Creative strategy in the age of AI
What 1,784 ads tell us about how Meta reads your creative, and which combinations win.
The short version
What did we find when we tested combinations, not single parts?
Most creative testing changes one thing at a time. The platform judges your whole ad at once. When we scored combinations instead of single parts, the results doubled.
Creative is the biggest lever you have.
It drives around half of the sales lift from advertising. Most marketers think it's closer to a fifth.
Meta reads your whole ad, not its parts.
Andromeda judges the hook, message, offer and format together. Testing one part at a time misses most of what's going on.
Combinations beat single ideas.
The best combination we found performed twice as well as the best single idea.
Winners mix different parts of the ad.
Every winning combination paired two different parts. None paired two versions of the same part.
The hook is a multiplier.
Hooks never won on their own, but they appeared in six of the eight winning combinations.
Signal in the noise
Why is creative still undervalued?
"Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted. The trouble is, I don't know which half."
Attributed to John Wanamaker, early 1900s
The data has caught up. Creative quality drives almost half of the sales lift from advertising. Most creative reports still grade ads one part at a time, which is too blurry to show what actually drives results.
Share of sales lift driven by creative
Source: Nielsen / NCS
What marketers think it drives
Source: Industry survey, 2024
Decoded
How does Meta read your ads now?
Before Andromeda
You picked the audience.
The platform delivered to it. Creative and targeting were two separate jobs.
Now
The platform reads your creative and picks the audience.
It weighs up tens of millions of ad variations for every auction. Meta says creative variety is now the main way to reach the right people, not niche targeting.
Increase in the capacity of the models Meta uses to shortlist which ads to show
Source: Meta Engineering, Dec 2024
Improvement in ad quality from Andromeda, in the segments Meta measured
Source: Meta Engineering, Dec 2024
Your creative strategy is now your targeting strategy.
The recipe
Which ad combinations won?
The best single idea reached up to 1.5× a brand's typical ad. The right combination reached 2× to 3×. These eight pairs beat the stronger of their two parts on its own.
Score is click-through rate compared with the brand's own typical ad. Pairs are listed in the paper's order, ranked by how far each beat its stronger half. Best evidence means the pairing was seen across the most accounts (4 to 5 each). These are patterns in real spend, not controlled experiments, so use them to decide what to test first.
Law one
Combining beats choosing.
The top pairing scored 3.0×, twice the best single idea.
Law two
The hook never won alone, but it's in three-quarters of the winners.
Law three
Every winner mixed different parts. Eight out of eight.
Not one winning pair combined two ideas from the same part of the ad, yet that's how most creative variation gets made.
Five hooks on one angle isn't five ideas. It's one idea in five costumes.The Signal · Issue 1
Proof outside retail
Does this only work for ecommerce?
No. We ran the same engine on a sports app sold through video creators: 1,764 ads from 63 creators, with no products, no unboxing and no before-and-after.
Cheaper per purchase when the ad opens with the viewer's problem
Held across 12 creators
Cheaper per purchase with medium pacing instead of fast
Rapid edits grabbed attention, then lost it
Before · Bold claim
Three things you need to do…
After · Problem first
I've got a big doubt.
One line changed. Same creator, same product. The opening line is a hook, and once again the hook was the lever that moved.
Get the full paper
What else is in the full white paper?
This page is the summary. The full 19-page paper includes the method, the mistakes and a checklist your team can use before Q4.
- How Creative IQ reads every ad, and the four checks every finding must pass 03 · Inside the engine
- The three single ideas that beat the brand's own average 04 · Ingredients
- The full combination grid, including the one pairing nobody has tested 05 · The recipe
- Five mistakes that waste your budget 07 · Mistakes
- Nine questions to ask before Q4 08 · Next move
Download The Signal · Issue 1
We'll send the PDF to your inbox.
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