Episode 761: Why Meta is The Best Ad Platform on The Planet in 2026 Part 3

December 26, 2025

Do you still consider Meta a targeting platform? If so, that mindset is probably costing you scale, efficiency, and confidence in your numbers. We see too many marketers clinging to old playbooks, such as hyper-specific audiences, exclusions, and lookalikes, without realizing the platform has fundamentally changed.

In this episode, we continue our discussion on the evolution of Meta advertising, from the early days of right-hand rail ads and insane third-party data to what’s happening right now. We break down why targeting used to do the heavy lifting, why that era is over, and how AI-driven delivery flipped the model on its head.

If you’re running ads or managing clients who are, this series on Meta’s history and current strategies will recalibrate how you think about Meta before launching your 2026 marketing plan.

In this episode:

02:20 Early Facebook monetization and newsfeed ads

04:58 Facebook Beacon and other early failures

14:37 The birth of Facebook’s ad engine

19:39 Facebook’s IPO and Instagram acquisition

24:26 AlexNet and the foundation of AI ads

30:15 When targeting started ruling Meta ads

32:20 Creative replaces targeting

Thanks so much for joining us this week. Want to subscribe to Perpetual Traffic?

Have some feedback you’d like to share? Connect with us on iTunes and leave us a review!

READ THE TRANSCRIPT:

Why Meta is The Best Ad Platform on The Planet in 2026 Part 3

00:00:00:00 – 00:00:11:13
Lauren
I remember you were able to do people that like income brackets. Credit score is like all of this type of stuff. So we needed to make sure that these are married individuals. They were employed. They had this household income and they had this credit score.

00:00:11:13 – 00:00:24:15
Ralph
This was a whole different era. Creative wasn’t as important. I think a lot of people say, oh, Zuckerberg is so brilliant. By putting ads in the newsfeed, he literally had no choice to do it. Zuckerberg really didn’t want anything to do with advertising.

00:00:24:15 – 00:00:30:14
Lauren
He said that this year, the only thing he’s put his priority to is ensuring that the consumer has a.

00:00:30:16 – 00:00:42:04
Ralph
There is a narrative that Cambridge Analytica won the election for Trump in 2016, which is absolutely untrue. What Trump did in 2016 is.

00:00:42:06 – 00:00:52:00
Lauren
If you’re new to advertising, this is a great time to jump in. If you’re not new to advertising, this is mission critical time to understand and catch up.

00:00:52:01 – 00:01:03:03
Ralph
Hello and welcome to the Perpetual Traffic Podcast. This is your host, Ralph Burns, founder and CEO of cheer 11, alongside my amazing Pink Microphones co-host.

00:01:03:05 – 00:01:05:19
Lauren
Lauren Eve Trillo, the founder of Mongoose Media.

00:01:05:22 – 00:01:23:12
Ralph
Notice I didn’t say fuchsia or purple like last episode. Anyway, so glad you joined us here today. If you’re a VP of marketing, Director of marketing and CEO, you need to be on meta advertising. Sorry, just sorry to break it to you. We’ve got a client call later on today. That is all Google, like 80% Google and 20% meta.

00:01:23:13 – 00:01:47:13
Ralph
And they’re like, why can’t we scale? And it’s because they’ve got it all wrong. They need to be 80% better than 20% Google, if not less. So that is what we’re seeing so much right now with this Andromeda update. And we’re seeing just businesses. Absolutely transform. And we’ve got probably 20 different examples. We’re very crappy about putting together case studies here on our site.

00:01:47:13 – 00:02:07:19
Ralph
I don’t know how many you have, but you know, the cobbler’s kids have no shoes when it comes to marketing. When you’re marketing an agency. The point is this is that we’re doing this three part series here to show you how meta has evolved. And in order to understand where we’re at right now, I think you got to really understand where we’ve been.

00:02:07:21 – 00:02:25:01
Ralph
And the funny part about this is we’re just about at the point in time where little Lauren Petrillo starts advertising on meta in the history of the advertising platform. So you are going to have a lot more to say on today’s episode.

00:02:25:06 – 00:02:31:08
Lauren
Yeah, I felt that, Archie, I don’t know any of this stuff. You’re like right hand column. I was like, isn’t that where the birthdays were?

00:02:31:10 – 00:02:52:09
Ralph
Right, right. Felt like it was a monologue, I think, on part two. But that’s all right. You know, we kind of got us up to that point. I wanted to get you in on this. Okay. So where we left off on part two was a couple of different things is that they did strike a deal with Microsoft to start their first advertising on meta.

00:02:52:09 – 00:03:07:17
Ralph
And this is something that I think it was maybe Dustin Moskowitz was pushing for. Maybe it was Eduardo Saverin. But anyway, the one of the founders really wanted to put advertising on Facebook at that time. It was not better. It was their Facebook ad than it’s Facebook watch, the social network.

00:03:07:18 – 00:03:08:12
Lauren
Social network.

00:03:08:12 – 00:03:28:00
Ralph
Yeah, yeah. Good. Does a really good history of like how all that evolved. The point is this is that they never really looked at this as an advertising model, because Zuckerberg never really knew what Facebook was going to be. I’m actually listening to an interview of him about the evolution of it. He’s like, first it was just a website and was like, I really didn’t think it was going to turn into a business.

00:03:28:00 – 00:03:55:02
Ralph
So I was like, I’ll just set that aside. I’ll figure out something else. Like it almost never came to be, which is crazy. But then all of a sudden he realized, if I can unite the world and have the world communicate with the rest of the world and, you know, bring people together, which is, I believe, his statement that he said many times, this is a great way to do it and the best way to monetize it ended up being advertising, which is the thing that we use every single day.

00:03:55:04 – 00:04:15:06
Ralph
Yeah, spending hundreds of millions of dollars a year and creating billions in revenue for our clients. So that all started with this Microsoft deal, but then it evolved into what then became the News Feed. The news feed, actually, we sort of take for granted, which came in in 2006. It was probably the single biggest.

00:04:15:07 – 00:04:22:08
Lauren
Before the news feed then, like it was just profiles and you just like went. I think people doing dating couples.

00:04:22:10 – 00:04:27:02
Ralph
Yeah. It was almost like he wasn’t really sure whether it was going to be a dating site or what it was.

00:04:27:02 – 00:04:35:08
Lauren
Oh, like you would comment on people’s stuff, I think. Right. Like you’d be like, oh yeah, hey Sean, happy birthday or something. So you just go to people’s profiles.

00:04:35:11 – 00:04:51:17
Ralph
I think that was it. Like this is a little bit before my day, but so I don’t know what the experience of it was. I still really don’t even use Facebook all that much socially right now. The point is, it’s like the people are on it. So that’s why we advertise. But yeah, I think it was more like a messenger kind of thing.

00:04:51:17 – 00:04:55:00
Ralph
And that’s what it evolved from, from its original incarnation.

00:04:55:04 – 00:05:00:18
Lauren
Like a visual white page, yellow page Rolodex thing that you set on as a kid.

00:05:00:20 – 00:05:24:00
Ralph
Yeah, yeah, I mean, that was it. And so but now we know it as like the newsfeed. So the newsfeed is, you know, you get obviously updates from your friends. You see ads on there, all of that. And remember this was browser based. It was not on mobile yet in 2006 and 2007. And then we talked about their huge mistake with beacon, which I did not experience this firsthand.

00:05:24:00 – 00:05:38:09
Ralph
But if you actually we’ll leave a link in the show notes like What is Facebook Beacon? And it was literally it was an advertising program that shared user activities from third party websites like purchases to their Facebook feeds. I mean, default.

00:05:38:11 – 00:05:39:02
Lauren
Oh man, you.

00:05:39:02 – 00:05:40:19
Ralph
Imagine, oh my God.

00:05:40:19 – 00:05:47:06
Lauren
You would see how many times I buy pink shoes and like let the world know it. Like it’s funny. Tell it’s not funny.

00:05:47:08 – 00:05:52:08
Ralph
I know, you know, it’s really funny. If you use the, if you use Venmo.

00:05:52:10 – 00:05:53:08
Lauren
Oh my gosh.

00:05:53:08 – 00:06:04:18
Ralph
Like yeah. People don’t realize that when they use Venmo. Like if they don’t shut off their privacy settings like everything that they do is broadcast all your friends. It’s crazy.

00:06:04:18 – 00:06:23:01
Lauren
Oh wait, you have it right. This is the this is a hidden social network piece that I think those people, to me, my friends use Venmo as like they communicate in petty ways to other people in a sense of like, say, Ralph, you and I go out for lunch, you’re coming to Orlando. And what John is like, what, 45 minutes away from where I am?

00:06:23:03 – 00:06:45:16
Lauren
And John, you and I are all friends on Venmo. And then we would make the like, say you paid me $100 back for drinks or something, and then your message on Venmo would be like, drinking is so much more fun without John, with the intention of John seeing it like that petty type of stuff, or I’ve seen it where like people are blocked, like say, well, okay, let’s do a different situation.

00:06:45:16 – 00:07:01:08
Lauren
So let’s say you and John are dating and then you’re like, you end everything with John, and John’s desperately trying to get you back. You blocked him on socials, you blocked his number. So then he’s going to send you money on Venmo and be like, Will you please unblock me?

00:07:01:10 – 00:07:21:08
Lauren
Like, those are the best things. Or like, just like nuts when I go through my Venmo feeds and I check all my financials every Sunday and I’ll see, like, what’s the balance in my Venmo account? And I just love scrolling to see the comedy of what my friends are sending to each other, because maybe they went out for, like, Mexican foods, but it’s like tacos, tequilas and titties or something like that.

00:07:21:08 – 00:07:29:14
Lauren
They’re just going to explain something ridiculous. And I now I have FOMO and I’m going to message like, hey Christy, thanks for the invite. Sounds like you guys.

00:07:29:14 – 00:07:49:14
Ralph
Thanks for the invite. Thanks for inviting me. Yeah, yeah, it’s so, so funny. Like, my sister is on there and my boy. But both of my boys are on there, so I mean, they’re obviously they’re on all these networks. And so whenever she would have like a facial or she would get like, you know, maybe some Botox, oh, you know, and it’s I think.

00:07:49:14 – 00:07:51:21
Lauren
It’s, you know, toxic person. Yeah.

00:07:51:22 – 00:08:02:08
Ralph
So and so my kids are like, well, how was your appointment at the doctor’s last week? All right. You know, because they didn’t know. And she’s like, what? How did you know that it was because of Venmo.

00:08:02:10 – 00:08:03:23
Lauren
Oh, that’s so good.

00:08:04:01 – 00:08:05:08
Ralph
I know, and she’s not.

00:08:05:09 – 00:08:08:00
Lauren
Someone I knew was pregnant from Venmo.

00:08:08:02 – 00:08:08:13
Ralph
Yeah.

00:08:08:14 – 00:08:13:18
Lauren
Because I didn’t send something like, hey, diapers for the baby. And I’m like, you’re pregnant.

00:08:13:20 – 00:08:36:17
Ralph
It’s so funny. But like, that was what beacon was. But for every purchase you ever make. So imagine how embarrassing that is. So like it was in your, you know, your feed, not your news feed, but it would it would be actually broadcast. And yeah, it’s actually in their feeds by default. So that’s what would happen before the news feed you had a feed.

00:08:36:19 – 00:08:53:10
Ralph
So whatever you were doing, like you didn’t have the news feed as it currently exists. Anyway, the point is like that was a failed attempt. And like I said in the last show, there is a long list of failures for meta and it’s like in this interview I’m listening to is Zuckerberg. It’s like I just went from failure to failure or failure.

00:08:53:10 – 00:09:00:20
Ralph
It’s like, you know, you just figure out what works and what doesn’t work. Copy other people. He doesn’t say that in the interview, but I don’t like copy.

00:09:00:20 – 00:09:01:09
Lauren
Out like.

00:09:01:12 – 00:09:27:02
Ralph
That. We know today. Yeah. Copy or acquire. Right. And even the network itself like think about Facebook the network itself was a copy of Friendster or Myspace. I forget the other ones. Like this is not a novel thing, but Facebook is meta is now where it’s at today, and all of those other social networks are basically been vanquished to the exception of now TikTok, snap.

00:09:27:02 – 00:09:32:06
Ralph
Obviously LinkedIn for business. Sure. I guess Venmo is sort of a social app, you know?

00:09:32:08 – 00:09:47:06
Lauren
Oh, absolutely. I know how much people are giving for weddings. And I’m like, okay, I wouldn’t know what to expect because you can if you’re inviting people that are far away from you to wedding, you can just go to their Venmo history and see what they’ve given other people decide whether or not it’s worth saving them a seat.

00:09:47:07 – 00:09:55:00
Ralph
Oh my God, it’s so good in the evolution here. So beacon was a big was a big failure. But I mean that is history is is littered with followers.

00:09:55:01 – 00:10:06:12
Lauren
Oh look Rob, I brought one. I told you one of their failures is a thing called portal. And I have one actually, I bought a bunch and it was a really, really good tool. They just discontinued support last year like it was.

00:10:06:12 – 00:10:07:15
Ralph
A dream.

00:10:07:17 – 00:10:29:17
Lauren
Last year. So this is a screen with a camera, right? So obviously you can turn it on, turn it off. Then portal would listen like Siri or Alexa or whatever. But like I would use this to my computer and I’d have zoom, so I’d have all my zoom calls on the portal. It has its own speaker. So it wasn’t slowing down my computer, and if someone dropped in, I could just have this as a separate monitor and I connect it to my computer.

00:10:29:17 – 00:10:48:15
Lauren
So it was a really nice, easy monitor. And the reason why I bought it like this was the bigger one, but I bought everyone in my family were all remote. My mom’s in Chicago, brother in Texas, others Caroline Oliver I got this portal on top of the TV because I do Christmas and we open up all of our gifts together.

00:10:48:17 – 00:11:14:14
Lauren
But before there was like pairing to your phone and mirroring, I was like, I can’t see you. I can’t see seven people from my tiny phone screen and portal. I could call them on WhatsApp. I can call them on Messenger or Zoom or whatever. And then they had a camera on top of the TV. They could see more and follow me around with the smart camera, and I could see all of them on the TV screen, which is 10 to 15 times bigger than my phone.

00:11:14:16 – 00:11:19:08
Ralph
Yeah. So it was it was great. It is a great tool, but they discontinued it so that.

00:11:19:10 – 00:11:21:09
Lauren
No one bought it was it was like.

00:11:21:11 – 00:11:31:04
Ralph
Too expensive, bought it, whatever. But like, think about all the things that like, I don’t know if you remember slingshot moments, Facebook paper, the poke.

00:11:31:06 – 00:11:38:14
Lauren
Poke buttons. I remember you can poke people I know, but that was stolen. That was from Snapchat or something else. They did not have the poke first.

00:11:38:16 – 00:12:04:06
Ralph
Of course. Right. Like Facebook credits, which was like a virtual currency, Facebook deals, you know, obviously beacon, you know, portal devices, portal, TV portal plus Oculus Go, like the list just goes on and on and on and on. Their workplace. Like they they actually started like a project management system that I remember our partner manager had us all go on.

00:12:04:06 – 00:12:14:13
Ralph
I was like, yes, sucks. You know, it was such a pain. So anyway, the point is this is like I think that’s the key to businesses is going from failure to failure to failure to ultimate success.

00:12:14:17 – 00:12:21:08
Lauren
Like that said, Dyson had 999 vacuums before they landed on their billion dollar prototype.

00:12:21:10 – 00:12:40:10
Ralph
Yeah, it’s it’s crazy now. Meta arguably like one of the most successful companies on the planet. So anyway, the point is this is that if you’re a if you’re listening to this, like, what does this have to do with advertising? It has everything to do with advertising because, you know, 8,090% of our it. Well, maybe not now, but like let’s say 70, 80% of our ads fail.

00:12:40:12 – 00:12:50:14
Ralph
They just don’t resonate for whatever reason. I think with we’ve definitely increased that percentage. We’ll have to redo that one with the Andromeda update. The point is this it’s like that is the key to success in business.

00:12:50:16 – 00:13:13:17
Lauren
I wouldn’t say failure with Andromeda. I would take it back. So like the work and don’t it’s like an RB, right? Like you, you hit less times then you don’t. And so ads, you just don’t know what’s going to resonate. But I wouldn’t say within breakthrough and stuff it’s failure because there’s the incrementality and like contribution all the contribute a little lift because someone’s not going to make a decision anymore.

00:13:13:17 – 00:13:38:03
Lauren
Like the current advertising landscape isn’t like linear, where you say, I see this ad, therefore I know immediately I’m going to buy because of this one ad. We have all these touchpoints and the demands of Andromeda, of creative diversification and variety of options for the ad retrieval engine to get is so that you can have I saw this version, this version, this version, this version and this version which combine all the powers together.

00:13:38:03 – 00:13:51:17
Lauren
You are Captain Planet and acquiring whatever it is you are being sold to. So that’s where it’s like in the past. Like why this stuff matters. You have to understand that you had to fail before. Now we get to the instead of failing. It’s supportive.

00:13:51:18 – 00:14:16:17
Ralph
I think there is a difference now between contribution and attribution. So all of those ads contribute, but they not may not get the last click attribution. Yeah. So to your point, yes, there are some ads that just don’t resonate for whatever reason. We see them. You know, meta will spend on them. And then all of a sudden they just stop spending and we’re like, all right, well that’s it sort of self-select out.

00:14:16:17 – 00:14:37:18
Ralph
So that might be an ad that’s a fail. Did it actually contribute to an actual sale as opposed to attribute got the click or got the view that ended up getting the purchase on Google? We don’t really know. So yeah. So I would say there is a big distinction now like we used to launch a bunch of ads and then you would see the ones that just didn’t resonate.

00:14:37:18 – 00:14:48:03
Ralph
You’d have to pause them. Meta self selects them. So it’s contribution versus attribution I think that’s a big, big statement. I think I stole that one from John. Or maybe me and John came up with that.

00:14:48:07 – 00:14:52:15
Lauren
I was like, no, that’s really good. I’m going to feel that myself. I’m going to.

00:14:52:17 – 00:15:19:01
Ralph
Steal it, Zuck, steal it, make it your own. All right. So News Feed came in 2006. So Sheryl Sandberg comes on the scene in 2008. A lot of people now, I don’t know, realize or give her the proper credit for creating what really is the auction system playbook that we now enjoy. And yeah, like, Zuckerberg really didn’t want anything to do with advertising.

00:15:19:01 – 00:15:19:18
Ralph
He, he.

00:15:19:19 – 00:15:44:16
Lauren
He said that this year he literally said in an earnings report this year is like, this is the first time I have ever cared about ads. Like he like there’s a quote of him saying he’s like, I have ignored ads always. I care about the consumer’s experience on platform. The only thing he’s put his priority to is ensuring that the consumer has a good enough experience that they stay on platform.

00:15:44:16 – 00:15:59:20
Lauren
And he says ads are the exact opposite. They do exactly what I don’t want to do, which is get people to leave platform or get people to sign off or discontinue use of the platform. So this year is the first and only time he’s ever came out saying, I care about ads.

00:16:00:01 – 00:16:22:13
Ralph
That is true. That’s a great statement. I’m not into that. Interviewed far enough. Actually, it’s it’s an older interview, but yeah, it’s never been his thing. But he realized that he had to monetize it, and he had to figure out a way to kind of, you know, detach a bit from the Microsoft arrangement, which was generating, you know, at this point in time, hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue like it was a grow.

00:16:22:13 – 00:16:44:11
Ralph
It was growing like a weed using a non-native platform, basically using a white label platform. And so Sheryl Sandberg comes in and really sort of saves the day and creates the system that we know today. And even at that point in time, we talked about this in our last, part two is this was the evolution of the right hand rail ads, which you were like, what are those?

00:16:44:13 – 00:17:13:01
Ralph
Well, I mean, remember, Facebook was a browser based. That’s the only place that you could go. You went to the computer, you logged in to Facebook. You still do it today. You’re technically not on an app like the blue app that we all have on our phones. That’s usually the way that we interact with Facebook, with Instagram. But still, this was a web based browser, you know, platform and so on the right hand side, which we left links in the show notes from last week’s show on exactly what those right hand rail ads look like.

00:17:13:01 – 00:17:28:06
Ralph
And now they’re sort of an afterthought. I mean, I don’t even know if they exist anymore. Do they actually exist? Like, we don’t even talk about them. All right. I like how little they matter. Yeah. I’m like, go on Facebook like on the browser and actually see if you see a right hand rail that.

00:17:28:09 – 00:17:51:16
Lauren
I think that’s going to be like all your audience network sign images. I mean, you still it’s the 1200 by 620 size. Because I’ll say it just depends on like which browser you’re using, which device like I’ll there’s so many different versions of how you’re looking at that. But like when you go into the ad, dimensions and ad creatives, I’ve seen what’s as close as I can to what you’re referring to.

00:17:51:18 – 00:18:09:20
Ralph
In and around this time around 2009, 2010 is when I first started advertising on Facebook. So I was an affiliate. I had just been fired from the corporate world. I had a bunch of affiliate friends and they were like, yeah, there’s this new platform called Facebook. You should check it out. And I was like, well, well, you know, what is it?

00:18:10:00 – 00:18:15:10
Ralph
I didn’t really understand. So I was an affiliate for dating sites at that point, which no.

00:18:15:10 – 00:18:16:08
Lauren
Way.

00:18:16:10 – 00:18:27:12
Ralph
Loved. Yeah. Oh my God. Yeah. Plenty of fish, which was one of them Christian Mingle. I was a super affiliate for Christian Mingle.

00:18:27:14 – 00:18:27:20
Lauren
Which.

00:18:27:20 – 00:18:47:12
Ralph
Goodness, I create it like Trish was still my webmaster, like, created all these, like, Christian dating site, like, huge sites with, like, hundreds of pages to rank for SEO. And then we then sent paid traffic to them. So there’s like, all right, well, they’ve got all this, they’ve got all these users. I think there’s hundreds of millions of users at this point.

00:18:47:12 – 00:19:02:16
Ralph
I mean, now there’s obviously there’s nearly 4 billion users. So still a lot of users. But like I said last time, like you had very limited targeting options. You had where they lives, what the age they were, what their marital status was, and if they were, you know, who they were interested in, like what type of person they’re interested in.

00:19:02:16 – 00:19:26:14
Ralph
I’m like, this is perfect for dating sites. And so I actually launched an ad on Christian Mingle, I think it was late 2009 on the right hand rail, and I forgot to put a cap on my spend. Oh, no. And, I remember I had my red Dell laptop, and I had brought it upstairs to our bedroom up here, and I woke up like, I was like, Holy crap, I didn’t put a cap on my spending.

00:19:26:14 – 00:19:34:07
Ralph
So I opened up my laptop and I had spent, I think, $2,700 in literally like two hours.

00:19:34:07 – 00:19:35:12
Lauren
Oh my gosh.

00:19:35:13 – 00:19:36:22
Ralph
Without a single conversion.

00:19:37:03 – 00:19:39:20
Lauren
Oh my. Yes.

00:19:39:22 – 00:19:46:07
Ralph
And so instead of being pissed, I was like, Holy crap, how much traffic is on this thing?

00:19:46:09 – 00:19:47:07
Lauren
Yeah.

00:19:47:09 – 00:20:14:20
Ralph
And that was late 2009, early 2010. So, this was a huge deal. I was like, well, if they ever figure out the targeting, then this would be absolutely phenomenal. And lo and behold, in two, let’s fast forward a couple of years here. So basically between 2000 and 8, when I believe it was 2008 when Sheryl Sandberg came on board, double check my ass on this.

00:20:14:20 – 00:20:37:12
Ralph
I believe it was. Yeah, 2008, 2008 and 2012. The only advertising really was those right hand rail ads with very limited targeting. So the next step in the evolution, this is where you sort of come into play here is their S-1 crisis. So they had to file for an IPO. They said, all right it’s about time we’re going to or a file for an IPO.

00:20:37:12 – 00:21:08:08
Ralph
This is they said, all right, we’re going to become a mobile first company. However, a little note on the bottom of their S-1 filing said, basically all of our users are daily active users, and our revenue per user is coming from the desktop, and literally zero is coming from mobile. And this freaked out the investor community. And of course, at that same point in time, that’s when they bought, Instagram in 2012 and they bought it during the quiet period, which we mentioned, unless we.

00:21:08:08 – 00:21:32:18
Lauren
Didn’t buy it for like and it was like the biggest acquisition I remember, like shortly after, like they bought WhatsApp for like a billion and but I remember like the Instagram purchase was something so outrageous that it was shocking. But then like literally it felt like the next year, the WhatsApp billion dollar purchase made Instagram seem minuscule.

00:21:32:20 – 00:21:36:01
Ralph
Yeah, I mean, Instagram was bought supposedly for $1 billion.

00:21:36:06 – 00:21:37:05
Lauren
Okay.

00:21:37:07 – 00:21:44:17
Ralph
So yeah, and then WhatsApp, just a like a year or two later, like two years later was 22 billion.

00:21:44:18 – 00:22:16:03
Lauren
Okay. I was like okay so Billy for Instagram. But then WhatsApp was okay. $22 billion because that’s like I remember being like, wow, Instagram was such a monumental acquisition for an app. And then when it was like so soon after they did that, was that 1 billion to 20, a 22 X acquisition for another app? It’s like, oh man, do the what are the people at Instagram were like, I wish I had waited, but at that point, what’s another 2 or $3 billion?

00:22:16:03 – 00:22:19:06
Lauren
You don’t have the ability to spend all that money in a single lifetime.

00:22:19:06 – 00:22:32:13
Ralph
So the funny thing is, is Zuckerberg had hundreds of millions of users. Instagram was really a photo app, if you remember, like it had cool filters, like 30, 40, 50 million users. It was definitely very popular.

00:22:32:18 – 00:22:46:18
Lauren
Geared for photographers because at first it’s like showing the esthetics. But then when the filters came in, photographers were like, whoa, your degrading my photos. But then the increase of users are like, look, now I’m also a photographer, right?

00:22:47:00 – 00:23:07:13
Ralph
Right. That was the thing. Yeah. And they didn’t have advertising either, remember. So it was it was basically just an app. But it also had it was only like a dozen or so people. I, I listen to interview with Kevin Systrom, who the founder of Instagram, who’s now since left. I guess they had issues. We can talk about that at a later date.

00:23:07:15 – 00:23:21:06
Ralph
Point is, it’s like they only had, you know, 20 employees maybe or less at this point. Like this was tiny, but for $1 billion, like, think about it today. Like how incredible what acquisition was that?

00:23:21:07 – 00:23:49:21
Lauren
But again, the like Jack Dorsey moment, like Twitter was trying to acquire Instagram and there’s like some stuff like from political standpoint where like there was a monopolization play and that there were other valid bids that were in play. But meta did this like Mark did this like overnight sneak attack saying, you must sign this within 24 hours while Jack Dorsey was going up and back and forth in the acquisition process.

00:23:49:21 – 00:23:53:17
Lauren
But like, there’s definitely some like politicking. That was politicking.

00:23:53:21 – 00:24:12:12
Ralph
Absolutely. It was a genius move by Zuck. I don’t want I mean to be like totally like kissing his ass here. Like we have nothing to gain by this. We’re just using his platform. But I mean, this was a very, very smart move. 2012 was a big year. So you go for an IPO during the quiet period, you acquire Instagram.

00:24:12:12 – 00:24:33:02
Ralph
You can’t say anything about it. The stock price basically it comes out. It shoots up like triples on the on day one. But then craters 50% because of this little line that says we’re basically we are a desktop company and everything’s moving to mobile and we’re we don’t have a strategy right now. Instagram, I believe, was an app at that point.

00:24:33:02 – 00:24:57:00
Ralph
So was the Facebook app even created at that point? They were still trying to figure this whole thing out because remember, it was still web based. It’s still web based. It was like a website. Yeah. So anyway, so another thing happens around this period of time and I think this is really important is Alex. Net is if you know what Alex net is.

00:24:57:05 – 00:24:58:06
Lauren
No idea.

00:24:58:08 – 00:25:12:18
Ralph
Alex that is basically is the first I generate like all right. It was developed by a team of three researchers from the University of Toronto. Alex Krzyzewski, Elias Carver and Geoffrey Hinton.

00:25:12:20 – 00:25:20:09
Lauren
These guys things to be the second and third person. It lands on the moon when your whole app the three of you create is called Alex. Net.

00:25:20:10 – 00:25:50:11
Ralph
Yeah, exactly, exactly. So Alex net was founded by these three individuals, few that went on to like big jobs in meta, OpenAI and then into academia. They actually came up with a project of how to. This is called the 2012 ImageNet challenge, where thousands of images were labeled and Alex Net was one of the entries into this program.

00:25:50:11 – 00:26:02:01
Ralph
And this program, like they figured out with a very high degree of accuracy, they could identify, based on the images, how to categorize the images. Like these are monkeys. These are dogs.

00:26:02:01 – 00:26:04:21
Lauren
This is all like in Silicon Valley. Hot dogs. No.

00:26:04:21 – 00:26:29:17
Ralph
Hot dog. Yeah, exactly. And this was like a big, big breakthrough because this is sort of the generative. Like this is the genesis of AI. It’s image recognition. It’s understanding how to logically sequence and categorize pieces of data, hundreds of thousands of pieces of data. So Alex, net these three founders, they were the ones who won the contest.

00:26:29:18 – 00:26:54:20
Ralph
And lo and behold, they then sold or licensed their tech to Facebook and Google. And that’s the reason why we have the recommendation engine that underlies all the advertising is because this original AI, this is like the genesis of AI in 2012 with this AlexNet project.

00:26:54:23 – 00:27:21:22
Lauren
Or at least an image recognition because like I’ve seen a lot of stuff with Google where like maybe 5 or 7 years ago, I was listening to interviews of Google. I mean, I image recognition being that of like the age of a toddler and it’s progression to AI being able to identify feelings. So there are people in this photo that are happy but not being able to understand like contextual stuff because that’s like, I like in that type, this is like 5 or 7 years ago.

00:27:22:00 – 00:27:40:02
Lauren
They’re like saying the future of image recognition will say, like, you can see that there’s a woman in the background wearing a wedding ring crying, and then there’s a man in the background throwing off a wedding ring. And so it can he’s like, in the future it’ll be able to understand. And that’s where we’re at with like man, nano banana and being able to add in all these different layers for images.

00:27:40:07 – 00:28:00:09
Lauren
But this is the genesis of image recognition, which, as you’re saying, is like the baseline for Meta and Google’s search and discovery features. But then also, if you think of today, fast forward 13, 14 years with all the stuff that we’re doing with generative AI and being able to create stuff, you have to know how is this possible?

00:28:00:09 – 00:28:22:14
Lauren
Because it took over a decade and billions of dollars of investments to build the model that is today that serves the ads. So there’s a reason why this matters, because it all pertains back to ads, but it’s just showing the evolution and history of why what’s happening today is so substantial, because it is built on stuff that’s been in the works behind for decade plus.

00:28:22:14 – 00:28:55:09
Ralph
Yeah. So this was really what we referred to back in 2012. There’s no such we didn’t really talk about it as AI in 2012, but this was like a deep neural network. And it’s this is the future building blocks of AI. So it triggered a mandate to integrate these deep neural networks into the newsfeed, ranking models, like allowing the algorithm to move beyond simple data and to classify the actual content of photos and videos, which enabled a new level of visual targeting.

00:28:55:10 – 00:29:26:11
Ralph
To your point, like the next level of that is recognizing emotion within those images and or video as well, which is sort of that next sort of stage. And then obviously there’s generative AI. We can talk about that, of course, and future shows. The point is, is for meta and for Google and Facebook at that time and Google, this AlexNet AI feature was absolutely critical to the success of the recommendation engine inside the newsfeed.

00:29:26:11 – 00:29:48:04
Ralph
If you can figure that out, like if you can figure out, like what I like, if I like something, how do I know? Like how do they then show me more content of stuff that I like or that I hover over? Well, it all started with this. Alex. Net licensing from these three super smart individuals. And then see one went to one came on board and meta, another went to OpenAI.

00:29:48:10 – 00:29:54:06
Ralph
But that’s the reason why we have the newsfeed today and the reason why we have ads today. It’s all based on that.

00:29:54:12 – 00:29:55:17
Lauren
Foundational ads.

00:29:55:17 – 00:30:18:23
Ralph
Successful ads that actually target the right people. If you’re selling a anti-aging serum, chances are you probably want to show that to people who are interested in the anti-aging serum. And this AlexNet was the foundation for that ranking model, and for the algorithm and the advertising platform that we now enjoy today. Does that make sense?

00:30:19:04 – 00:30:21:00
Lauren
Totally makes sense.

00:30:21:02 – 00:30:42:23
Ralph
It’s crazy to think about it. And that’s why am I today. So what actually started really back with meta. So anyway, so that was a big deal in 2000. This is all happening in 2012. Like 2005. It was a pretty, pretty big deal. The next phase of this though was because they realized that, holy crap, everything is going to mobile.

00:30:43:01 – 00:31:07:08
Ralph
What are we going to do about these right hand rail ads like we need like sort of the next evolution? And so that’s when in 2012, 2013, this is when I sort of really got on board with it is and realized that that meta and Facebook at that point in time, not yet Instagram because Instagram didn’t have any ads like this was the key.

00:31:07:10 – 00:31:25:22
Ralph
If you put ads in the news feed to make them native, all of a sudden you’ve got a far better engine for advertising. And they layered in all that targeting. Remember all the targeting we had and 2012, 2013 and just like 20 vit like up until really like 2 or 3 years ago, it was a targeting based platform.

00:31:25:22 – 00:31:30:19
Ralph
You also had, you know, you had big data in there like household income.

00:31:30:19 – 00:31:54:03
Lauren
Yeah. And we were still like the best data logics or Oracle. So that even enhanced stuff where I’d be paying like 15% extra on my CPMs, like it was so much of an audience forward platform because you were finding the audience and then building the creative in front of them, where it’s like when it’s like, here’s the audience I want.

00:31:54:03 – 00:32:15:20
Lauren
I want someone who drives a BMW who attends yoga classes three times a week, who’s read books by this author, this author and this author, and is a frequent traveler internationally. Oh, and and you could do credit scores you had. I remember you were able to do people that had like income brackets, credit scores like all this type of stuff.

00:32:15:20 – 00:32:32:04
Lauren
So like especially in the timeshare space where I have like run ads for every major timeshare company and hospitality brand, you can think of where it’s like, we needed to make sure that these are married individuals. They were employed. They had this household income and they had this credit score, and they lived in this zip code like it.

00:32:32:05 – 00:32:39:19
Lauren
I mean, it was now nuts. You know, like if you’re listening to this, you’re like, what do you mean you could do all that? I can’t do any of that now. Yeah. This is a different yeah.

00:32:39:20 – 00:33:02:06
Ralph
This was a whole different era. And like, they were buying this data and embedding it into the platform. So it was from 2013 up until literally like within the last year, this was a targeting based platform in a lot of cases. And creative wasn’t as important. It was like just show the ad like you’re targeting is going to be so great.

00:33:02:06 – 00:33:21:23
Ralph
Like you said, you know, into yoga drives, a BMW, has this level of income, lives in this particular geography, like all of this was being gathered by the pixel from all the sites that you’re you’re being tracked on. And then there’s data that’s being pumped in and matched with your user ID from all these major data companies. Like the targeting.

00:33:21:23 – 00:33:34:11
Ralph
Was it? Now it’s the complete opposite. Yeah, we hardly use any targeting now because the creative creates the targeting. And I think maybe that’s another takeaway. Like we’ve said that plenty of times here that’s creative creates the targeting.

00:33:34:11 – 00:33:54:15
Lauren
In today’s day and era. Because before you would just say here’s my ideal customer. You’re an LDS mom with seven kids, and I’m trying to sell you a nine passenger vehicle. It’s easy to sell a mormon family, a nine passenger vehicle with seven kids, than it is to a 20 year old with three different girlfriends. Like they’re not thinking about family at all.

00:33:54:15 – 00:34:23:00
Lauren
That kid wants a car to attract his fourth girlfriend versus the Mormon family is like, I need to be able to take everyone to service or to school on time. So when you had that detail, I just had to say, hey, here’s that nine passenger vehicle you’ve been wanting, you know, like, thank God it’s relevant to me. But now, as you’re saying, it’s shifted because now you have to make an ad specifically for that person, and then you make a different ad specifically for that, like 20 year olds, that is in three different situation shifts like that.

00:34:23:03 – 00:34:38:22
Lauren
That’s where it totally came before you could have your audience. Here’s my ideal customer. I know ten, nine out of ten times this person is going to be like, yes, this is the model I like. Here you go. It’s like you just put it up into the universe. And as long as you knew who the audience was, they almost always bought.

00:34:38:23 – 00:34:41:23
Lauren
Or at least it felt like that, especially when I.

00:34:41:23 – 00:34:59:12
Ralph
Started. It felt like it. Yeah. It was it was so easy. In 2013 through 2018, I would say it was like you just you didn’t like your creative didn’t matter quite as much. Like today it is everything. So the big data companies I remember there was like epsilon data. Acxiom.

00:34:59:13 – 00:35:03:00
Lauren
Yes. Paid a lot.

00:35:03:02 – 00:35:16:22
Ralph
Yeah. Like all of this. Like you could get to these crazy levels of targeting. And that’s why I was it was such a cool platform is like, oh, like I signed up a real estate investing company. All right. Real estate investing as a target. And then, you know, what did it.

00:35:16:22 – 00:35:20:22
Lauren
Real estate seminar in the last six months was a target.

00:35:21:00 – 00:35:41:18
Ralph
That was crazy. Like, think about that. And like, if you’re still looking at meta in as a targeting based platform, you’ve got it all wrong. Like literally the targeting is like by region or by country and then by age, you know, cut down the age as much as possible. Meta will figure that out for you eventually anyway, you know.

00:35:41:18 – 00:35:53:09
Ralph
So if you’re not going to sell the 18 year olds, then, you know, make it 25 to 55 or whatever your ideal demographic is, or just have a wide open and figure it out. Yeah, sneaky. Really.

00:35:53:11 – 00:36:17:00
Lauren
Suggestions like none of that. That is chatter and it’s like you can upload your audience list which is good because then when you’re looking at your sales campaign, you can see your new customers engage audiences in existing. But like, even like we used to do a lot of like, lookalike audiences, like even to earlier this half of the year because we would say, hey, here, model the data off of already my existing customers, and then I would supply it.

00:36:17:00 – 00:36:22:22
Lauren
But you look in all of their documentation and we’ll say, you can give us recommendations. We’re going to view them as suggestions.

00:36:23:00 – 00:36:43:00
Ralph
And by the way, if you put them in as exclusions, we’re just going to use that as a seed audience to figure out who’s your best customer and completely ignore the exclusions, which is a totally different way of doing things. And by the way, in and around this time, I believe it was about 2012. That’s when you could start to upload custom audiences, which we take for granted now.

00:36:43:00 – 00:37:06:02
Ralph
Like that used to be a great platform. Let’s say you have a database of 100,000 email addresses in your CRM. You just simply upload it. And then there was like a 70 or 80% match rate in a lot of cases. Yeah. Like it was really, really got the matching engines really good early on. And you could just literally retarget those people for, you know, a site wide sale or, you know, to get on your continuity program like it was so easy.

00:37:06:07 – 00:37:28:01
Ralph
And all of that has now completely flip flopped. So, but yeah, 2012 was a big year, you know, but I think a lot of people say, oh, Zuckerberg is so brilliant by putting ads in the newsfeed, he had no choice. He literally had no choice to do it. And that’s Sheryl Sandberg is obviously is powering that behind the scenes.

00:37:28:01 – 00:38:01:04
Ralph
And that’s the reason why we have ads in the News Feed today, which is, you know, probably the best, greatest ad platform or, you know, ad serving network. There is, so 2013 to 2017, you know, those are good years. But a little thing happened in 2016. Remember this? There was a big election and Zuckerberg is and just you know, I think meta in general is great at overcoming really bad situations.

00:38:01:04 – 00:38:02:23
Ralph
That’s when the Cambridge Analytica.

00:38:03:05 – 00:38:32:19
Lauren
Scandal was like 2016. That was like, I, I remember the 2020. And then because there was like all those alleged Russian attacks where they were like hacking stuff in that election. Some people were like, oh my gosh, what’s going on? Are my dollars being spent? Like, I think for me at least, that was the like that was the very beginning of stuff for me, or early in the beginning where I remember we had surging CPMs and that was like the for me.

00:38:32:21 – 00:38:44:00
Lauren
So like the very beginning of it all for me. But as far as I know, that was when people were like, my accounts are getting attacked. Like this became a viable business for people to sabotage.

00:38:44:00 – 00:39:09:23
Ralph
There is a narrative that Cambridge Analytica won the election for Trump in 2016, which is absolutely untrue. I don’t know if you’d realize this, but we actually talked to Cambridge Analytica about their targeting, which basically they use like a hyper focused targeting, which we we assessed it and realized it’s kind of a waste money. It was hundreds of thousands of dollars.

00:39:09:23 – 00:39:28:17
Ralph
And like the targeting inside meta is so good. Our Facebook at that point in time was so good. It’s like we don’t need this. And how much is it, by the way? Oh, it’s like 50, $60,000. Like that’s total crap. So what Trump did in 2016 is he split tested millions and millions. There’s a great article from wired.

00:39:28:17 – 00:39:39:10
Ralph
I’ll leave it in the show notes. His media manager like basically won the election for him on on meta. And we’re not going to get into all of that here. And we don’t really get.

00:39:39:10 – 00:40:03:05
Lauren
A marketing team. Whatever you think, political wise. His marketing team was solid. I remember in 2016, Jeb Bush, who was the governor of Florida, had a website, Jeb bush.com, and his domain expired. And someone on Trump’s marketing team bought the domain the second it expired. And if you went to Jeb bush.com for several days, it went straight to Donald trump.com or Donald J.

00:40:03:05 – 00:40:14:11
Lauren
Trump or whatever it was, whoever it like that I believe whatever this article is, I’m going to keen to look at it because, yeah, he brought on elite marketers that were like, I’m gonna try everything.

00:40:14:13 – 00:40:34:00
Ralph
So that the lead on his team is this guy named Brad Parscale. And, he’s it was I think it was interviewed on 60 minutes. We’ll leave links in the show notes for all this. It’s fascinating. But basically he did like all this, all the stuff that he did, we were doing he was just doing it at like a massive scale, like he had hundreds of millions of dollars to play with.

00:40:34:02 – 00:40:41:21
Ralph
And he basically ingratiated himself to the Trump family by building their websites for like a couple thousand dollars. And then he all of a sudden became like their.

00:40:41:23 – 00:40:44:02
Lauren
Their marketing expert.

00:40:44:04 – 00:41:01:06
Ralph
Yeah, it’s fascinating. Leave a link in the article. It’s actually it’s on wired magazine. It’s still up. I just found it here. So we will leave a link on that if you want to get deeper into that. But anyway, the Cambridge Analytica thing was totally overblown. Now, the point is this is that it did raise a lot of visibility.

00:41:01:06 – 00:41:31:23
Ralph
Unfortunate negative visibility for Facebook at the time about privacy. Yeah, which the election happened in 2016. The Cambridge Analytica thing comes out of 2017, 2018. I remember we actually had, you know, numerous shows on this on perpetual traffic. We were, you know, still within our first couple of years of running the show, it was a big deal. And as a result of that privacy and a lot of the security side of the equation really became like we started to see a ton of banned ad accounts.

00:41:32:00 – 00:41:48:07
Ralph
Facebook’s sort of overstepping on compliance. And this was the age of banned ad accounts. And thankfully, thank God we had a partner manager at that point in time where we could navigate through it. But I was getting calls left and right for people’s like, yeah, I just got my ad account banned. I don’t know what I’m doing.

00:41:48:07 – 00:42:18:21
Ralph
I’m selling, you know, you know, health and beauty products, you know what I mean? Like, and now it’s against their terms of service. So after Cambridge Analytica, the fallout for advertisers was like this hyper focus on not really privacy yet is that comes a little bit later, but really on compliance. And a lot of these fake pages that were being put up like by, you know, Russian infiltration, like a lot of that sort of thing, which didn’t swing the election.

00:42:18:21 – 00:42:35:14
Ralph
Sorry. Everybody. Like read this article and wired Brad Parscale won that election for Trump. Like he was super, super smart. And you know, whether you like Trump or don’t like Trump, like he leveraged the platform that had nothing to do with Cambridge Analytica, had nothing to do with all this other sort of stuff. It was a different day and age there.

00:42:35:14 – 00:42:38:16
Ralph
So very important thoughts. Comments.

00:42:38:18 – 00:43:05:02
Lauren
I’m not seeing anyone who’s listening and has any any connection to Brad Parscale whatsoever. Like can you please introduce us? I want him on this show like Ralph, I want to so go here about like, well, what? I mean, if he was went from like a website builder to then managing, a political account, there’s a lot of small businesses that are listening to this and a lot of small agency or like single service providers that are listening.

00:43:05:02 – 00:43:27:18
Lauren
And it’s like, hey, that’s a really cool story of a lot of us start selling one service, and then we expand and expand our business to where we go from freelancer to agency. It sounds like he did that trajectory as well, but then still, I like the the startup mindset and the enterprise budget he had was something that I think would be valuable to bring on it.

00:43:27:19 – 00:43:43:01
Lauren
So hey, any listeners, if that’s something you want to listen to or you have some sort of connection, like that’s my ask. That’s my comment. Like this would be I’ve always wanted to meet the people behind some of these very successful campaigns.

00:43:43:03 – 00:43:56:13
Ralph
Yeah, yeah. No, I think, yeah. If anybody knows him, certainly. I mean, he’s I think he’s from Kansas originally. One of the things that when I read about it, I don’t think it’s in this article. It’s like he used to do the same thing that I would do when I was first starting my digital marketing agency.

00:43:56:13 – 00:44:00:09
Ralph
He went to Barnes and Noble and hung around the website book section.

00:44:00:09 – 00:44:04:13
Lauren
Okay, you did that in the business section. You’re in the business book section.

00:44:04:15 – 00:44:20:06
Ralph
I you know, the business book section. But then I also did it in like the website section, like coding and that kind of thing. And then I would hand out my card. He did the same thing, which I thought was always kind of cool. So he’s he’s like a totally scrappy dude that’s not, you know, latched on to the Trump Organization, ran the whole thing.

00:44:20:06 – 00:44:42:16
Ralph
And I think Trump let him go at some point in time. Like it was a very bad ending. Anyway, the point is this is that that’s what won the election. What really won the election is ads in the news feed. An insane levels of targeting. It was not Cambridge Analytica. Sorry, everyone. Now, Cambridge Analytica did take data out of Facebook because of this app.

00:44:42:16 – 00:44:54:18
Ralph
Well, I’m not going to get into all that, but we’ll leave links in the show notes. We dissect the whole thing. Point of this is that became privacy started to become more of an issue. And that’s something that we are still dealing with.

00:44:54:20 – 00:44:55:13
Lauren
Absolutely.

00:44:55:13 – 00:45:04:20
Ralph
Really to this day. Yeah. Which is GDPR, like costly advertising for elections, you know.

00:45:04:20 – 00:45:26:01
Lauren
Sensitive allegories, what’s included for minors names or, you know, like we’re 100% now messenger, like Facebook Messenger, that data within your messenger, as I understand, is now fair game to be used for. Was it contextual targeting for pieces that you can upload into the ecosystem. And so then again there’s like meta I love that I it’s a great tool.

00:45:26:01 – 00:45:50:14
Lauren
But again it’s like all the stuff with the intention of where does the line draw between relevancy and privacy? And like I was just at the Capitol a week ago where I was talking to, a subcommittee about, business and professional use of AI. And there is one representative that was very specific about excluding minors access to AI because of the fear of their information becoming available.

00:45:50:14 – 00:46:07:02
Lauren
I mean, yes, there’s a component where it’s like, do I think minors to be left out of the AI conversation? Absolutely not. But should their content be leveraged for ads? No, I don’t agree with that. But all that to say, like that was a conversation I had last week, was elected officials like this conversation is not going anywhere.

00:46:07:04 – 00:46:32:06
Lauren
It’s not just a target shifting, I think, from Mark Zuckerberg clearly on the attack to what I know is in our next piece, the next phase of other social media giants that then become the enemy. And now with this world of AI and the fear of how AI is replacing jobs, I feel like the AI, they’re just moving their target of who politicians and legislators in the public is going after.

00:46:32:08 – 00:46:53:07
Lauren
But again, it’s like we’re seeing history repeat itself too. So like, again, I know it seems like why are we not talking about the ads and like, tactics and stuff? Because so much of this defines what’s working today. And when you understand where it came from and then you see other things coming on the news, you can anticipate what’s going to happen when it just becomes a repeatable conversation.

00:46:53:07 – 00:47:11:07
Lauren
And so this is the advent of privacy. Banned accounts are that the haven’t. This is the era of privacy restrictions, ad account hacks. Marketing legislation slowing things. Like you said with GDPR, oh my gosh. And the California Act now there’s many tactics.

00:47:11:07 – 00:47:39:23
Ralph
CcpA yeah, there’s this was the genesis of all of it, all the stuff that we’re still dealing with today. Yeah. So which is the reason why we’re talking about this. It’s like you gotta understand this to sort of realize like what we have today and all the stuff that’s happened along the way. And I would say probably, like I always say about Andromeda, the Andromeda update right now in creative diversification, it’s the biggest thing to happen to Meta or Facebook, since ads in the news Feed.

00:47:39:23 – 00:48:00:20
Ralph
And that insane level of targeting which did win the 2016 election, 100%, this now is even bigger than that, in my opinion. So putting things into context here, if you try to go through the chronology of of meta and or Facebook, they haven’t changed their name yet and sort of our story or in our narrative here still Facebook.

00:48:00:20 – 00:48:03:23
Lauren
Well, no, they want not Facebook to Facebook.

00:48:04:01 – 00:48:08:21
Ralph
Right. That happened very early on I believe in 2004 and I have.

00:48:08:23 – 00:48:10:03
Lauren
Nothing in the movie.

00:48:10:05 – 00:48:33:12
Ralph
So it was actually it was Sean Parker, the founder of Napster, who told Zuckerberg he’s like, that is true. That has been confirmed even though it was in the Social Network as well. He’s like, you know, the Facebook isn’t as cool as Facebook. So anyway, so credit him. And he was actually an early investor, you know, moved out to, Silicon Valley with Zuckerberg when you took like his gap year at Harvard.

00:48:33:13 – 00:48:39:19
Ralph
Never went back, like he was, he was a big force there. That that’s way, way in the beginning side quest.

00:48:39:20 – 00:48:59:15
Lauren
Like it would be really interesting to know if, Sean Parker, the founder of Napster, currently has a Spotify or Apple Music subscription is very funny. Like so Spotify has a social media network it, and you can connect to your Facebook account. I’d be curious. There’s Todd Parker, pay for a music subscription now?

00:48:59:17 – 00:49:05:07
Ralph
I have no idea Napster is still alive. I don’t even know what they do. Like, we’ll we’ll leave a link in.

00:49:05:07 – 00:49:06:07
Lauren
The look at the limelight.

00:49:06:08 – 00:49:31:19
Ralph
Napster moment is almost here. Yeah, LimeWire was the one that I really loved. Obviously all of that was illegal at that point in time. ITunes changed all that, which is a good segue into the next phase here, which really changed a lot of things. So we’ve come up until about 2017, 2018, 2019. We’ve got 2020, which is obviously the biggest thing that happened that year was this pandemic thing.

00:49:31:21 – 00:49:32:21
Ralph
Everything went crazy.

00:49:32:21 – 00:49:37:05
Lauren
All depends on where your business is. I live in Florida, so we pretended that it.

00:49:37:06 – 00:49:57:15
Ralph
Happened, which was it didn’t exist. Yeah, I’m in the Boston area. Everyone was wearing masks outside, so. And they still do. By the way, when I walk around my neighborhood, sometimes I’m like, why are you wearing a mask? It’s like outside and whatever. So in 2021, this was the big deal. This is when everything I felt was starting to kind of fall apart.

00:49:57:20 – 00:50:01:14
Lauren
Oh my gosh, I know exactly what you’re getting to. Oh my.

00:50:01:14 – 00:50:26:00
Ralph
Gosh. You dealt. Yeah we dealt with GDPR. We dealt with Cambridge Analytica. We dealt with like a lot of account bans, but nothing compared to the at prompt attack. The prompt was then 2021 and it came on and I don’t know what your reaction to it was. Originally. I was kind of freaked out by it. And then I remember I, I was messaging with Molly, she’s like, yeah, it’s not really that big of a deal.

00:50:26:03 – 00:50:45:00
Ralph
Nobody really cares. Like everyone will opt in. I’m like, no, but so what do you will opt in? And so let’s remember what this thing is. You still get it when you download a new app. Yeah, I don’t I forgot what app I downloaded last week and it actually gave me that and said either would you like name of app to track you?

00:50:45:02 – 00:51:01:06
Ralph
You know, in essence and either yes, I want it to track or no, I don’t want to be tracked. So it’s very binary and I believe no is at the top, if I’m not mistaken. So 8,090% of Apple users opted out. Yeah.

00:51:01:06 – 00:51:08:03
Lauren
And the only ones that didn’t were marketers that were just like, please, dear God, please. They also did.

00:51:08:05 – 00:51:36:01
Ralph
Yeah. And so overnight, Facebook lost its visibility on its largest mobile platform and most lucrative. And by the way, if you really if you could break out users of Apple iPhones versus any other Android device, the Apple iPhone users, we did this many, many times. We’re always like our highest average order value, have highest lifetime value. Like it was crazy, like a very, very lucrative market.

00:51:36:01 – 00:51:53:14
Ralph
All of a sudden it was just pulled completely out from under. And I remember when it happened in 2021, it was like spring. And then everyone was trying to scramble and figure it out. And then I didn’t have or at Facebook at that point, time didn’t have an answer. And you just all of a sudden lost tracking literally overnight.

00:51:53:16 – 00:52:13:18
Ralph
And if you had a lot of Apple users and most of them were at that point in time, it was a really, really hard time for any advertiser, agencies included, and we didn’t have an answer for it. We were struggling with we were in the throes of making our first investment and wicked reports at that point in time, and ended up doing so.

00:52:13:22 – 00:52:19:22
Ralph
The point was, it’s like nobody had an answer to it. And I don’t know if you recall those days, but oh yeah, it’s scary.

00:52:20:00 – 00:52:50:09
Lauren
Oh, I, I hired a program. I joined a mastermind specifically with the intention of getting prepared for the iOS updates like that. Was this paid traffic program was, hey, we’re going to go through these changes together. And then I was alongside like 20 or 40 other media buyers, marketers, because I was like, this is the first time I ever personally invested into, that type of education.

00:52:50:11 – 00:53:09:21
Lauren
And it just scared me so much. I thought, I don’t know how to navigate this. I’m going to disappear from having a client roster. And I had like the pandemic was really hard for me. I don’t know how it was for you, but we had nonprofit and hospitality clients, so no one traveled. All of our hospitality clients disappeared.

00:53:10:03 – 00:53:36:11
Lauren
Nonprofits, their donors held back because they were too afraid. So in 2020 was the hardest year I’ve ever worked. And then we grew into the e-commerce space and, a lot of success. Some clients have come back and like, it was just like I just went through the gantlet. And then as soon as I was finally able to take a breath, we built an entire new client book because we had like, lost the clients that we had, like the like the biggest hospitality brand in the world.

00:53:36:12 – 00:54:01:11
Lauren
Right? We were overseeing a $200,000 a day budget like that just disappeared overnight. And so that was super traumatic for me. And then all of a sudden this these iOS changes, I thought, oh my gosh, I just finished a marathon. And now you’re asking me to run an Ultra Ultraman? I wasn’t ready so that, you know, I was I was terrified, I was uncomfortable, I hired my first ever mastermind type of help.

00:54:01:13 – 00:54:10:08
Lauren
So while no one really knew what to do, I was in the camp of, oh my gosh, Lord help me.

00:54:10:10 – 00:54:32:07
Ralph
Yeah, I think we are all we are all freaked out about it. And, I think it caught Facebook completely off guard because that’s when they realized. And you, you listen to Zuckerberg right now and he’s like why are they coming out with these. You know the new Ray-Ban glasses there. They want they don’t want to be sharecropping on other people’s land.

00:54:32:09 – 00:54:35:06
Lauren
I was like that’s three van glasses I know.

00:54:35:06 – 00:54:59:04
Ralph
Which is very cool. But they don’t want they want, you know, platform agnostic security. And they realized at that point in time they were tied in with 80. And because Tim Cook couldn’t think of any new thing to come out was because he’s totally a crap CEO, in my opinion, is not sort of anything original since he’s been the CEO of Apple.

00:54:59:04 – 00:55:08:03
Ralph
And you can tell him I said that point is, this is now he latched onto this whole privacy thing is like, oh, we’re so private. When in fact Apple is using your data every single day.

00:55:08:05 – 00:55:28:14
Lauren
Let’s not. They’re doing this because they’re launching their own ad network. So like which is it? Yeah. Like we’re talking about something that’s happened in 2012 at the beginning of this episode. And then I think, like that is going to be the 2030. Oh, how Apple’s ads network, because Apple has an Ads network. I don’t know if a lot of people know this, but Apple does have an Ads network.

00:55:28:14 – 00:55:51:11
Lauren
It’s just like two 2007 Facebook or whatever they initially came out with, like those right desktops. Yeah, it’s nowhere near where it can be. But I assume that that was essentially doing a like complete annihilation of who their biggest competitor will be when they launch Apple Ads Network.

00:55:51:12 – 00:56:09:17
Ralph
That’s what we all thought. And I think we actually did plenty of episodes on that here. Like if they’re definitely launching their own network and they haven’t and I mean, they’re using your data for sure. Is it is it within the walled garden of Apple? Are they selling your data? No, Facebook doesn’t sell your data.

00:56:09:20 – 00:56:26:11
Lauren
So I’m just going to pause. Ralph Apple does have an answer network. They for sure. Absolutely. Yeah okay okay. It does. You said they we don’t have it to the degree of what the other ad network and ad platforms like ad or Taboola or Google or Snap all out.

00:56:26:13 – 00:56:31:22
Ralph
We thought because they had so much data, they would launch a Facebook level kind of.

00:56:31:22 – 00:56:32:12
Lauren
Yeah, okay.

00:56:32:13 – 00:56:52:19
Ralph
Perfect predator. Yeah. And that that did not happen. Do they have an admin at work? Yes they do. And you know, the most of the ads that I see are like app download ads. But yes, they do absolutely have a network, but they have not leveraged as much as they possibly could have or should have, or I don’t really know what they did with that, but it was just a way to like really stick the knife inside.

00:56:52:19 – 00:57:26:10
Ralph
Facebook and Facebook had no response for it until they started to figure out in early 2022 ish. About conversions API, which is the way to get server side data sharing to restore that data pipeline and protect attribution to a certain degree. Yeah, but also use the data that we’re still we’re still in this day and age right now where meta is not as the data that you see inside your meta ad platform is typically is modeled data.

00:57:26:12 – 00:57:27:05
Ralph
Yes.

00:57:27:10 – 00:57:28:11
Lauren
I don’t think.

00:57:28:13 – 00:57:54:04
Ralph
That t prompt. Yes, the ad prompt, which, you know, it’s the thing that that comes up that says name of the app would like Joe, permission to track you and you will say allow tracking or ask app not to track. If you say ask app not to track, you are blind for that particular app and for anyone on the Facebook app, they had to reinstall the Facebook app if you remember the iOS 14 update.

00:57:54:07 – 00:58:02:00
Ralph
So everybody like the vast majority, I think it was 8,090%. It was like a site that would actually track like I how many?

00:58:02:00 – 00:58:07:00
Lauren
I think that’s very conservative. I feel like it was 94 to 97%.

00:58:07:01 – 00:58:33:07
Ralph
Yeah. It was a lot. Yeah. The point was, is you lost visibility there, but then through copy integration, which was sort of their defense into 2022 and beyond, and then model data, which you still see now. So if you see ten conversions inside meta right now people don’t really know this. 4 to 6 of those are probably modeled conversions because Apple has to I mean, meta has still lost data and lost visibility because of that 85.

00:58:33:07 – 00:58:48:19
Ralph
So they never fully recovered. Does Capi or conversions API make up for it to a certain degree? Yes, it does restore some visibility, but still there is model data that’s in there. That’s why. Yeah, third party attribution software’s and edge tagging and all the other things that we talk about here on the show are so vital right now.

00:58:48:23 – 00:59:15:00
Lauren
I would say the only caveat would be that the conversions API and all that model data stuff is for things that are outside of the control of Metis network. So if you’re doing in-app lead forms or if you’re doing, meta shops, things that are like still with containing within their ecosystem, they’re providing extensive visibility on that end because they have lots of there’s still model data that’s happening, for sure.

00:59:15:00 – 00:59:23:03
Lauren
But on the conversion side, where it’s model data off of other behaviors, especially when it’s like web conversions that happen.

00:59:23:03 – 00:59:24:07
Ralph
Off.

00:59:24:09 – 00:59:26:06
Lauren
A meta owned platform.

00:59:26:08 – 00:59:45:10
Ralph
Good point. Good point. Absolutely. And if you keep everything in app, it’s all within. You’re not actually leaving. And so that data is accurate. So there is a way around it. And I think there was a big push. I remember our partner manager was pushing for, you know, keeping everything in inside meta to his or Facebook at that point in time.

00:59:45:10 – 01:00:02:13
Ralph
I forget when they actually changed over in 2021. I just call it Facebook and or meta 2021. So yeah. So keeping in a in in-app in the blue app itself and never leaving the app and actually making the purchase lead forms, like everything that you’re talking about here was not affected by that. So that was a partial strategy.

01:00:02:13 – 01:00:20:08
Ralph
But Facebook really didn’t know what to do. And it was an interesting time. On top of that, there’s this other app that came out called TikTok, that started to get away a lot on on talk people.

01:00:20:08 – 01:00:45:07
Lauren
Yeah. Meta. They were unprepared for. But it was like after Bob Baidu or Doyen. And so they just brought it to the Western market. And I think what it was is like this eastern, massively successful app where we talked in the last episode how, meta, absent some other Western social media, are not available in China. So in China was like, well, let’s launch this very successful app in the east, out to the west.

01:00:45:09 – 01:00:50:05
Lauren
And I was like, oh, what do you mean? There’s a world outside of us?

01:00:50:07 – 01:01:18:02
Ralph
Yeah, it’s true, it’s absolutely true. I mean, I would submit that, TikTok is TikTok is categorized as a social media app, but I, I actually look at it as more of a media app because you can see everybody in everyone, you really not communicating with your friends per se on it, but you’re just seeing media from anyone that’s, you know, any of your interests or anything that you’ve liked or watched in the past.

01:01:18:02 – 01:01:29:07
Ralph
They show more and more of it. The algorithm, I think, is super smart, but not a whole lot of interactivity like there is where’s the blue app? And even with Instagram for that matter. So I mean, there is some social. So I.

01:01:29:08 – 01:01:30:10
Lauren
Agree with that.

01:01:30:10 – 01:01:31:09
Ralph
For media.

01:01:31:11 – 01:01:50:00
Lauren
But I hear you on the media like like I just told you like yesterday. So where we’re recording this is like summer 17, Tuesday, December 16th. Meta. Announcer Instagram TV is going on Amazon Fire enabled devices. And so if we’re saying it to that degree, it’s like, is so is YouTube a social media app or is that more of a media company?

01:01:50:05 – 01:02:21:04
Lauren
I think the reason why I mentioned challenges is the way we socialize has just evolved. I think especially past a pandemic social isolated era, and especially for those gen alpha like we had the recession in 2008. So a lot of people like we had like 20% reduction in firstborn. So now people that are graduating high school now, that came during the like financial crisis, recession era, we have fewer high school graduates than past years.

01:02:21:06 – 01:02:45:20
Lauren
And so I think like in that taking in all these other pieces a group of like Gen alphas went to school online. We had social isolation, social isolation. With the pandemic, we had this advent of more ready made available media and like YouTube, became its own publisher. Like people are watching YouTube instead of Netflix or Prime for quality content shows.

01:02:46:00 – 01:02:56:05
Lauren
It’s a button on a remote. So if if TikTok is more of a media company than social, so it’s like a media social company and just like reversing the yeah order.

01:02:56:07 – 01:02:57:10
Ralph
I think it’s media first.

01:02:57:10 – 01:03:23:06
Lauren
For sure, because media first, I still yeah, I don’t know if I’m there with you yet. I just would say that people socialize differently because, I at least from my friends and what people I know like the way they connect on TikTok is with with strangers. I don’t think you like you still have messenger and you still connect socially to an extent, but I think TikTok is a place where you connect more with strangers the way like online gaming is like.

01:03:23:06 – 01:03:46:03
Lauren
Twitch, I think is a huge social platform that we never talk about or that like just gaming in general, like Minecraft, like you build friends online that you haven’t met in person. And so I think TikTok is one of the social devices that facilitates stranger interactions. Whereas Facebook, Instagram, messenger, WhatsApp, other solutions. Venmo is you’re interacting with your existing community.

01:03:46:03 – 01:04:05:04
Lauren
And Marx talked about how like Facebook is like your living room or your community town square, or as I think TikTok introduced, I’m going to connect with other people that like like I just learned that there’s dungeons and drag queens is like a community of of drag queens that learn how to play Dungeons and Dragons. It’s such a niche community that they’re finding more success.

01:04:05:04 – 01:04:21:09
Lauren
And so I just I’m just challenging. I don’t I don’t know if you’re right that there’s a lot more media forward, but I would caution on the side of eliminating the social aspect of it. I would just say that the way we socialize on that app is different than historically socializing and other apps.

01:04:21:11 – 01:04:49:06
Ralph
I think Zuckerberg and Facebook viewed it as a direct competitor, and that all comes in, in and around this. Like right after the prompt stuff. And now people like both apps coexist. I mean, Meta’s growth has not stopped. Like they’re still growing their user base over time. And I think this was an existential threat for TikTok, meaning that it was going to be a network that was going to pull away users from Facebook, which the younger demographic.

01:04:49:06 – 01:05:10:03
Ralph
Absolutely. Yeah. And I think it was sort of going that way anyway. But one of the interesting parts to this is something that we use every single day now, and we advertise on it every single day, is they stole yet another feature, which is fine. Yeah. Which is reels. You know, I came in. Yeah. And I think TikTok had a huge impact on meta overall.

01:05:10:05 – 01:05:26:19
Ralph
You know, we can debate whether it’s, you know, social or whether it’s media or whether it’s both. The point is this is that had a big impact on on their competitive nature and also integrating in new functionality into the platform, which came as reels and then YouTube. I saw a great yeah, it.

01:05:26:19 – 01:05:27:10
Lauren
Was this.

01:05:27:12 – 01:05:28:04
Ralph
YouTube shorts.

01:05:28:06 – 01:05:55:12
Lauren
For psychological and like caused a cultural change of short form content. I mean, Meg Klassen, who was, CEO, CMO at Disney, you know, she wasn’t Kim of Disney. She is a big executive at Disney, launched a short form content subscription service where you’re watching shows under $10. It fails in the western market, but now we see in this year short form content like Drama Box and other.

01:05:55:12 – 01:06:19:07
Lauren
These short form media platforms in China have now made their way to the West. And it’s a growing market of media like Crunchyroll, massive market of media, where it’s like specifically anime. I think they like grew like 40 acts in two years and then Drama Box and all these short form content like borrowing TikTok style reels, shorts and TikToks.

01:06:19:09 – 01:06:47:03
Lauren
They now have media made in that same short form content. So I think what TikTok did culturally, socially is dramatically shifted or leaned into that, like not, limited amount of attention while also leveraging binge consumption because we would have younger audiences that are like, I have such limited attention span, but when you got my attention span, I binge like a mother, right?

01:06:47:03 – 01:06:52:07
Lauren
They’d be watching hours of content, but just short micro pieces.

01:06:52:09 – 01:07:09:13
Ralph
Yeah. It’s crazy. Yeah. I mean, have you ever been like, obviously listeners of this show have been on TikTok? It is absolutely addictive and I can see why. And I was like, I almost I never open it up just because I know I’ll just waste a whole lot of time on it. It’s like there’s absolutely no use for it because it is so entertaining.

01:07:09:13 – 01:07:38:15
Ralph
And the algorithm and the suggestion engine, maybe it’s a little bit of Alex net in there is so damn good. All right. So TikTok obviously had a huge impact on meta which in and around that time Advantage plus came out not too far after that, which was, I think somewhat in response to TikTok’s incredible algorithm. And that’s when meta really started to pour money into this suggestion model, into the algorithm, into machine learning.

01:07:38:17 – 01:08:05:21
Ralph
And up to today, which is where we’re really at today, which is Andromeda. Creative diversification, all the billions, 72 billion that meta put into AI this year, the 115 billion projected that they’re going to invest in 2027. It’s obviously it’s through their own AI model, which is powered by llama, which you use meta AI a lot. There’s also the powering the algorithm for the advertising platform.

01:08:05:23 – 01:08:31:16
Ralph
The point is like that’s all. Everything that we’ve discussed in these shows here is sort of, a Prolog to where we’re at today, which leaves us with like, what do you do as an advertiser? What do you do as a business? And Andromeda, right now, and the creative diversification, the ability to be able to target people exactly at the right moment with the right type of ad that resonates most with them.

01:08:31:21 – 01:09:00:05
Ralph
Contribution of all the individual ads, maybe up to 30 or 50 at a time, that then ultimately attribute maybe one that gets the last click that, or maybe Google gets the last click after they’ve become aware of your product over on meta or any one of the meta platforms. All of this sort of leads up to where we’re at right now, which is an incredible time to be an advertiser with this meta Andromeda update, which I think is just going to get better and better as they continue to invest even further.

01:09:00:05 – 01:09:22:15
Ralph
And creative is the thing right now. Yeah, creative creates the targeting and creative diversification, which obviously you and I are big proponents of. If you want more information on it, head on over to tier 11.com/cd. We have a whole page on it there. We’ve got videos on it. But like, yeah, now is the best time to be advertising on meta.

01:09:22:17 – 01:09:23:18
Ralph
Closing thoughts?

01:09:23:18 – 01:09:41:13
Lauren
Comments I’m just like, I’m excited because like all this stuff, if you think there’s been a lot of changes in the last three episodes that we’ve talked about with the evolution of where we are today, just know that it’s like where the conversation started and where we are today. That big of a jump is still half as impactful as the jump that’s happened this year.

01:09:41:15 – 01:09:58:23
Ralph
Yeah, it’s it’s insane. And I think it’s there’s going to be even bigger jumps in the future or there’s just more iterations of what we already have. Yeah. Because this isn’t that this platform isn’t going anywhere. No really is. Unless there’s some exit essentials threat that’s out there that I’m not aware of like that can possibly happen.

01:09:59:01 – 01:10:02:11
Lauren
Okay. Put on John Moran’s tinfoil hat to put on.

01:10:02:11 – 01:10:09:15
Ralph
Yeah. Who the hell knows? I mean, nobody really thought that that was going to happen or that Cambridge Analytica and all of that was going to happen.

01:10:09:15 – 01:10:28:12
Lauren
For sure. Something will change. There’s going to be some an outside force. But yeah, this is fine. I’m I’m hoping people are understanding how if you’re new to advertising, this is a great time to jump in. If you’re not new to advertising, this is in the missing critical time to understand and catch up. And we’re figuring it out together.

01:10:28:12 – 01:10:29:06
Lauren
Same time.

01:10:29:08 – 01:10:44:07
Ralph
Well said. All right. Well, we’re going to leave links in the show notes obviously to everything. We mentioned a lot of different things here on today’s show. We’ll, get that all of our ad professional traffic.com, of course, wherever you listen to podcasts, please make sure that you do leave us a rating and review helps us get out to a wider audience.

01:10:44:07 – 01:11:02:00
Ralph
Teach people how to do the right way. This marketing stuff. So maybe teach them a little bit about the meta platform itself. Really appreciate everyone who leaves late ratings and reviews over there, so we can teach you how to do this through metrics that matter, and graph the scales and leverage the meta Andromeda platform at the same time.

01:11:02:02 – 01:11:20:07
Ralph
So on behalf of my amazing pink microphone, co-host Lauren Petrillo. So till next show, see you.

Episode 761: Why Meta is The Best Ad Platform on The Planet in 2026 Part 3

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Why Meta is The Best Ad Platform on The Planet in 2026 Part 3

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