:22:23] Richard Gaffin: Okay. Cool. All right. Well actually, is there anything else you wanna hit here?

[00:22:28] Tony Chopp: No, I don't think so.

[00:22:29] Richard Gaffin: Okay. All right. We can jump to promo ads and then we can go to your, I see your, your set of conclusions here, so that'd be cool to jump into too. Alright, let's let's, let's talk a little bit here about this slide. Promo ads buy customers for half the prize.

[00:22:39] Richard Gaffin: So first off, with some de de definitions here. What's promo promo, adverse non promo? What are we talking about here?

[00:22:46] Tony Chopp: So anything that was specific to like a Black Friday, cyber Monday offer?

[00:22:50] Richard Gaffin: Okay, interesting.

[00:22:51] Tony Chopp: This has been another sort of trope that's got thrown around for, for some time, which is like, i've heard, I've even heard Taylor say like, advertise the [00:23:00] color, sell the, sell the black. You know?

[00:23:02] Tony Chopp: And, and we've seen we've had these anecdotal things that have popped up over the years around like, we'll make all these pro promotional ads for Black Friday and Cyber Monday, but your, you evergreen top spending ad from the rest of the year will be the one that will scale through through the weekend.

[00:23:17] Tony Chopp: Right.

[00:23:18] Richard Gaffin: Mm-hmm.

[00:23:18] Tony Chopp: we wanted to tease this out a little bit and see, see what actually manifested in the, in the data set and then a couple things stood out. So, number one, the share of the spend was, was split evenly. So for sure we were able to deliver media spend through promotional ads on Black Friday, cyber Monday.

[00:23:34] Tony Chopp: And, and to me, this is like going back to this like pre. Post Andromeda, right? So pre Andromeda you have a BAU ad that's been running all year long and has all of this data history with it and all of that data history is a signal to the, to the pre Andromeda bidding machine. This is a good ad. Serve it,

[00:23:58] Tony Chopp: right? And sometimes we'd have, [00:24:00] we would have some challenges getting our promotional ads to deliver. Okay. This, this year, post Andromeda Andromeda understands this, this sale ad for BFCM is extremely topical for this moment in time. Deliver it. And we

[00:24:17] Tony Chopp: see that in, in the spend relationship where our, our promo ads like accounted for approximately half of the spend during the period.

[00:24:24] Tony Chopp: The, the other things that that popped out is and this is sort of like a. It's a little bit hearkening back to the, the BAU ads are the ones that perform during Cyber Monday. The, the ROAS for non-promotional ads actually was higher by you know, a 10th of a point. So 0.2 0.55 for non promo ads versus 2.4 for promo.

[00:24:46] Tony Chopp: So the, the takeaway here is it, it is very much still, bAU ads, ads that have existed in the account historically leading up to leading up to a big sale are going to continue to be important during a sale [00:25:00] moment. But it's not to say that the promo ads are going to deliver less or perform materially less in, in any way, AKA Andromeda delivering the right piece of content to the right person at the right time.

[00:25:11] Richard Gaffin: Yeah. 

[00:25:11] Tony Chopp: the real standout from this analysis was sorry, go ahead, Richard.

[00:25:14] Richard Gaffin: No, I was gonna like, kind of make the point earlier you were, you were talking about kind of like the, this being a real of the difference between. Bidding styles, pre ROA and post roa because as we were talking about a little bit before we hit record here, the idea is that we're switching from an auction-based like, an auction-based bidding kind of, setup or whatever to an AI driven algorithmic.

[00:25:45] Richard Gaffin: Thing that like basically

[00:25:47] Tony Chopp: delivery machine.

[00:25:48] Richard Gaffin: content delivery that reads that essentially is like able to read the creative and understand to some level that this is going to be more relevant. And so now the sort of like the conventional wisdom that we have certainly touted on this podcast that like [00:26:00] your BIU ads are going to be the high performers, there's a fundamental shift in the platform now that makes that not necessarily the case.

[00:26:07] Richard Gaffin: Obviously, like there's still. They still perform really well, but it's just interesting to see this particularly as like an acquisition tool. So if we're talking about, we're talking about, so are we talking about new customer acquisition here or just like, is there some sort of new versus returning split that's that 

[00:26:26] Tony Chopp: Not on, not on this layer. 

[00:26:26] Richard Gaffin: it just merely just 

[00:26:28] Tony Chopp: Not on this layer. So this is across the acquisition and retention campaigns, but that would be an

[00:26:32] Tony Chopp: interesting like, interesting

[00:26:34] Tony Chopp: second layer to add to the analysis.

[00:26:37] Richard Gaffin: Anyway, but all that to say, just like the fact that it's able to acquire customers for such a, for, you know, nearly half the CPA is fascinating here, and it's just, it's just showing you what Andromeda is capable of understanding about the creative itself, I 

[00:26:52] Tony Chopp: totally, it, it understands, it understands what it is, and as a result of understanding it understands what it, what it is. And the moment that we're in, we're in [00:27:00] Black Friday, cyber Monday.

[00:27:01] Tony Chopp: And as a result of that, the functional result of that was. Tons of delivery through of promotional ads from a spend perspective and really effective CPA from an efficiency perspective.

[00:27:12] Tony Chopp: And, and all, all of these ideas are like all related, right? It's like, well, you know, why, why do we have to make three times as many ads as we did last year? Well, because you were, were no longer able to just draft off like a top

[00:27:26] Tony Chopp: performing ad forever that has like all these all this like. the the historical data signal into it we have to get an the right piece of content for the right person at the right moment in time.

[00:27:39] Richard Gaffin: Yeah. Okay. Yeah, no, it's, it does, it does an interesting illustration of like, yeah. The fundamental shift between the bidding styles is like illustrated through kind of all this stuff. Let's okay, let's, let's kind of wrap it up here then with some kind of key takeaways here. So let's, let's jump into those.

[00:27:56] Richard Gaffin: What, what do we need to kind of bring into the future from [00:28:00] what we've learned here?

[00:28:01] Tony Chopp: Yeah, so like the couple of core ideas, y you know, around, around bidding this, it's not a right or wrong answer, but understand that there's gonna be a fundamental difference in the type of customer at, specifically related to the a OV, between lowest cost, highest volume styles of bidding and minero or cost cap or highest value styles of bidding.

[00:28:22] Tony Chopp: They, they both have utility but they behave really differently.

[00:28:26] Richard Gaffin: Mm-hmm.

[00:28:27] Tony Chopp: If, if you haven't heard this broken record yet you need to get into video production. From what

[00:28:33] Tony Chopp: we're observing, it has the ability to absorb scale at an increasingly efficient rate versus statics. That's not to say don't create static ads, you have to do both.

[00:28:45] Tony Chopp: But video production's really important. And the idea of like, just embracing this new world that we're going into you throughout 2026 for, for everyone listening to this, everyone in e-commerce, you're going to have [00:29:00] to launch thousands of failures

[00:29:03] Tony Chopp: to find the ads that scale. But if you want to just not spray and pray, make a bet on UGC based on the data set that we're seeing. It is the highest probability for finding a high value winner that is likely to, that has high potential to scale.

[00:29:22] Richard Gaffin: yeah. No, this, this is interesting. I mean, it kind of sets up another set of like. Of meta best practices here. So using like the entire range of, of bidding strategies, pivoting to video making way, way, way more ads, and then, and then find, and finally sort of leaning on UGC as, as kind of your big, putting them in the fourth slot in the batting order.

[00:29:44] Richard Gaffin: Let's, let's say that much, right? They're gonna be your heavy hitters, but cool man. Well, yeah, it's interesting to see how this is gonna play out. But yeah, anything else that you wanna hit on, on any of this stuff?[00:30:00] 

[00:30:01] Tony Chopp: I, I mean, I guess maybe just like my own anecdotal experience like. I, I feel like the types of ads and the content that I'm getting served on Instagram is like, better than ever. I, I'd be

[00:30:14] Tony Chopp: curious of what your feeling is, Richard. Like. I, I

[00:30:16] Tony Chopp: find myself clicking more. A lot of my Christmas shopping has been like directly driven by things that I've been served by Andromeda.

[00:30:26] Tony Chopp: And it, this is super anecdotal, but it feels like it's working from like a user perspective. I'd,

[00:30:31] Tony Chopp: I'd be curious what your thoughts are.

[00:30:33] Richard Gaffin: yeah. I think that, yeah, I guess I would say my experience has been similar. Like I have noticed, I think since we've been kind of calling it out that. I, I feel like I'm getting more engaging. UGCI think that's actually like anecdotally an experience that I've had where I'm seeing more convincing ads that keep me around for longer because like, I, I mean ultimately that's the type of [00:31:00] stuff that you watch anyway.

[00:31:03] Richard Gaffin: The sort of video that goes viral is just gonna be, it's just UGC video is the content of the internet more or less. And finding myself drawn in. in a way that I didn't really experience before. I guess again, that's, that's totally anecdotal 

[00:31:17] Tony Chopp: Totally anecdotal. 

[00:31:18] Richard Gaffin: the these effects are like subconscious.

[00:31:20] Richard Gaffin: But I think since becoming aware of it, I've been noticing that like people seem to be making, or I seem to be getting served better, UGC, but I don't know. 

[00:31:29] Tony Chopp: Totally anecdotal. We've been talking about data the whole time and I think the

[00:31:33] Tony Chopp: anecdotal experience is still, is still valuable.

[00:31:35] Tony Chopp: So because I think when we think about like advertising is like a sort of interruptive, like annoying thing.

[00:31:42] Tony Chopp: Like frankly and candidly, that is not my experience of ads on,

[00:31:46] Tony Chopp: on meta. And I'm actually finding them to be more, even more useful.

[00:31:52] Tony Chopp: So like my, so I guess the reason I would say all this is like, I think it can be frustrating and challenging from the advertiser's [00:32:00] perspective to hear this messaging from us. It's like, you just need to make 10 times more ads. But I think like the, the underlying premise there is that. If you go into this next year and, and make 10 times more ads, what's gonna happen is you're gonna get better at becoming a, a storyteller in different ways. And you will be rewarded by that for with an audience. And, and that's like the fundamental promise of the whole thing. And it really works for, it's challenging for brands to be able to, to keep up with this.

[00:32:31] Tony Chopp: But I think it's best for the, for the, for the, for the thing as a whole.

[00:32:35] Richard Gaffin: Yeah. Yeah. No, it makes, it makes sense. It's a, we've said it before, but like Meta's meta's advertising product is, is kind of the best there is, like, in terms of the actual user experience of receiving the ad. And so it's going to continue to build in a way that makes it useful for the user, I think. But anyway, all, all this points to like, we should probably do an episode soon on, on.

[00:32:59] Richard Gaffin: Step by step how we [00:33:00] make 10,000 ads, because I think that's obviously gonna be the biggest roadblock for most folks here. But a question for another time perhaps. Alright guys, well, thanks for listening to everybody. And again, if you're an eight figure to nine figure eCommerce brand and you wanna talk to us about doing this, this type of in-depth research and incorporating that into the way that we drive performance for your brand, common thread co.com.

[00:33:22] Richard Gaffin: Smash that higher us button. We'd love to talk to you, but until then, that's right. All right, folks. Until next time, we'll talk soon. Take care everybody.