Meta Ads is an ever changing tool that introduces new updates frequently. This makes it important to stay on top of the changes that will pop up in your ad campaigns. Andromeda now provides more in depth information regarding your ads and the people who view and interact with your ad content. This blog post will take a more straightforward approach into explaining the Andromeda system, how it works, and why it is important to understand if you are a company who utilizes Meta Ads.
What is Andromeda?
Andromeda is Meta’s proprietary machine learning (ML) system. This system is designed for compiling ad recommendations that are intended to improve the quality of your ad’s performance. In order to do these improved performance tasks, Meta has utilized the NVIDIA Grace Hopper Superchip and the Meta Training and Inference Accelerator (MTIA) to enhance the AI scanning results delivered by Andromeda. Additionally, by utilizing these products, Andromeda is now more sustainable than before, requiring significantly less CPU and GPU power to operate.
Andromeda also works alongside Meta’s Advantage+, a system that catalogues products based off of relevancy to a user’s interests. This can consist of products that they looked at but did not purchase, similar items to products they looked at on other websites that they may be interested in, promote similar but more profitable products, or automatically show products that they are likely to interact with. Advantage+ is a system that can be toggled on or off when setting up ads in the Meta Ads manager. Advantage+ is a system that only works with products or services that can be purchased.
Andromeda uses its ML to predict what ads a user may find the most interesting, and then push those ads to individuals who will enjoy viewing them. This benefits businesses as it will help companies view what audience is most interested in their product or services. This will also help a business improve their objectives, such as increased sales or brand awareness, once they start targeting their ads to individuals who are likely to interact with said ads.
How does Andromeda work?
Andromeda goes through a multi-step system to determine what ads should be pushed to who. The most important step is the first step: retrieval. Retrieval requires the most power to complete. It consists of selecting a few thousand relevant ads out of millions. Using Advantage+ and generative AI, Andromeda’s automation is improved when looking into the millions of ads uploaded to Meta at any given time. Automation is beneficial when Andromeda is deciding which ad out of an ad set is best to present to a user. Something as simple as a different background colour can impact the performance of an ad. Ben & Jerry’s completed a test with Advantage+ where they used different background colours in their non-dairy ice cream catalogue ads. They found a 7% increase in their click-through-rate (CTR) in comparison to when they did not use Advantage+. Andromeda can now be used in tests such as this to see which ads will be pushed to users based on their new data profiles. Ads can be pushed to a user who is lactose-intolerant, loves chocolate ice cream, and the colour yellow.
Retrieval can have latency restraints, meaning there is a time limit placed on when it’s best to show ads, or the overall length of their campaign. An example can be a one-day flash sale ad on Facebook shown to a user at 11:30pm. This would not be effective as the ad has a one day time limit and concludes within the next 30 minutes.
With the improved retrieval process, ads can be analyzed faster and more accurately. Now they can be pushed to the correct target audience in a timely manner. For example, the one-day flash sale ad will be promoted to a user at 9am, the time that person is most likely to be online, rather than 11:30pm.
The bandwidth required to store the target audience memory previously was extensive; now, with the help of the NVIDIA Grace Hopper Superchip and the Meta Training and Inference Accelerator, the memory can be stored on a smaller scale, but more accurate and more sustainable. The NVIDIA Grace Hopper Superchip aids in the computational power required to perform the retrieval stage. The Superchip’s power to increase automation will allow for businesses to have an increase on their return on ad spend (ROAS). As found by Meta, utilizing Andromeda and Advantage+ has led businesses to a 22% increase in their ROAS in comparison to when they did not have these features turned on. Overall, there has been a 6% increase in the retrieval system which then led to an 8% increase in ad quality improvement.
Why does Andromeda matter?
The key takeaway to why Andromeda matters is that prior to initialization, the ad personalization targets were limited. Now, the target audience has a more detailed personality chart depicting what they may or may not like. For example, instead of listing that User A likes shoes because they clicked on an ad for shoes, it can be personalized to connect that they like brown loafers rather than any other colour or style of shoe. Now, ads containing brown loafers, or similar styled shoes, will be pushed more to User A than ads that contain red shoes. This increases the likelihood that User A will purchase a pair of shoes because they match the style they already like. By pushing ads to users who are more likely to interact with them based on a collection of data points they fall under, rather than one data point or because they clicked on a different ad, there is a higher chance that they will purchase or interact with an ad that is now sent their way. This is how the ROAS improves as well as the overall profit received from sales.
Conclusion
To conclude, Andromeda is a system that can be considered when looking into launching Meta Ad campaigns. AI can be a work in progress and thus, be a little scary. In this case, Andromeda is an automated system that utilizes AI in a way that will not alter results negatively, but rather is proven to increase profits. It is not a system that is generating or changing images, but pushing ads to an already existing profile for Meta social media users. Andromeda is an enhanced and more sustainable system than what existed before, leading to better ad results for businesses and better for the environment.
Interested in learning more about Andromeda or Meta Ads? Book a call with JBC here!
For further reading, check out this posting from Meta regarding the launch of Andromeda!
