Meta Andromeda Explained: What It Changes for Your Ads, and What to Do

Meta Andromeda is the first stage of Meta's ad delivery: for each person, it cuts tens of millions of eligible ads down to a few thousand, and Meta's ranking models and the auction pick from that shortlist. Meta announced it in December 2024 and has extended it surface by surface since. Our read, after going through everything Meta has published on it: the one change that matters for your account is that ads which look alike now compete as a single creative. Make ads that look different, and skip most of the other Andromeda rules going around.

Andromeda picks the shortlist, ranking picks the ad

Every time someone opens Facebook or Instagram, Meta has to choose among every ad that could reach them. Its engineering post describes the first step as "selecting ads from tens of millions of ad candidates into a few thousand relevant ad candidates." That step is Andromeda. Separate ranking models, GEM among them, then predict which of those few thousand is worth showing, and the auction weighs that against your bid.

One person opens Instagram

Andromeda is step 2 of 3

1. Eligible

Every ad that could run

Tens of millions

2. Andromeda

Retrieval: the shortlist

A few thousand, for this person

3. Ranking + auction

GEM and other models score it

Then your bid competes

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• 
• 

1 ad shown

So Andromeda doesn't replace the whole algorithm, and it doesn't run the auction. It decides whether your ad is in the running for a given person at all. Meta built it for volume: with generative AI tools, it wrote, "the number of ads creatives in Meta's recommendation systems is expected to grow significantly." A system built to sort that many ads has to decide which ones are really different, and that's where it touches your work.

There's nothing to switch on. Ads Manager has no Andromeda setting or report, and Meta never gave a finish date. Its last word on coverage, in October 2025, was that Instagram Feed and Reels were next.

Ads that look alike compete as one creative

The part of Andromeda that changes your work is how it treats near-copies. Meta spelled it out in a December 2025 post: "When multiple ads look or feel alike, these are seen as variations of the same creative, meaning learnings and delivery optimizations are shared at the creative level." So ten ads built on one photo share one chance at the shortlist instead of getting ten.

What you uploadedUploadedHow Meta likely groups itLikely grouping

4creatives competing

1234

1

Iteration: one creative

Same photo, new headline and price

2

Likely grouped

Same product, same look and light

3

Distinct

A person and a review

4

Distinct

Different product and format

Meta's creative differentiation page names the cost. Similar creative may go to the same people, and "This overlap limits your reach and ultimately leads to Creative limited or Creative fatigue status." Nothing in Meta's wording says look-alike ads are punished. They overlap, so an ad set full of near-copies reaches fewer people than its ad count suggests.

What counts as different is narrower than most people assume. Meta's Creative diversity metric is "calculated by comparing the images and video thumbnails in your ad set to each other", and copy isn't part of that published calculation. Meta's own example of iteration is two ads with identical visuals and different text CTAs. A new headline on the same image is the same creative to that check. A new shot, a person on camera, a different format or a different idea is what reads as new.

AdMakeAI's image ad tool reads your brand from its website and generates up to 20 static ads per batch, each a different angle and layout, so an ad set doesn't rest on one photo.

Generate a batch of ads

Rules you can drop: Entity IDs, thresholds and ad counts

Once you know the grouping is real and the check looks at images, most of the advice built around Andromeda stops mattering. These five rules show up on page after page. Here's what Meta has published on each.

The Entity ID idea is the one worth understanding, because it's everywhere: 11 of the 19 agency and tool pages we read explain Andromeda through it. The grouping it describes is real. The name, the hard limits and the single auction "ticket" that come with it aren't in anything Meta has published, and one of the most detailed of those pages calls the term an explanatory device rather than an official one.

On ad counts, Meta ads consultant Jon Loomer put it plainly: "I tested 25 and 50 ads per ad set. I didn't see any clear advantage to it." That fits the grouping. Extra look-alike ads add little, so we'd rather run five ads that look different than 25 that don't. For how many ads brands at each spend level actually run, see the creative volume math.

What to change, and where to check it

All of this lands in the ad set. Before you add ads, ask whether each new one would read as new to Meta, then watch two columns in Ads Manager to see whether it did.

Delivery shows Creative limited or Creative fatigue, the two statuses Meta ties to creative that's too similar or overexposed. Creative diversity, under Columns > Customize columns, labels each ad set High, Medium or Low; we covered when the column arrived. Meta calls it estimated and in development, so read it as a hint, not a score to chase.

The new ads don't need a studio. A customer photo, a creator holding the product, a comparison or a plain text-on-color card all look different from your hero shot. Here are layouts that read as different creatives.

Meta Andromeda FAQ