Episode 760: Why Meta is The Best Ad Platform on The Planet in 2026 Part 2

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We continue our discussion on why Meta is still the most powerful ad platform and what to expect in the coming year. We break down how Facebook figured out monetization, from early Microsoft deals and disastrous missteps like Beacon to right-hand rail ads and the moment ads entered the newsfeed. 

We’ll walk you through the desktop era, the transition to mobile, and why Meta’s make-or-break moment before its IPO changed everything about how ads work today. Plus, we connect the dots to what’s happening right now with the Andromeda update and the increasing need for creative diversification.

In this episode:

02:07 Why Meta’s global reach matters 

05:00 Meta’s early advertising mistakes

08:42 Facebook’s Beacon backlash explained

11:32 The right-hand rail ads era

14:17 Mobile ads turning point

19:02 Why Andromeda update changes everything

Resources mentioned in this episode:
Listen to this episode on your favorite podcast channel:

Previous Episode on Why Meta is The Best Ad Platform: 

Acquired Podcast’s Episode on Meta:  https://www.acquired.fm/episodes/meta 

Perpetual Traffic YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@perpetual_traffic?sub_confirmation=1 

Facebook’s Failed Beacon Project: https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/facebook-shuts-down-beacon-marketing-tool-1.832698 

Ralph’s Photo at Meta’s Home Office:

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READ THE TRANSCRIPT:

Why Meta is The Best Ad Platform on The Planet in 2026 Part 2

00:00:00:00 – 00:00:21:02
Ralph
Why meta is the best advertising platform on the planet in 2026. When I say the Andromeda update is as big as when ads went in the news feed, people are like, what are you talking about? And how did they get there from the advertising standpoint? Not a lot of people know this. Is that. Hello and welcome to the Perpetual Traffic Podcast.

00:00:21:02 – 00:00:27:23
Ralph
This is your host, Ralph Burns, founder and CEO of tier 11, alongside my amazing at home co-host.

00:00:27:23 – 00:00:30:09
Lauren
Lauren E. Petrullo, the founder of Mongoose Media.

00:00:30:10 – 00:00:36:04
Ralph
So glad you joined us here today and man, your voice sounds great today. You must have a new microphone.

00:00:36:06 – 00:00:39:11
Lauren
Does it look at the color of this like, whoa!

00:00:39:11 – 00:00:47:01
Ralph
So gentlemen, you got to get over to professional traffic.com/youtube just to see Lauren’s cool new purple Mike.

00:00:47:03 – 00:00:48:21
Lauren
Pink Mike how dare you.

00:00:48:23 – 00:00:52:05
Ralph
All kind of looks purple. Is it the most fuchsia to me?

00:00:52:07 – 00:00:58:09
Lauren
I think you know what. What a boy. Answer.

00:00:58:11 – 00:01:15:14
Ralph
Anything that’s like pinky purple I say is fuchsia. Anyway, yeah. So we have such hobnobbing with politicians and hanging out at state capitals. You have been doing, like, a lot of digital marketing these days, and probably on the meta platform is my guess.

00:01:15:16 – 00:01:26:04
Lauren
You know, was this a chill big number? Because I can say it out loud, but it’s really intimidating when I said it out loud last time and I was like.

00:01:26:06 – 00:01:58:14
Ralph
Yeah, there’s a lot going on right now. And the reason why we’re doing this, I don’t even know it’s going to be three parts. Like you say, it’s a three part series, but it might actually be longer because the history of meta is a pretty big history. We’re going to skip over some of the more minor parts. This is a continuation of part one, where we talked about the fact that meta has more influence than the Roman Empire, and also the British Empire almost combined, well, just about the same as the British Empire, which is crazy to think.

00:01:58:16 – 00:02:21:18
Ralph
And if you missed that episode, we’re going to leave links in the show notes for that. Why meta is the best advertising platform on the planet in 2026, but today we’re going to get into the advertising portion before we said yes. This is a really big platform. If you are selling online, if you’re a VP of marketing, if you’re a CEO of your CMO, I don’t care what you sell.

00:02:21:20 – 00:02:38:00
Ralph
I’ve been on 3 or 4 different prospect calls this week. Some are B2B, some are B2C. Like, you know, everyone is on this platform, so much so that it covers, what did we say 5/8 of the entire planet last time.

00:02:38:02 – 00:02:40:20
Lauren
So the point it’s just been like six seven.

00:02:40:22 – 00:02:45:19
Ralph
Yeah. 6767. My favorite number, by the way. I know that’s like a thing now.

00:02:46:01 – 00:02:47:18
Lauren
669 is my favorite number.

00:02:47:18 – 00:02:57:23
Ralph
So I asked so you hear that. Yeah. Whataburger is now like banning six seven and six nine for like when you order your burger. Like when they yell it out.

00:02:58:01 – 00:03:00:22
Lauren
Because like, oh, it’s like no, hotel elevator.

00:03:01:04 – 00:03:04:07
Ralph
Exactly. It’s the same sort of thing. So that’s that’s what’s happening now.

00:03:04:09 – 00:03:17:04
Lauren
I think about it, some of the best in and out content has been watching like the consumers go wild and they’re like, order number 68, order 65 or 67. Like that’s the right brand exposure.

00:03:17:06 – 00:03:24:11
Ralph
It’s In-N-Out burger. That’s like it. Sorry about that. I think they’ve said, oh, I’ve been in and out burger once. I’ve never been okay burger so we don’t have any.

00:03:24:12 – 00:03:26:01
Lauren
You went in and out.

00:03:26:03 – 00:03:48:12
Ralph
I went in and out and I was like, yeah, it’s all right. I like I post it on Instagram. I’m like, yeah, it’s pretty good. Anyway. Probably pissed off, like, you know, 90% of our California audience today, this is a California company. If you didn’t know, it’s in Silicon Valley intent. And they’re pretty big right now. So but how did they get there and how did they get there from the advertising standpoint?

00:03:48:13 – 00:03:50:14
Ralph
Not a lot of people know this

00:03:50:14 – 00:04:17:01
Ralph
is that we’re going to sort of breeze past the origination story with Zuck in his co-founders. And, you know, what were the guys? It was Dustin Moskowitz, it was Eduardo Saverin. The Social Network does a pretty good job the movie of showing this whole thing. We’re going to skip past that part because there’s no advertising yet, although I believe it was.

00:04:17:03 – 00:04:28:04
Ralph
Eduardo was in charge of advertising and failed miserably at it, even though he was ousted later on. And he’s now like like a gazillionaire. So don’t feel too badly for him.

00:04:28:04 – 00:04:34:21
Ralph
But what Zuck really wanted to do, and I think this is throughout the history of Meta and Facebook, is that

00:04:34:21 – 00:04:45:09
Ralph
he really underscored the importance of the user experience and the user experience to unite people, to unite the world on a singular platform.

00:04:45:09 – 00:05:08:14
Ralph
This is the thing that’s been consistent with him. Say what you want about Zuckerberg. The point is, he’s been very consistent with that throughout his entire time at Facebook. You know, he turned down billions of dollars in offers from other companies and kept going on this thing, now turned it into data. But one of the original advertising parts to them was a deal that they did with Microsoft.

00:05:08:15 – 00:05:10:06
Ralph
You aware of this in 2000?

00:05:10:08 – 00:05:14:03
Lauren
You know what? Why I wasn’t I couldn’t work then.

00:05:14:09 – 00:05:17:16
Ralph
So yeah. Yeah. But 2006 you were like junior high school. But anyway

00:05:17:16 – 00:05:51:12
Ralph
the no where you internet it’s got are they actually domestically they outsourced their advertising. They finally said blue was sovereign and finally said like, let’s just strike a deal with somebody and sell the eyeballs on the platform. And so they struck a deal with Microsoft in 2006, and after rejecting a $1 billion bid by Yahoo to actually take over the company, they did a strategic partnership with Microsoft.

00:05:51:12 – 00:06:19:06
Ralph
And still to this day, Zuck and Bill gates are very cozy, very friendly. And, he was also very friendly with Steve Jobs, believe it or not. They’re very, very similar personality wise that. But anyway, enough of that analysis. The key is like that was their first deal after they invented the newsfeed in the very same year. It’s almost like they do they they started the news feed, which today we sort of take for granted.

00:06:19:08 – 00:06:34:11
Ralph
But then they actually did the Microsoft deal in that like within weeks of each other. Yeah. All the things we now take for granted that started way back in 2006, is that kind of a mind blower? If you sort of go back and do the research here? I mean, that’s how it all started.

00:06:34:13 – 00:06:58:06
Lauren
I’m almost like wondering like, because OpenAI’s relationship, like they’re one of their first early on deals was like with Reddit. And so I wonder if the same team from Microsoft was like, hey, let’s go after these social platforms or like where they structure these type of relationship deals. Being OpenAI is a subsidiary of Microsoft. Well, they wouldn’t have been then.

00:06:58:06 – 00:07:15:12
Lauren
You know, it was like two. Anyways. It is it’s really interesting how Microsoft has positioned themselves in this and in other really big advertising deals quietly. I mean, maybe maybe it was allowed just I’d never heard about it, but also it wasn’t.

00:07:15:12 – 00:07:40:17
Ralph
I actually didn’t know or I was doing research prior to this show. And by the way, there’s, props to, another podcast that I listen to quite a bit, actually called Acquired. It’s the acquired podcast. They do a much more detailed breakdown of meta if you want to go even deeper down the rabbit hole. They do like a three hour show for our show on this after interviewing Zuckerberg.

00:07:40:19 – 00:07:58:02
Ralph
So, a great podcast. We’ll leave links in the show notes for that’s called the Acquired Podcast. A little bit nerdy, a little bit like two detailed for me. They’re both two programmers who are, definitely not marketers. But if you are a marketer and you love to nerd out in the search stuff, it’s a great, great show for that.

00:07:58:04 – 00:08:20:23
Ralph
Anyway, the point is this is that that deal actually enabled meta to reject this bid by Yahoo for $1 billion because they finally said, okay, we have a way to monetize the platform. We’ve got this deal where we’re going to actually sort of white label or enable ads, you know, through Microsoft, through the Microsoft, which wasn’t even like Bing.

00:08:20:23 – 00:08:42:16
Ralph
There was no Microsoft network of advertising. Yeah, they just had all these users and they started to license it through Meta or Facebook at that particular point in time. So, very interesting. That’s way back in 2006. So that’s when monetization really started. I was not on meta until years after that, but I didn’t realize that that’s actually the sort of the evolution of it.

00:08:42:18 – 00:08:52:04
Ralph
The next thing that they did is and this is one of their biggest mistakes and and if you go back and you do a Google search for

00:08:52:04 – 00:09:08:12
Ralph
Facebook mistakes or Facebook failed projects, it’s like the list is so long of things that they’ve done. And one of the biggest things that they did that just really pissed off users is they did this thing called beacon, and this was in 2007.

00:09:08:12 – 00:09:26:11
Ralph
And so what this did is it broadcasted user purchases through the platform, through the Microsoft. So anybody who bought something through an ad, it would then be broadcast to for social engagement with people’s followers and people’s friends.

00:09:26:11 – 00:09:28:07
Lauren
Oh my gosh. So you would have receipts.

00:09:28:07 – 00:09:30:01
Ralph
So they made like these.

00:09:30:01 – 00:09:33:13
Ralph
Yeah. It would show like if you went out and bought something that you didn’t want the public.

00:09:33:18 – 00:09:35:08
Lauren
Oh my gosh, hello world.

00:09:35:10 – 00:09:42:10
Ralph
It would automatically will appear in your profile. Yeah. Whatever you’re like. So yeah. So they wanted to or.

00:09:42:12 – 00:09:49:19
Lauren
Imagine like a pregnancy test if you’re a, a military wife and your partner’s overseas and you buy a pregnancy test,

00:09:49:21 – 00:09:50:11
Ralph
Oh.

00:09:50:11 – 00:10:10:01
Ralph
You imagine, like, the, the failures in the States will leave a link in the show notes about this, but, failures and mistakes by meta and how they’ve been able to just overcome it just because they, they they move fast and they break things. And that was sort of the that was the mantra back then. That is not the case now.

00:10:10:01 – 00:10:24:23
Ralph
They’re a little bit more logical. Zuckerberg thinks things through a little bit less of that hacker mentality. You know, even though meta is still on, what is it, one hacker way. If you ever been to the meta.

00:10:25:01 – 00:10:26:14
Lauren
Yeah, I have.

00:10:26:16 – 00:10:36:18
Ralph
A home office. Yeah. Yes. It’s actually on the other side of the sign for meta. It’s actually the old sign for Sun Microsystems.

00:10:36:20 – 00:10:48:19
Lauren
Oh, is it us? Yeah, because I was like, I have my picture from 12 years ago when I did a thumbs up down in front of the Facebook thumbs up headquarters sign.

00:10:48:21 – 00:10:49:19
Ralph
Yeah.

00:10:49:21 – 00:11:00:17
Lauren
I never man, I remember going around it, but that’s cool that they had a nod to their old home. But either way, yeah, yeah, they’re on one hacker. It’s,

00:11:00:19 – 00:11:25:23
Ralph
It’s absolutely massive. It’s like airplane hangar sized buildings there. It’s absolutely crazy. But anyway. So I’ll if I can, I’ll dig up a picture. Oh, that’s right in the show notes that where I actually take a selfie in front of the the now meta sign, but in the back is actually the Sun Microsystems side, which is a company that’s now defunct, but did actually have it’s have quite a run in the 90s into the early 2000 anyway.

00:11:25:23 – 00:11:44:19
Ralph
So just those two things right there, just like an example of one of their big mistakes, but relating it back to advertise you. So they really struggled with the advertising model to start. They had no idea. And this is this is total Zuck. It’s like, all right, we’ve got all these eyeballs we’ve got at that point hundreds of millions of users.

00:11:44:23 – 00:12:16:21
Ralph
But how do we monetize it. Yeah. And the partnership with Microsoft was the first step. The next step was remember the right hand rail ads. Those happened shortly thereafter in and around sort of 2007, 2008, 2009. And that’s when I actually started to advertise in 2000, late 2008, late 2000 or early 2009. Yeah, doing affiliate marketing and it was only desktop.

00:12:16:22 – 00:12:24:21
Ralph
Keep in mind no mobile yet. No mobile Facebook, but it was the right hand rail ads. Do you remember those like there?

00:12:24:23 – 00:12:32:06
Lauren
I assume it’s like you had like I was I remember when I was on Facebook desktop and you had the birthdays on the right hand side.

00:12:32:11 – 00:12:43:07
Ralph
So this is an actual picture you can see here. This is what the ads used to look like. There were this sort of odd size. And they were just sort of hover on the right hand side on desktop.

00:12:43:09 – 00:12:44:07
Lauren
Okay.

00:12:44:09 – 00:12:49:20
Ralph
Yeah. And so this is what we used to buy, I mean, these were the types of ads all the time.

00:12:49:21 – 00:12:51:14
Lauren
And it would fit when you scrolled.

00:12:51:16 – 00:13:11:23
Ralph
It would fit when you scrolled. Yeah. So it sort of hung there. So picture like this scrolling here. And those just kind of stay static on the top. And then oftentimes they would layer them maybe 2 or 3 of them. And this was the sort of the Sheryl Sandberg effect she started. She came in in around this time.

00:13:12:01 – 00:13:42:13
Ralph
And this is how they were able to wean themselves off Microsoft, start their own native platform. But remember, this was all desktop at this time. And the the targeting was really sort of rudimentary. It was where people lived, what their gender was. It was male, female was that was the only there wasn’t anything else. And then who they were interested in male or female or it’s complicated.

00:13:42:15 – 00:14:11:04
Ralph
And then last but not least, marital status, which is either married, single or I believe it’s complicated was the third one. And where you lived, what your age was and that was it. That’s all the targeting that you actually had. And that’s before ads went into the newsfeed. And that’s when things really started to take off, which is in, you know, 2013, 2012.

00:14:11:06 – 00:14:52:17
Ralph
That’s when things really started to to accelerate for meta. And one of the important parts to this is that they realized that in their I think it was their 2012 IPO filing when they actually had to when went for their IPO, they actually submitted the fact that all of their the average revenue per user was on desktop, and literally none of it was coming from mobile, even though mobile with like the adoption of the iPhone, all of everything sort of shooting towards mobile, they realized they basically didn’t have a mobile advertising solution.

00:14:52:19 – 00:15:13:20
Ralph
And that’s the reason why we now have ads in the newsfeed, because those right hand rail ads obviously won’t work in an app and the blue app on your iPhone or on your your Android device. And that’s why we now have ads in the newsfeed. I don’t know if people realize that evolution, we sort of take all.

00:15:13:20 – 00:15:41:23
Lauren
Of this didn’t always have ads in mobile like and I mean, again, for me it’s like Instagram and Facebook has been one and the same and like Instagram has always been a mobile app. Then they made desktop and then they finally made a better version for the tablet, like this year under Amazon’s direction. But it’s like weird thinking that you didn’t have mobile ads on I believe it, I just I didn’t start advertising on Facebook until 2014, 2015.

00:15:42:01 – 00:15:50:22
Lauren
And so yeah, in that capacity, it makes sense. I just I’m still like, wow, that was I mean, I, I’ve been doing this for ten years. Whoa.

00:15:51:00 – 00:15:51:18
Ralph
Yeah. Yeah.

00:15:51:18 – 00:16:18:07
Lauren
But and so before that and it’s like I remember like all the targeting options that are available. So when you’re saying that you have such a limited number of targeting to then when it was like wide open and you could target people’s Facebook groups, you could target very specific interests. I remember in 2017 getting a book allegedly, that had printed every single like available like or interest that’s inside of the meta ecosystem.

00:16:18:07 – 00:16:37:12
Lauren
Like you would like research it and I remember like learning from Molly, but and something like how like I would like find out different ways and and trying to find interest because it was so ad set heavy. Yeah. And then I remember like seeing this book, it was like a printed like Book of Congress kind of situation and, how expensive it was.

00:16:37:12 – 00:16:39:18
Ralph
And then and that’s how you targeted, right?

00:16:39:18 – 00:16:41:04
Lauren
Yeah.

00:16:41:06 – 00:17:07:13
Ralph
But what people liked was the targeting initially on the ad platform, but then it became far more than that. And then in 2013, this is after this shift towards mobile and not, you know, this is probably just a little bit before your time when you first started. Yeah. Advertising on the platform is that this shift towards mobile was the thing and they were really kind of caught with their, with their pants down, so to speak.

00:17:07:15 – 00:17:42:11
Ralph
So much so that the stock absolutely cratered when analysts read that. Wait a second. Everything’s going towards mobile. But Meta or Facebook at that time doesn’t even have a mobile advertising solution. People were just like dumping the stock like, this is the end of Facebook, I don’t think I don’t think people realize how drastic that was. And oh, by the way, right after they they announced they were going public, they’re in what’s referred to as a quiet period, like right prior to your IPO or you can’t make any, you know, big news announcements.

00:17:42:11 – 00:18:03:21
Ralph
You can’t, because it would alter the stock like all this sort of stuff. And over the last they, they bought this little company called Instagram during the quiet period. Can you imagine the balls of of of Zuckerberg and doing this? It’s like he’s absolutely insane but insane in kind of a good way. So yeah.

00:18:03:23 – 00:18:24:11
Lauren
Have you there’s a book I read I can’t remember which one it was. But there is a book that I had that, talks about that deal and how Twitter was actually like, well, yeah, Twitter now, you know, x now Twitter then had been like presenting a really strong deal. So I feel like this would be a really good point.

00:18:24:11 – 00:18:44:23
Lauren
I’m going to pull up in that last book and grab it that I had before. And then I feel like for the next one, we can do like the Instagram era. So like we did the desktop era and like going over what that I went through to now we’re we’re in a mobile era and leading up to the most important aspect is like, where are we going now?

00:18:44:23 – 00:19:01:20
Lauren
And how like if, if you think about if you’re listening to this and like, wow, that was so weird. There’s a desktop era now we’re gonna talk about the mobile era. Just know that what Ralph is leading up to is lead is ten times bigger than this jump that we’re talking about.

00:19:01:22 – 00:19:31:06
Ralph
Right. So the reason why we’re doing this because I think, you know, when I talk about this and I know today is sort of a shorter show, but when I say the Andromeda update is as big as when ads went in the newsfeed, people are like, what are you talking about? Oh, I mean, when advertising went into the newsfeed and all of a sudden we had this incredible target, remember the targeting that was in there, like the bleeding data companies, you had insane levels of targeting, like the targeting major ads, like you could put anything in front of people.

00:19:31:06 – 00:19:56:22
Ralph
But the targeting was so damn good. Now it’s the exact opposite with Andromeda, that Andromeda update for the vast majority of our clients are wide open targeting, with some age targeting and some, you know, geographic targeting. But literally it’s the ads themselves and the creative themselves that creates the targeting. So I think it’s important to know where we’re at right now to understand where we’ve been when it comes to meta.

00:19:57:00 – 00:20:22:19
Ralph
And we’ll continue this conversation with more Instagram and more mobile stuff and more meta knowledge bombs on part three, which hopefully we can finish up in record time here. But anything to add before we sign off on part two here? On why meta is the best advertising planet. Why meta is the best advertising platform on the planet in 2026.

00:20:22:21 – 00:20:35:16
Lauren
It’s so much more epic of what’s coming, and I’m just like, we’re we’re barely, barely touching the surface. And I’m like, I’m really excited. So hang tight. So you understand how dramatically different it’s about to be?

00:20:35:17 – 00:20:58:03
Ralph
Yeah, we haven’t even talked about deep neural networks. We haven’t talked about AI. We haven’t talked about it haven’t talked about this other thing called WhatsApp, which they haven’t even monetized yet. There’s so many different things that we’ll be discussing on part three of Perpetual Traffic here, sort of as your year end wrap up with some knowledge about why you should be adopting the meta platform in 2026.

00:20:58:05 – 00:21:18:00
Ralph
So of course, everything that we mentioned here will be, in the show notes over a perpetual traffic e-com, of course. Watch us on our YouTube channel, perpetual traffic.com/youtube. And as always, wherever you listen to podcasts, we appreciate it. Rating a review gets us out to a wider audience. Teach people how to do this stuff the right way through metrics that matter and growth that scales.

00:21:18:00 – 00:21:33:17
Ralph
So on behalf of my amazing co-host Lauren Bruno. So till next show, see you.

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