Some advertisers have noticed that Meta’s ad system has been faltering in the last two months.
The ad buyers note that the cost of advertising in Meta Platforms is up significantly while results are mixed.
“Our ads system is working as expected for the vast majority of advertisers,” a Meta spokesperson said in a statement. “We recently fixed a few technical issues and are researching a small amount of additional reports from advertisers to ensure the best possible results for businesses using our apps.”
As a result, some ad buyers have shifted budgets to TikTok and Alphabet.
Temu, one of Meta’s largest advertisers said it hasn’t notice any advertising issues with Meta.
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Meta said its Andromeda, a proprietary machine learning (ML) system that utilizes NVIDIA Grace Hopper Superchip and Meta Training and Inference Accelerator (MTIA) and is used for retrieving relevant ad creatives resulted in a +6% recall improvement to the retrieval system and a +8% improvement in ads quality in selected segments.
AI innovations at Meta that driver advertiser performance
Meta recently detailed four AI tools and technique driving ad performance: Andromeda, Sequence Learning, Lattice, and GEM.
Meta GEM (Generative Ads Recommendation Model) is a large-scale, generative AI model trained on thousands of GPUs to process trillions of data points and deliver hyper-personalized ad recommendations. Meta said during initial launch on Reels this year, it has increased ad conversions by up to 5%.
Sequence Learning is a modeling technique that tracks the order of user actions before and after ad interactions, helping predict what ads are most relevant next. Since being adopted last year, it has delivered a 3% increase in conversions in tested segments.
Andromeda is a new end-to-end ML system introduced in 2024 (hardware + software) that enables much more complex ad retrieval and personalization at scale. It has led to an 8% increase in ads quality, enhancing tools like Advantage+ and GenAI ad creative generation.
Meta Lattice is a unified ad ranking system that allows Meta to generalize learning across ad formats and improve efficiency by operating fewer models. Launched in 2023, this model has increased ad quality by almost 12% and ad conversions by up to 6%.
Meta Platforms shares up 3.8% on reports that it plans to fully automate ad creation using AI by the end of 2026
Meta Platforms aims to fully automate ad creation using AI by the end of 2026, the Wall Street Journal reported citing people familiar with the plan.
The planned system will only need advertisers to upload a product image and define a budget, and it will take over other steps such as generating videos, visuals and ad copy, and selecting the target audience.
Meta also plans to personalize the ad creation such that people can see different versions of the same ad in real time, depending on where they are located.
Many brands are already using third-party tools such as Midjourney and OpenAI’s DALL-E to create the ads that they place on the likes of Meta Platforms.
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We are still early in what’s possible in the advertising Universe, CFO Susan Li said
CFO Susan Li said at the Goldman Sachs 2025 Communacopia and Technology Conference that there is a lot that’s happening to their ad recommendations and retrieval tools (Andromeda, GEM and Lattice) (min 13:43).
She said that over time they want to use LLMs to power ranking and recommendations work (min 16.07).
”I think over time, we’re also going to find that we will use more LLM architecture to think about how to power ranking and recommendations work, “ she said. That’s relatively newer for us, but that is another, much earlier stage project that I think has the potential for a lot of upside in the recommendation landscape.”
Li said video generation in Advantage Plus is where there is currently a lot of work (min 17:37).
Li pointed out that she thinks we are still early in what’s possible in the advertising universe (min 18:29).
“That’s the goal. All this is to say the arc of the advertising universe is long, and I think we’re still pretty early in what’s possible.”
I=7 Meta will start showing ads based on your AI chats
Meta will start showing ads and other content to users based on their interactions with Meta’s generative AI features.
The update to Meta’s recommendation system will go into effect in Dec. 16.
Meta reiterated that more than 1 billion users use Meta AI every month.
“For example, if you chat with Meta AI about hiking, we may learn that you’re interested in hiking — just as we would if you posted a reel about hiking or liked a hiking-related Page. As a result, you might start seeing recommendations for hiking groups, posts from friends about trails, or ads for hiking boots,” Meta wrote.
I=6 Some advertisers report experiencing ad platform glitches since the end of last week
Ten advertisers toldAdExchanger that they started experiencing ad delivery issues and AI-based product failures since the end of last week on Meta Platforms.
Meta told AdExchanger early last week that it sees no further concerning trends with its ad platform after fixing a few technical bugs.
The advertisers pointed out that Meta’s ad system has been burning their entire budgets within the first few hours and generating poor quality impressions and conversions.
They also noted that Meta’s AI creative feature has been generating strange, off-brand ads in the last one month.
Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns is also said to be experiencing glitches.
The advertisers added that they lack human points of contact after Meta replaced them with AI chatbots.
Those who have connected with human customer care agents said the fixes have been quite easy and fast.
On October 29, Business Insidercovered complaints from advertisers who said Meta’s Advantage+ AI tools were generating bizarre or off-brand ads and even re-enabling settings they had turned off, forcing teams to constantly babysit campaigns.
Hmm this looks to me more like something minor that could be fixed or maybe only affecting a smaller sub-group of advertisers. Or do you have any reason to believe it could point to any larger problems? (Overall my trust in the execution ability of Meta is very high)
No, I also think it could be affecting only a small sub-group of advertisers. Other than the two articles, there aren’t any other reports which could suggest a larger sub-group of advertisers are affected. Also, such reports have been there since last year without noticeable impact on revenue. Nevertheless, it’s something to keep an eye on.