Andromeda and Advantage+: how the work of a Facebook Ads media buyer has changed over the past year

How Andromeda and Advantage+ changed Facebook Ads buying: why Meta now needs broader audiences, more creatives, and less manual campaign control.

Дата обновления: 12/10/2019

Publication date: 18/09/2026

Author: Profit Rental

Reading time: 6 min

Introduction

A few years ago, a strong Facebook media buyer was largely associated with the ability to build a complex setup: split audiences, distribute them across ad sets, play around with age and gender, and then look for the combination that would bring the right profit.

Today, Facebook Ads often requires much less manual work. Advantage+, broad audiences, a solid batch of creatives — and Meta takes over most of the delivery decisions.

We spoke with Ivan, Lead of Facebook at Profit Rental, about what happened during the first year of Andromeda, why Meta is pushing teams harder toward Advantage+, why old setups are gradually losing their meaning, and where the real expertise of a media buyer remains today.

A year ago, Facebook started breaking the usual launch logic

Andromeda is a new ad selection system inside Meta: the algorithm analyzes a large pool of ads and decides which creative is more likely to fit a specific user. In Meta’s engineering blog, it is described as a system for personalized ad retrieval within Advantage+ automation. For media buyers, this means that Facebook increasingly wants to decide on its own whom to show ads to, where to show them, and which creative to choose — while expecting fewer manual restrictions and more options from advertisers.

At the same time, Andromeda and Advantage+ are not the same thing. Andromeda works inside Meta’s advertising system, and you cannot turn it on or off separately. Advantage+ is already a set of automation tools that advertisers can control: for example, by giving Facebook more freedom when working with audiences or placements.

Previously, the usual launch structure often revolved around one campaign, one creative, and many ad sets. Teams manually split audiences by gender, age, interests, and placements, tested different segments, and tried to find a working combination through settings.

Ivan, Lead of Facebook at Profit Rental:
“Around August 2025, this setup simply stopped working the way it used to for many teams. It took time to get used to it and test new approaches. As a result, the logic is almost the opposite now: one campaign, one broad ad set, and many creatives inside. We go through audiences manually much less and leave more decisions to Facebook.”

Over the year, the focus has clearly shifted: fewer ad sets → broader audience → more creatives → more freedom for the algorithm. Instead of breaking users down into dozens of segments in advance, the team gives Meta a broad audience and a set of different creatives, and then the algorithm finds working combinations on its own.

And this is what changed the usual work of a media buyer the most: there is now much less point in endlessly going through targeting, while there is much more value in constantly working with creatives and understanding what to do with the campaign after launch.
And that is probably the main change of the past year.

Advantage+ actually takes away manual control — and that is the point

Advantage+ is often perceived as one more setting that you need to learn how to use in a special way. But its meaning is almost the opposite: you are not adding more control, you are giving part of the decision-making to Facebook.

If you enable Advantage+ for placements, Meta decides where to show the ads. The principle is similar with audience settings: you can give the system some direction, but Facebook is no longer required to strictly limit delivery to those settings.

Meta Help Center also describes Advantage+ campaign budget as an approach where the budget is set at the campaign level, and the system distributes it between ad sets.

Ivan, Lead of Facebook at Profit Rental:
“Advantage+ is basically a checkbox where you trust Facebook to make decisions for this part of the campaign. In placements, it chooses where to show the ads; in audiences, it gets more freedom in deciding whom to show the ads to.”

Most teams now work exactly according to this logic: Advantage+, broad audiences, and a minimum of unnecessary restrictions.
But fewer manual settings do not mean that the media buyer has nothing left to do. The hardest part now starts after launch: understanding when to turn a campaign off, when to give it more time, when to increase the budget, and when it is better not to touch anything at all.

If Facebook chooses the audience itself, distributes placements itself, and generally asks for less interference in the campaign — what is actually left for the media buyer?

The answer turned out to be more interesting than any setting.

The main job of a media buyer now is to make the right decision at the right time

Campaign setup has become simpler, but post-launch work has not. A media buyer still needs to understand when to turn a campaign off, when to give it more time, when to increase the budget, and when it is better not to touch anything.

Ivan, Lead of Facebook at Profit Rental:
“The main difficulty now is decision-making. When to turn something off, when to turn it on, when to give the campaign a chance. That is essentially the media buyer’s task now — to make the right decision at the right time.”

These decisions are based on metrics and experience, and there is no universal set of indicators — everything depends on the product and buying model. In gambling, teams usually look at the whole chain: cost per click, install, registration, deposit, and conversion between stages.

For video creatives, it also makes sense to track VTR and view engagement. The important thing is not to cling to one number, but to understand exactly where the economics start to drop.

More creatives are needed, and they have to be updated more often

If earlier a media buyer could spend a long time manually searching for the right audience segment, Meta now does a significant part of that search itself. This means the algorithm needs enough material to work with.

Ivan, Lead of Facebook at Profit Rental:
“More creatives are needed, and they burn out faster. There is no universal number: if you can make 10 new creatives per week — good; if you can make 100 — also good. It all depends on the volumes and the team’s capacity.”

A campaign needs a constant flow of new materials so that Facebook has a choice and the ability to find new working combinations.

Meta also writes separately about the role of AI in advertising: such tools help create creative variations faster and optimize ad campaigns.

As for formats, the market has not changed much here: UGC still remains one of the main working directions.

A good setup will not save a weak foundation

When a campaign does not deliver the desired result, the first instinct is to go back into the settings: change targeting, rebuild ad sets, narrow the audience, add interests, restructure the setup.

If the funnel does not show a normal result on a broad audience, endless setup adjustments often just postpone the main question: does the offer, funnel, and creative even work?

Ivan, Lead of Facebook at Profit Rental:
“If you have good creatives, a decent product, and a working funnel, it will work. If you do not, no setup or targeting will save you.”

That is why we recommend first checking how the funnel performs on a broad audience and only then making the structure more complex. If the economics do not work from the start, trying to squeeze out a few extra ROI points through endless ad set tweaking is often fighting the wrong problem.

Broad audience first, precise settings later

This does not mean that manual targeting is no longer needed at all. Interests, separate ad groups, and narrower settings can still be tested — it just makes more sense now to treat them as an additional optimization tool, not the foundation of the launch.

Ivan, Lead of Facebook at Profit Rental:
“Basically, everything should work on a broad audience. The broader your settings are, the more normal creatives you upload, and the less you interfere with the campaign at the start, the more chances you give Facebook to work properly. And if nothing works on a broad audience, endlessly tweaking ad groups for a couple of extra percent is already questionable.”

So first comes a broad audience, enough creatives, and time for delivery. Only when data appears and there is a specific reason to change something should more precise settings be added.

The most common mistake in 2026 is continuing to buy traffic like four years ago

Against this background, the most obvious mistake looks almost funny: Facebook has already changed how it works, but the team has not.

The team still comes in with the old habit:
— create many ad sets;
— split the audience;
— add restrictions;
— spend a long time searching for the perfect targeting;
— upload a few creatives.

But Ivan’s practical advice for those rebuilding their approach now is much shorter: narrow the audience less, give Facebook more freedom, and produce more creatives.

It sounds too simple.
But this is the uncomfortable part for many media buyers: a complex Ads Manager no longer necessarily means complex and professional work.

Sometimes the professional decision now is to avoid setting up anything unnecessary at all.

What to change in the team’s workflow

If the team is still working according to the old structure, there is no need to rebuild the entire process immediately. It is enough to start with three things.

Remove settings that have no clear reason
If a separate ad group, age restriction, or placement restriction does not test a clear hypothesis, it most likely only complicates the campaign.

Stop treating creatives as a one-time task
Right now, it is more important to build a constant flow of new materials than to spend weeks tweaking the same structure.

Shift the buyer’s focus from setup to analysis
The main work starts after launch: understanding what exactly is dropping, where there is still potential, and when intervention is actually needed.

In essence, Andromeda and Advantage+ did not remove the media buyer’s job — they changed it. Previously, more time went into manually searching for the audience. Now, the focus is on creatives, the funnel, and the quality of decisions after launch.
The less Facebook has to be told whom to find, the more important it becomes what you give it as input: the offer, creatives, and data.

Andromeda and Advantage+: what media buyers should remember

Andromeda and Advantage+ have simplified campaign setup itself, but they have not removed another part of the work — accounts, payments, replacements, and support.

Facebook is taking over more and more of the manual part of buying: audiences, placements, user selection, and delivery distribution. But this does not mean that media buyer expertise has disappeared.
It has simply shifted.

Now it is more important not to build the most complicated setup, but to understand:
— which creatives to give the algorithm;
— when a campaign needs more time;
— when it is worth interfering;
— when it is better not to touch anything;
— where the economics are dropping;
— what is preventing scaling.

To avoid thinking about the infrastructure around launch, message us in the bot for Facebook accounts.

Facebook Ads agency accounts for launch and scaling

Andromeda and Advantage+ have simplified campaign setup itself, but they have not removed another important part of the work — the infrastructure around launch.

For stable work in Facebook Ads, teams still need accounts, payments, replacements, and support that can quickly step in if something goes wrong.

At Profit Rental, you can get Facebook Ads agency accounts with a ready-to-launch and scaling setup. We help close the account-side operations so buyers can focus on what actually affects performance: creatives, the funnel, metrics, and campaign growth.

To learn the terms and get a Facebook agency account, message the Profit Rental bot.

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