On October 28, 2026, Meta explained how its ad system picks an ad for each person and published new numbers for its three models: Andromeda, GEM and GenRecs.
For your account, targeting now matters less and two things matter more: different creative ideas and a conversion event Meta can learn from. Meta reports more conversions, and Advantage+ takes audiences and placements off your hands. The price is that you depend more on Advantage+ and on how fast you can produce creative.
What Andromeda, GEM and GenRecs do
- Andromeda finds candidates. It narrows tens of millions of ads to the few thousand worth ranking for each person (Meta). It scores over one billion ads per second (Meta).
- GEM is Meta’s generative ads model. It reads an engagement history twice as long, through a model 2.5 times more complex.
- GenRecs uses generative retrieval in Facebook Feed.
What Meta reported
Meta published these results for its models (Meta):
- In Q2 2026, improvements to ads ranking gave 8.3% more ad clicks and 15.7% more conversions on Facebook.
- Since 2025, Andromeda gave 2.4% more conversions on Facebook. In Q3 2026, a 10 times more complex Andromeda gave 1.37% more conversions on Facebook and 0.24% on Instagram Reels.
- Since 2025, GEM gave up to 18.9% more conversions and 12% higher click-through rate across Meta’s surfaces and objectives.
- In Q3 2026, GenRecs in Facebook Feed gave nearly 2% more conversions in the targeted segments.
These are Meta’s own measurements. Some are maximums (“up to”), and some apply only to targeted users or segments. Your account can differ: it can gain less, or nothing.
What Meta advises
- Use Advantage+ as a whole and give more creative variety. Meta asks advertisers to adopt Advantage+ rather than component by component, and to supply more creative variety, so that the system has more to test and learn from (Meta).
- Different ideas, not variations. A partner case on Meta’s site says the delivery system rewards a diverse mix more than repeated variations of similar assets (Meta).
- About fifty conversions a week per ad set. In Meta’s analysis, ad sets under this threshold ran about 28% more expensive per purchase. Meta gives a formula: total weekly budget ÷ (cost per result × 50) = the most ad sets your budget can support (Meta).
With a weekly budget of 7,000 and a cost per purchase of 35, the formula gives 7,000 ÷ (35 × 50) = 4 ad sets. More ad sets split the signal.
New tools for creative
- Results for each media asset in an ad. In Ads Manager, open Breakdown → Creative → Media to see how each image and video delivered (Meta Business Help Center).
- An audience for each creative. From October 19, 2026, Marketing API partners can set the age range and gender for each media asset (Meta for Developers). It does not work with Advantage+ audience or with age and gender suggestions (Meta for Developers).
- Customer Lifecycle Strategy. It is available to all advertisers. You mark a campaign as acquisition and get recommendations on excluding existing customers (Meta).
Why ten crops of one video count as one idea
Andromeda picks a few thousand candidate ads for each person from tens of millions. So an ad first has to be a good candidate for someone, and only then does it compete in ranking. Ten crops of one video are one idea for a person. Ten different ideas, such as a founder or a customer review, can be candidates for different people. I think this is why Meta asks for variety and not only for volume.
GEM learns from a longer history of engagement. The cleaner the conversion event, the better the model learns who buys, and not only who clicks.
Build the account in this order
- A conversion event Meta can learn from: purchases or qualified leads sent through the pixel and the Conversions API. If the business makes fewer than fifty sales a week, as in B2B or with expensive products, it cannot reach fifty purchases per ad set. Choose an earlier event that still predicts a sale, and send qualified leads from the CRM.
- Fewer ad sets, each with enough conversions. Count them with Meta’s formula. On a small budget that also means fewer tests at once.
- Creative with different ideas, such as a founder, a customer story, a demo, an offer or a comparison. Five crops of one video are still one idea. Creative is now where the money goes, and it takes a steady flow of new ideas rather than one shoot a quarter. Spend on it before you spend on audience tests.
- Results for each media asset every week. Replace the media that gets no delivery or no sales. You see the results, but not why a person got an ad.