In 2025, Meta rolled out Andromeda, a major upgrade to its advertising system that’s still widely misunderstood in the media buying world. Many advertisers blame this update for performance drops or assume it’s a mysterious “new algorithm” that magically changes results. But that’s not quite right.

What Andromeda Actually Is

At its core, Andromeda is Meta’s new ads retrieval engine — the first stage of the process that decides which ads are eligible to compete for a given impression. It uses advanced machine learning and powerful hardware (like NVIDIA Grace Hopper and Meta’s own MTIA chips) to scan millions of potential ads and narrow them down to a few thousand relevant candidates.

This isn’t a completely new “everything algorithm.” It’s a critical improvement at the retrieval stage. But it doesn’t handle ranking, budgeting, or final delivery on its own. Those decisions happen later in the system.

Common Misconceptions Marketers Have

1. Andromeda Is The Algorithm That Controls All Results

Many advertisers casually refer to Andromeda as “the Meta algorithm,” implying it directly decides who sees what and why. In reality, it’s one part of a larger ad delivery pipeline. It helps choose which ads even enter the auction, but it does not drive targeting or bidding decisions by itself.

2. It “Killed Performance” Overnight

A lot of marketers blame Andromeda for rising CPAs or drops in ROAS. But this is often correlation, not causation — performance issues can come from many factors, including competition, creative fatigue, signal quality, or changes in user behavior. Andromeda being rolled out at the same time doesn’t mean it caused poor performance.

3. Andromeda Makes Targeting Obsolete

Some think Andromeda removes the need for any segmentation or audience strategy. Not true — instead, Meta has shifted how targeting signals are used: creative signals, engagement patterns, and behavioral cues now matter more than narrow interest stacks. This feels like targeting is “dead,” but really the focus has moved from audience lists to signals within the data.

4. It’s a Black-Box That You Can’t Influence

While the system is more automated and AI-driven, that doesn’t mean you can’t optimize for it. Marketers still influence performance through creative diversity, broad campaign structures, and strong signal quality (like server-side tracking and clean conversion events).

What Andromeda Does Mean for Your Ads

Creative First

Andromeda excels at analyzing massive creative libraries meaning campaigns with a high volume of diverse ads perform better because the system has more options to match with the right user at the right moment.

Broader Targeting Works Better

Micro-segmenting audiences or splitting budgets into many tiny ad sets often slows AI learning. Andromeda thrives when data is consolidated, so broader targeting with fewer, richer creative variations often leads to faster optimization.

Data Quality Is Critical

Andromeda relies heavily on clean, complete conversion signals. Bad pixel setups, fragmented data, or noise (like bot clicks) can mislead the machine and weaken performance.

So What’s the Real Change?

Meta’s Andromeda isn’t a magic performance driver or an unfair force that suddenly breaks good campaigns. It’s a fundamental upgrade to how ads get retrieved and prepared for delivery, making the system stronger and more scalable, especially as creative volume explodes.

The real shift for advertisers is not “new rules,” but a new emphasis:

• creative diversity over endless audience stacks

• broad structures over hyper-segmentation

• data quality over vanity signals