Episode 762: Why Meta is The Best Ad Platform on The Planet in 2026 Part 4

December 30, 2025

In this final part of our four-part series on why Meta remains the top platform for scaling in 2026, we continue analysing the evolution of Meta’s advertising engine. From the days of custom audience uploads in 2012 to the impact of the 2016 election and the fallout from the Cambridge Analytica scandal, these milestones have shaped the platform’s current landscape.

We also explore how the iOS 14 update and the rise of TikTok have pushed Meta to adapt and innovate in ways that make 2026 the best time to advertise on the platform. Central to these innovations is the Andromeda algorithm and creative diversification, which are set to revolutionize your advertising strategy.

You’ll discover how you can leverage these advancements to refine your marketing strategy, understand what the Andromeda update means for your campaigns, and why the future of advertising on Meta has never been more promising.

In this episode:

02:14 Why creative is now at the core of Meta ads

06:22 Cambridge Analytica scandal and the 2016 elections

09:39 Privacy issues and ad bans after Cambridge Analytica

18:33 Navigating iOS 14’s App Tracking Transparency (ATT) prompt

28:51 The rise of TikTok and short-form content

35:58 Andromeda update and its impact on marketing

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 4

00:00:00:00 – 00:00:11:13
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.

00:00:11:15 – 00:00:19:14
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.

00:00:21:13 – 00:00:59:19
Speaker 1
Hello and welcome to the Perpetual Traffic podcast. This is your host, Ralph Burns, founder and CEO of Turo Levin. And today is part four, the final episode of why meta is the absolute best advertising platform on the planet in 2026. Meta is not paying us to say this. We are paying meta quite a bit in order to prove this and to show it to you, and I think the history of meta, the history of Facebook is really important for you all to understand exactly how much of a monumental shift is going on right now with the advent of AI, of course, with the Andromeda Update and how that affects everything, we’re going to be talking

00:00:59:19 – 00:01:00:20
Speaker 1
to show them.

00:01:00:20 – 00:01:26:13
Speaker 1
And we’re going to be talking on a subsequent show about how it affects your Google organic search, which is a really interesting episode, how all of this stuff affects everything. Looking at individual platforms, looking at your meta, trying to measure your Roas on meta, trying to measure Roas on email, trying to measure your Roas on Google Ads, your Google Organic, your Tik-Tok, your Amazon.

00:01:26:15 – 00:01:52:12
Speaker 1
That is so 2016. So 2017. The reason why we’re talking about this stuff right now is because multi-platform, not even multimedia, mixed modeling or however you want to say it, it’s not even modeling. There’s a way in which to show this through. Last click, first click contribution versus attribution, which we talk about here on the last episode, as well as on this episode and how it all impacts your business.

00:01:52:14 – 00:02:14:13
Speaker 1
And these are really important episodes. I think you understand exactly how we’ve sort of gotten to where we’re at right now and how you can leverage this new Andromeda algorithm. And of course, if you need our help, you can head on over to career 11.com/apply. So without further ado, here is the final part four of why meta. It’s the best advertising platform to scaling grow your business in 2026.

00:02:14:20 – 00:02:17:16
Ralph
Like we’ve said that plenty of times here that’s creative creates the targeting.

00:02:17:16 – 00:02:37:20
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.

00:02:37:20 – 00:03:06:05
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.

00:03:06:08 – 00:03:22:03
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.

00:03:22:04 – 00:03:25:04
Lauren
Or at least it felt like that, especially when I.

00:03:25:04 – 00:03:26:09
Ralph
Started. It felt like it.

00:03:26:09 – 00:03:42:17
Ralph
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.

00:03:42:18 – 00:03:46:05
Lauren
Yes. Paid a lot.

00:03:46:07 – 00:04:00:03
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.

00:04:00:03 – 00:04:04:03
Lauren
Real estate seminar in the last six months was a target.

00:04:04:05 – 00:04:24:23
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.

00:04:24:23 – 00:04:36:14
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.

00:04:36:16 – 00:05:00:05
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.

00:05:00:05 – 00:05:06:03
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.

00:05:06:05 – 00:05:26:05
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.

00:05:26:05 – 00:05:49:07
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.

00:05:49:12 – 00:06:11:06
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.

00:06:11:06 – 00:06:44:09
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.

00:06:44:09 – 00:06:46:04
Ralph
That’s when the Cambridge Analytica.

00:06:46:10 – 00:07:16:00
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.

00:07:16:02 – 00:07:27:05
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.

00:07:27:05 – 00:07:53:04
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.

00:07:53:04 – 00:08:11:22
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.

00:08:11:22 – 00:08:22:15
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.

00:08:22:15 – 00:08:46:10
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.

00:08:46:10 – 00:08:57:16
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.

00:08:57:18 – 00:09:17:05
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.

00:09:17:07 – 00:09:25:02
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.

00:09:25:04 – 00:09:27:07
Lauren
Their marketing expert.

00:09:27:09 – 00:09:44:11
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.

00:09:44:11 – 00:10:15:04
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.

00:10:15:05 – 00:10:31:12
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.

00:10:31:12 – 00:11:02:02
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.

00:11:02:02 – 00:11:18:19
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.

00:11:18:19 – 00:11:21:21
Ralph
So very important thoughts. Comments.

00:11:21:23 – 00:11:48:07
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.

00:11:48:07 – 00:12:10:23
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.

00:12:11:00 – 00:12:26:06
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.

00:12:26:08 – 00:12:39:18
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.

00:12:39:18 – 00:12:43:14
Ralph
He went to Barnes and Noble and hung around the website book section.

00:12:43:14 – 00:12:47:18
Lauren
Okay, you did that in the business section. You’re in the business book section.

00:12:47:20 – 00:13:03:11
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.

00:13:03:11 – 00:13:25:21
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.

00:13:25:21 – 00:13:37:23
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.

00:13:38:01 – 00:13:38:18
Lauren
Absolutely.

00:13:38:18 – 00:13:48:01
Ralph
Really to this day. Yeah. Which is GDPR, like costly advertising for elections, you know.

00:13:48:01 – 00:14:09:06
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.

00:14:09:06 – 00:14:33:19
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.

00:14:33:19 – 00:14:50:07
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.

00:14:50:09 – 00:15:15:11
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.

00:15:15:13 – 00:15:36:12
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.

00:15:36:12 – 00:15:54:12
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.

00:15:54:12 – 00:16:23:04
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.

00:16:23:04 – 00:16:44:01
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.

00:16:44:01 – 00:16:47:04
Lauren
Well, no, they want not Facebook to Facebook.

00:16:47:06 – 00:16:52:02
Ralph
Right. That happened very early on I believe in 2004 and I have.

00:16:52:04 – 00:16:53:08
Lauren
Nothing in the movie.

00:16:53:10 – 00:17:16:17
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.

00:17:16:18 – 00:17:23:00
Ralph
Never went back, like he was, he was a big force there. That that’s way, way in the beginning side quest.

00:17:23:01 – 00:17:42:20
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?

00:17:42:22 – 00:17:48:12
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.

00:17:48:12 – 00:17:49:12
Lauren
The look at the limelight.

00:17:49:13 – 00:18:15:00
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.

00:18:15:02 – 00:18:16:02
Ralph
Everything went crazy.

00:18:16:02 – 00:18:20:10
Lauren
All depends on where your business is. I live in Florida, so we pretended that it.

00:18:20:11 – 00:18:40:20
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.

00:18:41:01 – 00:18:44:19
Lauren
Oh my gosh, I know exactly what you’re getting to. Oh my.

00:18:44:19 – 00:19:09:05
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.

00:19:09:08 – 00:19:28:05
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?

00:19:28:07 – 00:19:44:11
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.

00:19:44:11 – 00:19:51:08
Lauren
And the only ones that didn’t were marketers that were just like, please, dear God, please. They also did.

00:19:51:10 – 00:20:19:06
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.

00:20:19:06 – 00:20:36:19
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.

00:20:36:21 – 00:20:56:23
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.

00:20:57:03 – 00:21:03:03
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.

00:21:03:05 – 00:21:33:14
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.

00:21:33:16 – 00:21:53:02
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.

00:21:53:08 – 00:22:19:16
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.

00:22:19:17 – 00:22:44:16
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.

00:22:44:18 – 00:22:53:13
Lauren
So while no one really knew what to do, I was in the camp of, oh my gosh, Lord help me.

00:22:53:15 – 00:23:15:12
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.

00:23:15:14 – 00:23:18:11
Lauren
I was like that’s three van glasses I know.

00:23:18:11 – 00:23:42:09
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.

00:23:42:09 – 00:23:51:08
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.

00:23:51:10 – 00:24:11:19
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.

00:24:11:19 – 00:24:34:16
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.

00:24:34:17 – 00:24:52:22
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.

00:24:53:01 – 00:25:09:16
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.

00:25:09:18 – 00:25:15:03
Ralph
We thought because they had so much data, they would launch a Facebook level kind of.

00:25:15:03 – 00:25:15:17
Lauren
Yeah, okay.

00:25:15:18 – 00:25:36:00
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.

00:25:36:00 – 00:26:09:15
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.

00:26:09:17 – 00:26:10:10
Ralph
Yes.

00:26:10:15 – 00:26:11:16
Lauren
I don’t think.

00:26:11:18 – 00:26:37:09
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.

00:26:37:12 – 00:26:45:05
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?

00:26:45:05 – 00:26:50:05
Lauren
I think that’s very conservative. I feel like it was 94 to 97%.

00:26:50:06 – 00:27:16:12
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.

00:27:16:12 – 00:27:32:00
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.

00:27:32:04 – 00:27:58:05
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.

00:27:58:05 – 00:28:06:08
Lauren
But on the conversion side, where it’s model data off of other behaviors, especially when it’s like web conversions that happen.

00:28:06:08 – 00:28:07:12
Ralph
Off.

00:28:07:14 – 00:28:09:11
Lauren
A meta owned platform.

00:28:09:13 – 00:28:28:15
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.

00:28:28:15 – 00:28:45:18
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.

00:28:45:18 – 00:29:03:13
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.

00:29:03:13 – 00:29:28:12
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.

00:29:28:14 – 00:29:33:10
Lauren
And I was like, oh, what do you mean? There’s a world outside of us?

00:29:33:12 – 00:30:01:07
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.

00:30:01:07 – 00:30:12:12
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.

00:30:12:13 – 00:30:13:15
Lauren
Agree with that.

00:30:13:15 – 00:30:14:14
Ralph
For media.

00:30:14:16 – 00:30:33:05
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?

00:30:33:10 – 00:31:04:09
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.

00:31:04:11 – 00:31:29:01
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.

00:31:29:05 – 00:31:39:10
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.

00:31:39:12 – 00:31:40:15
Ralph
I think it’s media first.

00:31:40:15 – 00:32:06:11
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.

00:32:06:11 – 00:32:29:08
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.

00:32:29:08 – 00:32:48:09
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.

00:32:48:09 – 00:33:04:14
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.

00:33:04:16 – 00:33:32:11
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.

00:33:32:11 – 00:33:53:08
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.

00:33:53:10 – 00:34:10:00
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.

00:34:10:00 – 00:34:10:15
Lauren
Was this.

00:34:10:17 – 00:34:11:09
Ralph
YouTube shorts.

00:34:11:11 – 00:34:38:17
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.

00:34:38:17 – 00:35:02:12
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.

00:35:02:14 – 00:35:30:08
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?

00:35:30:08 – 00:35:35:12
Lauren
They’d be watching hours of content, but just short micro pieces.

00:35:35:14 – 00:35:52:18
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.

00:35:52:18 – 00:36:21:20
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.

00:36:21:22 – 00:36:49:02
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.

00:36:49:04 – 00:37:14:21
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.

00:37:15:02 – 00:37:43:10
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.

00:37:43:10 – 00:38:05:20
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.

00:38:05:22 – 00:38:06:23
Ralph
Closing thoughts?

00:38:06:23 – 00:38:24:18
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.

00:38:24:20 – 00:38:42:04
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.

00:38:42:06 – 00:38:45:16
Lauren
Okay. Put on John Moran’s tinfoil hat to put on.

00:38:45:16 – 00:38:52:20
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.

00:38:52:20 – 00:39:11:17
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.

00:39:11:17 – 00:39:12:11
Lauren
Same time.

00:39:12:13 – 00:39:27:12
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.

00:39:27:12 – 00:39:45:05
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.

00:39:45:07 – 00:39:51:20
Ralph
So on behalf of my amazing pink microphone, co-host Lauren Petrillo.

00:39:51:20 – 00:39:53:08
Ralph
So

00:39:53:08 – 00:40:03:12
Ralph
till next show, see you.

Episode 762: Why Meta is The Best Ad Platform on The Planet in 2026 Part 4

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Why Meta is The Best Ad Platform on The Planet in 2026 Part 4

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