Meta Tells Advertisers: Diversify Creative or Lose Ranking
Meta's ranking engines now treat near-identical ads as one creative, pushing brands to diversify formats and hooks as the company tests new creative metrics.
Updated
The brief
- Meta's engines won't rank an ad highly if it shares the same look or opening hook as the advertiser's other creative, per Billion Dollar Boy's Olivia Cripps
- Model changes plus the Gem recommendation model increased Meta ad clicks by 8.3%, CFO Susan Li said on the Q2 call
- A 'small number of agencies/GCR resellers' have been testing creative insights metrics in Meta's Insights API since June, spokesperson Alisha Swinteck said
Meta's ad ranking engines will not rank an ad highly if it looks like the advertiser's other creative or opens with the same hook, according to Olivia Cripps, global paid media director at the social agency Billion Dollar Boy.
That clarification sits at the center of updated best practices Meta has been sharing with advertisers as it invests in its ads models. Meta is also testing creative insights metrics in its Insights API, the interface that provides ad performance data to advertisers, Meta spokesperson Alisha Swinteck confirmed.
The core message: near-identical assets count as one ad. "If you had a video of me, and then also a video of me, and this one has a text that says, 'Text A,' and this one says, 'Text B,' that would actually be considered the same creative," Cripps said. The engines treat them as fundamentally the same ad.
That guidance has already changed how BDB operates. The advice and overall clarification around how Meta's models perceive pieces of creative has helped the agency's team structure its creative testing for clients, Cripps said.
More nuance on diversification
Meta has also been breaking down creative diversification with more granularity for agency clients. The company is offering detailed advice such as mixing video and static assets and varying messaging and tone through different hooks, among other tips, according to Ankit Jadav, associate director, paid social at Rain the Growth Agency.
Swinteck framed the guidance as deliberately broad rather than engineered around any single model's behavior. Diversifying ad creative is a "longstanding best practice as we see it deliver measurable results," she said.
"We don't get into the specifics of how our ranking models represent individual creative assets. Our guidance to advertisers is deliberately outcome-based (not model-specific), like 'diversify your creative, test, and let the system optimize,'" Swinteck told Marketing Brew in an email. "That's what actually improves performance, rather than trying to engineer around any single model behavior."
Model changes are already paying off
The push comes as Meta reworks the models behind its ad delivery. During the company's Q2 earnings call in July, Meta CFO Susan Li said the company altered its models dedicated to understanding user behavior so they could better analyze organic user activity and match users with appropriate ads. Those changes, combined with the use of Meta's recommendation model Gem, increased ad clicks by 8.3%, Li said on the call.
Alongside the model investments, Meta has been testing creative insights metrics in its Insights API, giving advertisers data on creative performance. "These insights are not widely available and are part of regular insight tests to help maximize the value of the Insights API to our partners," Swinteck said.
A "small number of agencies/GCR resellers" have been testing those creative insights metrics since June, according to Swinteck.
For advertisers, the direction of travel is clear: as Meta's models grow more sophisticated at distinguishing creative, the payoff will go to teams that build genuinely varied asset pools — and test them — rather than those that recycle one execution with minor text swaps.
Based on privacy.morningbrewinc.com
Filed under meta, paid-social, ad-creative, creative-testing, ad-ranking
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Market editor covering media and advertising at Marketing Herald.
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