Transcription
Super excited today. We've got Maxim from Meta who works as a creative strategist there. You work with the top 1% of brands, the disruptor brands. You will have seen a lot of the nuances, the things that they're doing correctly that gives them that status.
This will be the last time we talk about this on the podcast. I feel like we've really milked this.
What would you say is the biggest misconception that people have around Andromeda? It's like a super intelligent librarian that knows everything about every book that is in the library. It's less about thinking what piece of content I'm putting out there, but who am I building this piece of content for and which motivation or barrier I'm trying to tackle with this piece of content.
Good segue into partnership ads.
The top performer, the top brands are spending between 30 and 50% on partnership ads today just because partnership ad consistently deliver CPA and higher CTR.
I wanted to ask one really practical question. This is a question that gets asked by clients really frequently. If I have a UGC video with the same creator in the same setting, but completely different scripts, is that enough differentiation for Meta to not see that as the same asset?
In most cases, I would say,
Should we go for it?
Let's go.
Let's do it.
Feels a bit like a therapy,
but a double therapist.
I think it's probably more going to be a therapy session for us to be honest. Really?
Yeah. The creative in the room.
Exactly. Exactly. But super excited today. We've got Maxim from Meta uh who works as a creative strategist there with some of the most disruptive BL brands on the platform including the likes of Space Goods who we also work with. Super excited to have you here today because I think we can see a slightly different perspective from what's happening on the inside, how you're perceiving things and also where we are going with Meta. We're also going to look back at things like Andromeda partnership ads um as well as creative diversity. So Maxim, welcome.
Thank you for having me. Yeah, it's great to have someone from from the inside of the the operation where we spend so much time so much so much of our time talking about to get the inside scoop.
So much of it is uh us just um almost yeah wondering is is this the right way? You just kind of have to testing things up.
Yeah,
we act like the experts, but
hopefully I don't break your dreams today.
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Well, yeah, we'd love to, I guess, start with just a bit about your role. Uh, it' be great to get an overview of, uh, what does a typical day look like as part of the disruptors creative strategy team within meta?
Yeah. Um, I mean, my days are very varied. Uh, but my role in general is about basically leading transformation when it comes to creativity within the disruptors world basically. So that means it can help disruptors finding new insights to to explore new creative or running workshops basically with creative team and and the day teams all the way to helping really into uh business transformation when it comes to creative creativity and creative teams.
Makes sense. And disruptors for everybody watching is just like brands doing pushing the boundaries I guess of of Facebook and um in terms of results in terms of scale. Um, how much of a has the role transformed I guess over the last tw that whole um, disruptive team transformed over the last couple of years within meta? I'm assuming it's got much greater focus on creative now than it did previously.
Yeah, I think it's it's really interesting because I'm coming from like a more traditional world, a more like CPG traditional world. So really exploring the disruptors is really bringing the knowledge that you get from the old world and really getting on this journey with those people who are not following any rules and trying to build the new rules. the new playbook basically when it comes to creative. So, it's really really exciting.
It's nice to have nice that you guys are pushing the same narrative as us. I can't have so many conversations with brands that are still trying to scramble to figure out how to set up an an operation, how to even think about creative strategy for for Meta. Um, I feel like we've come a long way since even like 6 months ago. So, I can't imagine what it was like then. Um, wanted to start with Andromeda again for everybody watching. this this will be the last time we talk about this on the podcast because I feel like we've really milked this.
We were saying uh it's become a bit of a meme that agencies just talk about Andromeda all the time, but I think it would be rude not to discuss it today. Um, it'd be great for you, I guess, just to give your interpretation of Andromeda, what it is. We've talked about it. We've talked about our best interpretation, but I think it Yeah, hearing it from the inside would be it would be great. So it may be your last time talking about Andromeda, but I know it won't be my last time talking about everybody wants to talk about Andromeda and like you're saying in the past few months it has been on everybody's lips. So it's quite interesting but in in plain terms and how I explain to clients is like think of Andromeda as like a super intelligent librarian, right? So the old school librarian or the old school system was looking at ads as like book cover. Today Andromeda is capable of going inside the book and going through the content of the book. So, it's like a super intelligent librarian that knows everything about every book that is in the library.
That's a really good analogy. That's better than any analogy we've used.
It's very good. Yeah,
for sure. And I guess the what that's helped the platform do is just deliver better ad inventory to the users and therefore drive better results for for the advertisers if you're producing the right diversity and volume of creative. Is that correct?
Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. I think we're going to get into it in in more details, but it's basically blending art and science, right? Andromeda is really getting into the content like the sentiment, the the the actual meaning of the ad, right? So, you're moving away from basically this targeting game and really getting into what is the creative content.
Why did they feel like they needed to make that change? I guess what was broken in the customer experience that led to Meta completely reimagining the way that they deliver ads?
I think there is there's two there's two parts to this answer. The first one is completely understanding that today we're not in the business of disturbing but about earning attention. Right? So the whole ecosystem has to be about earning the attention of the consumer on the platform. Right? The other is that today we're we're receiving millions of millions of ads per minute. Right? So you get that people are starving for attention or brands are starving for attention. The people are losing attention span also. So you you have more ads, more people but less attent attention span. Sorry. And then more more ads being served basically. So the idea is like how can we
make the experience on the platform for the consumer completely tailored for them.
Yeah.
Oh, I feel like Meta does a really good job of being like non-intrusive in its ad inventory compared to things like YouTube compared to a lot of other advertising platforms where it's very hard to skip. It's very obvious when you're facing ad. Obviously, they rolled out that the whole subscribe for no ads on platform and that was a big narrative the last few weeks, but it's definitely definitely feel like the platform's got a strong balance.
Yeah, 100%. I think especially because from a creative strategy perspective, you're seeing more and more brands leaning into that very raw native approach that that fits, you know, the the platform in which they're they're um, you know, distributing ad content on. What What are your thoughts? I mean, I don't know if this is something that you think about much, but it very much aligns with, which we're going to get into soon, creative diversity, but also Andromeda. This idea of like soulmate theory, like there's a perfect piece of creative out there for for everyone. I mean, how are you thinking about that when you're talking to these disruptor brands?
Yeah, I think it's funny that you're mentioning that, but it's like it's about the brands and I think that's the work we're doing with disruptors today. It's less about thinking what piece of content I'm putting out there, but who am I building this piece of content for and which motivation or barrier I'm trying to tackle with this with this this piece of content. Sorry.
Yeah. So, very much persona driven in the way that
Exactly. Yeah. 100%. Yeah. We we'll definitely be getting on to that shortly. And I guess just coming back to to Andromeda because I think there's a lot of misconception isn't there about you know how we are creating ads for Andromeda, how we're delivering ads for Andromeda, what it means in terms of how we change from a from a volume and output perspective. What would you say is the biggest misconception that people have around Andromeda?
I mean I think it's around volume, right? Like and I think we're going to get into that later of this idea of like you have to have thousands of ads and it's about iteration. It's not about iteration. And I think it's about being smart in the volume. It's strategic volume and understanding really like we're going to get into it like motivators and barriers when you build the content. It's not about flooding the platform with content. It's really about finding the right motivation and the right barriers to create the right content.
Yeah, 100%. And I mean we actually did a um with created that campaign article with Met Meta where we did the the controlled study all around volume and um, you know doing a creative volume AB test where we essentially compared five ad variants with 25 variants while uh and essentially from that test it came out that definitely the volume was the was where more of the performance came from. 171 more purchases despite reaching 59,000 fewer people. Uh 50% cheaper cost per conversion. But I think the key there, the learning there, the hypothesis around that is that you know volume for volume's sake as you say isn't isn't enough. Like it's important that we are driving that through the lens of the persona and also going deeper into how we speak to those individual personas through that volume.
100%. And we've Sorry, go on. No, no. I I was going to say to link to the article, it's exactly that. It's and when we talk about strategic volume, think of it as like how much flavors you're giving to the algorithm basically, right? So, if you're giving 10 times the same flavor, you are basically reaching for the same audience. If you varied your flavor, you're giving more signals for the algorithm to find new audiences basically for your content. It's as simple as that. That's why we talk about strategic volume.
Yeah, I love that. So it's like flavor is is the more flavor the more strategic depth which essentially then translates into incremental reach.
Exactly.
Yeah. I feel like and and even we've been guilty of it towards the end of last year of just throwing more at a problem. And I think that is that is creative strategy, right? I think brands the brands that got on the volume hype early went a lot of them went really far into like four 5,000 assets a month. And um, and we we do a lot of audits where we'll look at an account and they've been making more and more assets every 30 days and their reach is going down or their CAC is going up rather than taking a step back and being like, are we being really intentional? Do we really understand the different customer types we're going after?
Do we understand what their content preferences are and how we're building those blocks of diversity up? um, which yeah, I know we're going to come on to spoken a lot about Andromeda but then we've got gem and then Latis as the three building blocks of the new delivery system within Meta's algorithm. How is this fundamentally changed I guess not just the creative portion of the approach but the general approach to ad accounts and and and growth on on the channel holistically for brands before we go deeper into creative.
Yeah, let's cover uh Andromeda and Jim how they work together basically. So let me go back to the the librarian image, right? So if Andromeda is the librarian basically selecting the best ads, thousands of best ad you would think that Jim is like the discerning reader, right? And what we mean by that is like out of those thousands of ads, they will be able to scan the content and the context from a consumer perspective. So it's not just about finding or getting the right ad, but it's getting the right ad at the right moment for you basically. So those two work together. Aluma will basically filter the best content and GEM will exactly know and predict how to basically deliver it to the right person at the right time.
So you've got Andromeda which is retrieval.
Mhm. And you've got gem which is the ranking system of ads that changing I guess the approach to um, ad accounts like the way that people are approaching the media buying the the I guess the people and the operation that need to sit around that to to grow consistently on Facebook compared to maybe like 12 months ago.
So we're thinking about account structure, right?
Yeah. Account structure and even just the resource that brands need to be thinking about and bringing into that that approach. some creative resource or or yeah
I think one thing that is quite hard for for internal team and agencies is when we talk about radical simplification
um, I think the old ways of thinking was like multiple ad campaign multiple adset with those campaign right uh we see now that if you do that if you over complicate and if you manually create all those layers basically you're actually not helping the algorithm to reach new audiences that's why we talk about radical simplification right and I It's scary cuz because of the old ways of thinking of like account structure but it's it's about trusting the algorithm today about finding. So the idea is recruiting those creative strategist uh that we've mentioned before. So the people who have like a mix of heart and science I like to explain them like that. So people who have who understand creative but also can read data right uh and those people are the golden employees of the future. Those those department used to be separated, right? You had the the people the left brain people and the right brain people. Here the now the golden child of the disruptors are those creative strategies that can do both basically
which is such why it's such a hard role.
Exactly. Exactly. Because you also sometimes play the the missing link between those two still existing team with within a company. Right. So the old ways of thinking. So you're playing this this role. Basically the idea of the the idea of this team and the team who really understand is that your job today is not to create those layers but to provide the creative fuel for the AI and let the AI find the destination basically.
Yeah. So creative truly becomes the targeting. I mean, it shows how it's like flipped from preios 14 where there was, you know, it's there was much more complexity from an ad account perspective and targeting versus real probably more simplicity from a creative perspective as to what would actually work. Now, it's it's, you know, all about the creative and and how we really talk through that psychographic state of the persona and ensure that we're tapping into the right motivators, fears, desires um to get in front of the right person.
Yeah, I think so. The whole way was like basically define your audience as restrictive as possible and then AB test your way to to your winning to your winning assets basically and then once you have this winning asset just iterate and iterate and iterate basically the golden era of just so I was the old ways though rather than the golden era. I I remember when I first started I first started media doing some media buying on Meta whilst I was at university and at one point we were running 1% lookalike audiences of every single event on like 20030 pound campaign with one asset per adset and there was like you'd go in the account there' be like a thousand campaigns or as many as we could run and you and it just you literally the opposite right literally like the arbitrage was in the campaign setup not the
creative so it has completely flipped and I think we've seen We've definitely seen that that journey of consolidation play out, especially for brands who are spending larger amounts where reach and and ad delivery becomes even more important, getting in front of new audiences consistently to inform today's performance and future performance. Um, and ensuring that we're getting the right creative volume and variety. And with space goods is a good example of that where we've kind of pursued that consolidation approach over a period of a few months and it's contributed to better and better results over time. So
definitely think everybody who's watching needs to go on that journey and find a way to simplify their account structure even if it's um
giving all of the power back to the machine in a way.
Feed the feed the algorithm and then trust the algorithm.
Yeah. So I want to dive into creative similarity which is something that yeah we've again spoken a lot about we've done multiple masterminds on um, but again it's still I say early it's not it's not that early anymore but there's still a lot of unknowns around creative similarity I guess just to start what could you just give some context for those that maybe don't know what is creative similarity in meta and how important is this for brands that are listening.
Yeah, of course. So, think of that the algorithm analyzes what we call visual signature, right? So, that means that it goes through your creative like we were talking earlier. It analyze the content, the emotion, the message behind it, not just the the file name basically, which was maybe before, which means that like you may have 200 ad files on on your account, but the system recognize only 20 different signature, right? That means that like it's not about having like we were saying hundreds of different assets but the the right assets because again the algorithm will only recognize 20 different signature and that means that your 200 assets are fighting for the same audience right so it's like it's moving beyond those superficial tweaks uh when when we we used to call iteration and I think we need to be careful today when we use the word iteration because I think in everybody's mind iteration is changing the background or changing a word in in in the title and really understanding that like it's a it means meaningful changes in the DNA of the creative and the assets.
So what are some of the things that Meta are looking at most in terms of whether they're deciding if something is the same or not? I mean that's not meta as us.
I am not behind the the algorithm but but there is basically like we were talking earlier about visual and and creative signals, right? So I think the algorithm is looking as many as possible different uh signal that means like different talent or creators different background or environment different type of filming or camera angle different type of messaging the more you're feeding the algorithm different like I said creative signals the better um the better your asset is about to stand out basically from this crowd of 200 ad assets.
Yeah, it's definitely changed the approach that we've taken and we've definitely gone on this journey where you know Andromeda we had changed our whole process when when um, you know, when we started kind of leaning more so into that of Andromeda and I think that became okay we need to iterate more on a weekly basis and drive more volume but then with creative um diver similarity it completely changed the approach again because actually we have to be we can still iterate But we've got to be like truly intentional about the iterations that we're doing. So if we had say 3 hours to do 50 iterations in that same time now maybe we could only do 10 to 15 but as a result they going to drive more diversity and therefore more impact more incremental reach within the account.
Yeah. Yeah. I think it's it's quite interesting when we talk about iteration and like like you were saying in the back when you have when you found your winner you would change the background or the music when it comes to video. Now it's about completely shifting the way you're thinking about a winning asset. Right? So, it's less about the execution and more about what has convinced people about this asset. So really about what is the inside behind this asset that has really struck a chord in people's mind and that that's why it's a winning asset. It's not because of the color or the visual. It's really the insight and really the motivators right behind the assets.
I think one of the things I've I think is an interesting challenge which we haven't quite figured out I guess internally is like I think some assets can really work because they're a combination of things working together. So it could be like a format and a persona and a message that all works together to resonate with a with an audience and it's trying to strip out like which of those has been the the real contributor the the biggest driver. Is it the message or is it that we've done it as a podcast? Um, but yeah, we're definitely looking at that as more of like what's the what's the fundamental building blocks rather than those like small things in a creative that we can then take into next output.
Yeah. One of the latest things that we'll get on to in a moment is that idea of how do we how do we go into more depth with the personas that we're targeting? And I think previously we would have just macro personas which really were quite broad in many ways. Like technically Ollie and I could fall under the same class of persona, but we've got different fears. We've got different motivators. Um, you know, we've we've got different things that that drive us as individuals that are going to resonate with us. And therefore, really we shouldn't be sat under the same class of persona. So, this is kind of why now we're viewing personas as macro, which maybe we fit under the same. and then micro uh, which through that you're looking at okay what is the primary desire what's the core fear what's the belief and that's then kind of really governs how we speak to each of those individuals
yeah, I think it's quite interesting because before it was we all we will all be part of the same demographic right uh, like male living in England liking football for example that would that would be a proper demographic like 25 to 35 if I'm older than 35 but 25 to 35 looking liking like football and living in England basically right now we're looking at personas and you it's more on like the emotional and psychological level which is not much more interesting when we talk about creative diversification we can talk an example like space good for example which is a wellness brand right if you target only male who like football you're going to get the same message over and over but then if you start thinking of like why people would like to try space goods the different products right they may be the person who is like a high achiever and In in that case the messaging is around productivity and and scaling and getting more active and getting better at your life. Then you on the other side of the spectrum of you may have someone who is like the stressful newbie or the stressful worker and the benefit is all going to be being like peaceful mind and and and wellness really the the core of the brand. So, it's really interesting to think of it like that because immediately you get diversification by thinking about your audience from a completely different perspective and you can also if you yeah, when you go when you approach it in that way, you can you can often and we've done this for a few clients, you'll find through research audiences that you didn't even know existed for your brand and that can open up like another >> huge leap in spend and huge leap in growth >> um >> massively >> and I think they and yeah, and the deeper you on those subers, the more of those you'll find and the more more scale you'll be able to drive.
Just on that, what what advice do you have for brands that maybe are in that position where they are seeing frequency increase? They're needing to unlock new personas, new angles. Like how would you approach a situation like that, I guess, through the lens of reporting or research?
I think I think it's both reporting and research. I think there's a work to be done by brands of understanding the consumer better. uh and again not on the demographic level but more on the psychological and emotional level right? So, it's like it's almost shifting role I always say to to marketeers or like clients or brands that are coming to us it's like put down your marketeer cap for for a moment and think of yourself as a simple consumer right? Like when you're targeted by ads when you feel that you may be targeted because you are a male living in England liking football, you're not relating to this ad, not in today's world, but when they start talking about emotional trigger or or it feels like they know you as a consumer. It it's much more interesting, much more relatable. So there's a lot of tools now. There's a lot of AI capabilities. Meta AI for example is a great way to start asking question about different audiences. What drive people a certain group of people to to purchase a certain category for example. It's a great place to start.
Yeah, I think that's we speak about that a lot. I think like research is the 8020 of creative. Yeah, I think it's like people should spend such time on like review mining, surveys, looking at organic videos that are trending against a certain problem or product and trying to find those like it's trying to find the way that your customers and the different personas talk about the problem that because that is often so different to how the brand will talk about the problem and that alignment just finding those small turns of phrases can have such a massive massive impact on on performance.
Yeah. The because the right it's like we're going through this inflection point in the business right now where the role of the creative strategist is changing as execution becomes more commoditized by AI. It means that the role of the creative strategist becomes vulnerable unless they are truly strategic in their approach. So they become more of the strategic spine versus I guess what you know notoriously they've been is kind of a jack of all trades. they have to do scripting, concepting, ideation, reporting, optimization, everything in between. Um, and yeah, because of that, like we are we're really putting an emphasis on how we spend more time on the research because I think sometimes brands think you do research once and you know they then don't touch it for for a year, two years, but it if if not a monthly thing, it has to be a quarterly thing and it it needs to it needs to be a big part of that ongoing approach.
Yeah, we we have a saying uh within the the creative department at at Meta is creative will be automated, creativity will never be and I think that's that's a good thing to understand and to take for brand and understand and and investing in the creative strategy department, right? It's like AI will help you automate the execution but creativity which is really to understand your consumer, your brand and the markets that you that you function within. This will never be replaced by AI cuz you like you're saying it's about emotion. It's about understanding the geopolitical environment, the socioeconomical environment of your consumer also and and really act quickly upon that.
100%. That's definitely the kind of ethos we're we're approaching like our in like growth of of that department through. We touched on like how Meta looks at creative similarity and why it's so important. Mhm.
Um, you mentioned signals, which I want to come back to because we think a lot about signal engineering within accounts, which I think many brands don't think about that enough, like how can we engineer the signals in the platform to find new audiences, but I know Meta's got a lot of creative similarity updates coming from like a reporting perspective and a um, and I just wanted to chat about that. the view of like creative fatigue, creative similarity score, top creative themes, um, and how you're looking to arm brands with more data and insights to improve creative similarity uh, over the next few months.
Yeah, I think for me the most exciting one is themes and and because you you're going to be able to not only understand what is working for your brand and double down on that, but also understanding when you're saturating your audience with the type of content, right? So, let's say you have 8% of your content that is around humor, but you see that this content is really performing. That means that like double down on humor. That doesn't mean that it has to become 80% of your content, right? We see brands that have 80% of their content that is that look like a podcast
good like today, right? And and it's true also specifically in in the disruptor world, right? I don't think there's it's a right of passage for disruptors to have this ad that looks like a podcast.
Talk about the benefits and the USBs.
It always works well.
I know. I know. I know. It's still ripping.
Still ripping.
It's like people who come they're like, "We've done podcasts." I'm like, "You've not done them well enough." It works. Our thought process now is like what's the next evolution of a podcast. So we've like tried to innovate on the same
the street mic is the is the next evolution. But the idea is that if 80% is 80% of your content is is the podcast you may want to evolve in term of content or diversify again the content.
I think that's I've been thinking about this recently because it's like survivorship bias in a way. It's like when you analyze when you're creating more assets and you're analyzing what's working, you're you're always looking to double down on what's working. And I was reading a Ben Horowitz book recently from Andre Andre Horowitz and he said that he used to go into his strategy meetings and write up like what are we not doing
and start from there and I think that for especially for brands that have quite broad appeal have a lot of personas to go after have broad TAM big market
I think you do need to balance doubling down doing more refreshing what's working with trying to activate just completely different styles of content and completely different types of people.
It's like the call earlier today about with one of our brands where you you were saying exactly that like where where are the gaps? We need to do some gap analysis.
Yeah. We're like so overleveraged into 40 plus but we're not really selling anything to people under the age of 40 and the product has appeal. So it's like right how do we do that cuz we'll activate so much more volume
and they're already spending a lot. So it's like there's a big big opportunity there. But yeah, themes sounds really good.
Yeah, I think I think to your point, I think it's it's really it's really interesting what you're saying because this is also what we're working with brand in term of like shifting mindset, right? And it's less about like short-term results and more like long-term how you build a brand. We usually tell brands don't try to to have this winner loser ad mentality or like the the concept and the ad and try to build more of like a creative portfolio, right? And within your creative portfolio, you'll have the themes that you know are working. But if you think of your content as a creative portfolio, then you may want to have more risk with 15 to 20% of your content, right? Try new theme for example or try new formats within within this portfolio because you still have those 80 85% where you know you'll get performance from. So it's this idea of like really building from the future and not just being short-term vision.
Yeah, 100%. And yeah, we we've started we've always categorized by like framework or big swing and then you know that's that's a layer within the creative strategy. What percentage splits are we doing of each? But the one we've added into that is calculated risk as well. Um, so I I agree it's like actually labeling what that looks like in the with each piece of creative as well. Like is it a big is it a big swing? Is it a framework which is something we know has worked before? And I think that's again like I guess almost before we get to that point of those like scorings, are we are we approaching it? Are we being pro proactive in the way that we are approaching that diversity or the way that we can ensure that we aren't overindexing in in one vehicle?
Yeah. Yeah. It's the calculated risk, right? And that's and I think if you go back to like like you're talking about framework like if we go back to personas it's this idea that like think of like three to five personas uh on on your brand or campaign level basically and within those three to five persona three to three different angles per persona then you can take like I said calculated risk for with each of those persona with a specific creative angle that you're testing to actually like you were saying reach a new audience that you may have not thought about before.
I wanted to ask one really practical question because I get this is a question that gets asked by clients really frequently is if so we've obviously talked create similarity is a big message like people are looking at diversity but then like an example of one that a question that I'll get asked by clients is like if I have a UGC video with the same creator in the same setting but completely different scripts is that enough differentiation for Meta to not see that as the same asset
In mo in most cases, I would say no.
Right? Again earlier we talked about creative signals right if you think of literally those assets that you're talking about now there's not enough difference or dominant differentiation between those two assets right
and let's remove meta and the algorithm and again let's go back to think of yourself as a consumer right if you're serving a piece of content about let's event like a burger brand basically and it's a chef in the kitchen and you watch the first 10 seconds and he talks to you about the fact that it's a beef burger, right? Then then let's say 6 hours later, you're being served another piece of content. It's the exact same chef in the exact same kitchen and you start by saying the burger, you're skipping the the ad, right? Because you've seen this ad already.
Yeah.
This is what the algorithm is doing basically on behalf of the of the consumer. And when we talk about iteration or tweaking, this is what we mean by that, right? But if I give you, and that's also the consultation that we do. If we go on set with clients, for example, we tell them, if you rent a house, why is the chef only at the kitchen? Can he not be in the bed, in the bedroom or in the garden, right? You rented a house. use the use the entire house or or or basically hire different type of creators within the sub kitchen. But you need to have a real visual differentiation in order for it for to be sure and again and I'm not behind the algorithm but to be sure to be 100% sure that it's differentiated you need to give multiple visual signals that it's a different ad.
That's why we've started thinking about that through the cuz we will do full podcast days in the same podcast studio and even you know you could have one one uh actor and another actor in this podcast um and maybe you swap out one of them but you've still got the same or the other same setting probably not enough signals there that we've uh to to to actually kind of deem as creative difference. Right. So, that's something we're thinking about in terms of logistically on those days you might be filming multiple ads but in a same studio same location like actually you need to to view that in a slightly different way even if potentially the angle's different in which you know and the messaging as well.
Yeah, I think like I was saying, there's no right formulas, right? And I don't want to give the the wrong signal, but like you were saying, like it's quite interesting when you like start swapping actors, but you keep the same background. You have a different speech or a different angle like we were talking earlier, the the algorithm would probably recognize it as different as, right? Cuz it's not the same human. It's not the same actor. We're not talking the same thing. What's what's left is just the set, right? So, I think you have given enough creative signal. And like you were saying, I think it's interesting when you talk about angles. Now we're being shot today, but like technically you could only shoot me and you could be basically in the background, right? So this ad could be just me talking versus having two people or three people, sorry, or have two or three people talking with each other. So I think there are like creative ways to to diversify the content. The idea is like don't expect the algorithm to recognize where you're doing minimum tweaks. Basically,
there's loads of ways to do that as well. There's like split screen. You can put a green screen, someone over the top of the original ad, talking about the ad in the background, switch it to third person. It's just
Yeah.
It just requires that that next
That's the work we've done with Space Good, right? It's like going on shoot, not only talking when we talk about mood board, but it's really going on shoots and and and really like practice basically with the with the team on the ground, right? So, you go to one or two two shoots with those teams and then it's a muscle basically. they understand that you need to change the angle, you need to change the actor, you need to change the setting and then then it becomes like a natural creative muscle that you develop.
Yeah. And that's I think that's why like actually operationalizing the building of framework databases for your brand is so so important. And this is something we've done huge amounts of even if it's like just through something you've seen organically um, you know, as a real or maybe it's something you've seen in an ad library and you're just saving a bank of all of these different types of you know, messaging frameworks or vehicles that you can deploy a message within because I think you know, obviously persona diversification is super super important but when you find winning messaging within um, a specific persona like that's like gold dust and you should be testing that against five, six, seven different vehicles
because you know that as it comes back to the idea of soulmate theory every everyone likes to consume information in different ways and uh, what what works for one person might not for another
true I mean you call it messaging I call it insight I think it's the exact same thing right it's like when you touch upon something that has strike a chord with with the consumer right with those different personas like that's what I call it insight it's like keep that because like you're saying it's gold right you found a way to cut through the noise and really find relevance within those person's life. Right? So, yeah, we saved multiple six figures in Q4 by changing the way that we make ad creative. And we did it with Lens by foreplay, a creative analytics tool that's built for speed and clarity. And you see, I've used a lot of these creative analytics tools before, but genuinely for me, Lens is the best. In seconds, you can get a bird's eye view of every creative test plotted. The UX for me is one of the best parts. Like if you've used one of these creative data tools before, you will know that loading times for reports can be incredibly slow and tedious. Whereas with Lens, it is literally instant. Just insights on demand that you can just hand directly to your creative team, to your designers, or your creators. Lens also connects to Foreplay's research tool. I'm sure you've used their inspiration function before. And for me, it's so so valuable having optimization and inspiration all centralized in one place. So if you want genuinely better creative, faster decisions, and less wastage, you need to use Lens by Foreplay. Link down below.
The golden question off the back of this is like
what's what's the right number of distinct creative concepts to run at any given time? I mean there's
don't put us out of don't put us out of a job by saying like no I think I mean like it's like talking about Andromeda every day I think I get this question also at least twice a day
every time I meet clients it's it's the same question there's not there's not right or wrong answer but if you go with the the persona framework for example I would say think of like three to five personas and like we were saying for each persona think of like three to five creative angles or messaging angles right the different insight and And based on those creative insights have those like uh vehicles right like being like or different formats being static video or carousel you end up with it really diverse creative portfolio right and you don't realize that you've created dozen of ads but always with the consumer in mind and that's that's the true gold right to have a diverse creative portfolio versus what we were talking earlier creating those hundreds of ads who are saying the exact same thing with the exact same uh visual. So it's about diversity but also my role as a creative strategist is also to say diversity cannot come at a compromise of quality and I think that's one thing that that we talk a lot at meta is like the the quality we've seen brand try to overproduce and to really hinder the quality of of the output and that will automatically link to also the quality of the performance right
yeah yeah I think brands obviously the easy thing when you've got a bottleneck is just to throw more resource at it.
Yeah.
And it's like we look at like hit rate like how many of our ads are winning based on what how we define a winner differently by account and it's like we need that to be
in a in a healthy range and we need that to be flat or improving as we add more volume
and that for us is like a good creative system because the output is is driving results and not just not just throwing it at a wall in a way.
Yeah. I think the other off the back of what you just
said as well, the other thing that's super important, I think what makes a great, you know, one element that makes a really great creative strategist is knowing how to prioritize. Cuz I think, you know, you may, like you said, you might have someone listening to this right now might have five personas, three per persona. Suddenly, you know, that and then you've got vehicles underneath that and you've just got so many ads, but let's say you've got a much smaller budget that you're playing with. You have to aggressively prioritize. How do you think about prioritization?
I mean, I I think it depends on your goal, right? And and I usually I'm not the guy in the room that talks about media budget because I'm the creative funny person that talk about personas, but but I think but I think it is really important to understand to understand budget, right? Uh we have we have clients and brands who have like hundreds of of ads but don't have the budget to support to support that. So you end up with like really badly performing campaign because there's not a proper ratio between the the creative and the actual it's like almost being too hungry basically but not having the appetite right or not the right the right appetite for it. So again it's not about producing a hundreds of ads. Understand who you are, understand what are your goals and like you were saying maybe it's about prioritizing the persona that you know are going to resonate with your brand before exploring with more adventurous persona. I I would call them like that, right? So it's like being ruthless in prioritization. So it's not only prioritization in the production of the assets but also in what are my goals, right?
I think that's important. The goal piece is important as well because a lot you your strategy will need to evolve multiple times through a year to as your goal evolves like as your spend increases and that's where you might have to add another two three personas or multiple personas which makes sense. I think the last point when we're talking about quality also I think it's really important to understand when you have a winning formula when when we talk about winning formula we talk about strong hooks branding within the ad right like a a strong message a strong CTA for example to not completely dilute that when you're trying to create those iteration when you have this winning formula continue producing within this winning formula.
You you mentioned Brad I'm not going to go down this note now be we we'll go down a black hole. But I've kind of it's it's interesting when you talk about like creative diversity and the and the and like similarity being like the enemy of growth and the role of brand which by definition is producing similarity across a set of output for a business. And I'm having more conversations with with with clients on like how do those two things live together? Mhm. Um how how do we ensure like onbrand creative whilst pursuing diversity and I think a lot of that is like constraints and like and and similar like similar elements but not completely similar to creative but I think that's certainly feels like a conversation that's becoming more and more frequent as as this rolls out.
Yeah, I think even branding branding the content, right? I think we we have we've had different era or we've been told you need to have the brand within the first 3 seconds, right? And then there's been an era of like you don't need to show the brand anymore because or it should be subtle, right? And I think the winning brands today are becoming smarter and smarter at integrating the brand within the content, right? And it's that means not having the logo on the right hand corner of your content. But
Yeah, exactly. But when we talk about it's funny like when we talk about beauty brand for example sometimes it's about having like a bondo basically with the with the logo of the brand or like for like I don't know like cooking um cooking brand it's about having an apron with the logo. So brands are smarter and smarter in the way the brand logo really show up in the content through the packaging without you being noticing it you being exposed to the content for the 25 seconds of the ads. Right. Also that's where developing the brand tone of voice is really important. Sometimes, you know, you're watching an ad from this brand and the logo hasn't been showed, right? It's because it the brand has such a strong uh tone of voice and such a strong personality that it comes out every through every content that they're putting out. So, it's really really interesting.
Yeah, that's where that's where I think that the brands need that's what I think brands need to be thinking about cuz um I think if you if you have that kind of older school brand approach, it really does constrain what you're able to get out of meta, which is for many of our Certainly our clients the the biggest channel.
We talked about signals briefly. Good segue into partnership ads.
Yes.
We talk about partnership ads internally and I'm on a massive push for partnership ads right now. Partly because Chloe off camera has made us made us pursue this aggressively Q1. Um but yeah, we're on a big push because we've seen the the impacts that it can drive it. It feels like a bit of a I hesitate to use hack but like cheat code right now to to get when done when done well like because so many brands aren't leveraging it. I think that creates an opportunity to get great results before everybody is doing it everywhere.
Yeah.
Um
We see it as like a multiplier of diversity. It's like when you add in the identity, it it's another variable to add to that similarity piece and it helps with signals by leveraging other people's audiences and how different people react to different different accounts.
But what do you think is a realistic sort of spend target for partnership ads? Um, how are you seeing the best brands use the use the tool internally to drive results?
I mean the top performer, the top brands are spending between 30 and 50% on partnership ads today. Um and it's just because it partnership had consistently uh deliver lower CPA and higher CTR. So like you're saying basically I don't know if we call it cheat code but but I think I think the top brand have understood uh few things. The first is that injecting partnership ads within your adset within within your campaign really bring one authenticity and it's we were talking about differentiating content and second going back to signals, you're bringing a different completely different set of signals right especially when you're running the part from the creator's handle right you're bringing the signals from the creative handle it's community it's type of content uh it's type of emotion that deliver. So you, like we were saying earlier, you're really feeding the algorithm a completely different set of creative signals in order to reach new audiences. So I mean all the way into partnership ads and not just because I'm a fan of creators, but really because because it does deliver results. So it's not just nice to have, it's now a must have to have.
Yeah. And I think brands overthink it. I think there's a lot of ways to get started quite quickly there. Um, we've we've seen success with like founders stories being delivered through a founder using internal team members.
Um, but I also think where we're going to go through this year is like we were talking about this today on a call like the concept of maybe getting an expert for a brand and then building a separate creative strategy around that person that runs just through that identity and almost isolating that work stream. But
Yeah, seeing a lot of brands overthink it I think in terms of just getting started and and leveraging that tool. Yeah, I think there's a lot of brands who are scared to to hand their brand away, right? Because that's how they see it basically. But but there's so many great creators out there uh who really understand how to work with brands also now. They're not just like crazy artists, you know what I mean? And you take their brand and they take it completely somewhere else. They understand brand DNA. They understand how to work with brand. So it's really about building this collaboration with those creators.
Very tactical question just on this. You may not be able to answer it, but are you going to be penalized for creative similarity if you're taking say a top spender within the ad account and then starting to whitelist that against the creator?
Repeat the question understood.
So you would you is you mentioned like it's a completely different set of signals. So, I I guess the question is, you know, if you've got a top performing creative in the ad in your ad account or a creative that's um showing promise, uh are you going to get um penalized for creative similarity if you take that creative and then run it as a partnership ad with that creator?
That's an interesting question. I'm not I'm not sure I have or we have the answer to it.
I've seen it work. I've seen it work, I think. But yeah, um we I mentioned quickly the brands overthinking it, but like if you are a brand watching this, like what's the quickest way and best way to get started on that partnership ads journey? How do you how do you functionally go about doing it?
Yeah, I think I think there's few steps when when you start with partnership ads, the first one is to really understand what kind of creators do you want to work with.
Mhm.
And where to find them. I think the creator marketplace is a great place to start your journey. uh because you have from nano to to bigger creators. Uh I know sometimes the investment also can scare brands away. So it's good also to start with maybe smaller creators to test the water and understand how to work with creators. Uh the second is really to find a way to work with them and and we help also some some brand with that. It's like how to write a brief, how to let go of some of your brand guard rails when you work with creators and give the creators real creative freedom.
Yeah. uh when when you work with them and it's about like building like I said building a collaboration I think the biggest mistake that we see brand do is to think that partnership ad is a one-off and not an always on strategy and when we mean always on strategy it's not just having partnership ads all the time and always on but it's also working with some of creators as always on right especially when you see that the content is working right and when your community for example associate this creator to your It's good to really build a relationship with these creators because one, it becomes easier to work with them. They understand your brand D and two, you can really start building a story or a story arc with those creators and with your brand.
Could you talk about some of the I know there were quite a few updates in 2025 in terms of features that help uh brands with partnership ads. Could you talk through some of those newer features?
I was about to say I think the creator marketplace is like the unsung hero of Exactly. People don't talk about valuable especially to add to add to what you said about getting started the they recently I think it was only a couple of weeks ago rolled out the ability to use creator marketplace to search through your brand's followers for active creators which I think is a really quick leg up it's like these people are already engaging with you like makes sense to go try and get them on first.
Brand mentions isn't it as well?
So yeah, I think that's just been a there's been a lot of features coming out there which has been really valuable.
Yeah, I I think the like I said the creator marketplace is really to democratize working with creators right? I think you have you have this world of like creator agencies which are really also great because they provide also a strategic value to to the relationship that you have with creators but I think creator marketplace is great because it gives power to the brand also because it's not about like you arrive on a c on a marketplace and you just look around right there there's proper filters and once you find your pool of potential creators then there is this level of like like I said it's not just nice to have creators but what kind of like metrics do they provide right and then you have this layer also not just in term of like their reach and the demographic but also like what type of performance they can provide then it's the the third level of like reaching out and really building this relationship and I always say like don't believe that every creator want to work with you also I think that's the beauty of creators it's like they also very the authenticity is that sometimes they say like I don't my value align with your value as a brand but that's also what they make them powerful that's why we see amazing results right with them so I think you have different layers that really put the brand in the driver seat and less at the mercy of the of the creator world so I think that's what creator plays for me is an exciting and I know that we're going to get more and more features also on it.
Yeah, I think it's been everyone should go and have a look at that as well it's great it's a great tool and when you when you're actually launching functionally again tactically in the ad account when you're launching these partnership ads. Um, it's very different type of content. We're seeing brands approach it very differently when we're looking in accounts, when we're doing audits. We we've taken the approach of like continuing to consolidate, treating it just as another creative test. What What would you say is best practice for brands there?
Yeah, that's a good point. I think the biggest mistake that that brands do is to create a different campaign or a different adset for their partnership ads, right? like we were saying, you completely miss the opportunity of those those signals, those creative signals, right? So, the idea is really to incorporate those partnership ads within basically your adsets or UBA campaign. It's don't don't create silos like we were saying like radical simplification. It's because again, you're feeding the algorithm more creative signals to reach new audiences. So like you were saying, I think the biggest mistake is to isolate those those partnership ads into their own adset or the into their own ad campaign.
Yeah. And I think that the signals aren't just ad level, are they? It's like the sequence of ad delivery by incorporating it in it can provide a signal to reach new audiences which then lifts the full campaign up. That would be my hypothesis. But
Yeah, we definitely tried to incorporate them into into those core campaigns rather than strip them out. will will deliver best performance.
Switching gears a bit to AI.
It would be it would be wrong not to touch AI. I feel like it's the it's got to be in every podcast. I feel like this what which of Meta's AI tools because I I know you've got a lot of like consumerf facing tools. You've got a lot of um um ad account level tools, creative tools, which I actually think has come on leaps and bounds over the last few months, the creative tool in in the platform. But what do you think are like the absolute must use for advertisers? I didn't word that very well, but you kind of know what.
And you can't say all of them.
No, I I mean no not all. I already mentioned I already mentioned Mi earlier, so I already tick that box for inspiration. But I think I think today uh brands would be would be missing a huge opportunity if you were not using the full suite of advantage plus tools, right, which are available to everyone in ads manager, right? And we talk about text generation, video editing or like image to video conversion. I think today and and maybe few months back it felt like it was for early adopters. I think today everybody everybody should be at least playing with them right trying trying with them. I think to me at least as like a strategist and a brand strategist text generation is really interesting to back to personas right because I think now today you can actually create those personal within the text generation. That means that the AI is smart enough to understand your brand DNA when you when you develop a message and also understand which person you want develop this message for. So it's like the AI understanding your brand DNA and also the the personas that you're trying to target. So I think yeah, I think advantage plus is a great way to start. Like I say, it's not for early adopters. It should be for everyone today.
Yeah. And there's some features in there like comments, pin comments, delivery. Um, the rest of them escape me right now that I do think are no-brainers. You just have to be cautious of not going too loose with them because you can end up with happy birthday on some sort of random asset or Christmas music in middle of July. But um, I'm sure that'll that'll get improve improve over time. I guess that that comes on to my next question of like where have you seen AI tools create problems for advertisers and where do people need to be cautious when just when giving all power to the robot? Especially because I know one thing you've spoken a lot about today is authenticity. So, it's almost balancing the two, right?
Well, I think you just mentioned about happy birthday or like a Christmas song in July, right? I think the biggest pitfall that that we've seen brands do is like over reliance on AI. Uh I think when when we think about AI, we think that AI like is about augmenting human creativity, not replacing it. And I think you should always have a human within the loop, right? Sometimes today's AI doesn't get your brand ton of voice right or exactly right or maybe missing a bit in the message that you're trying to deliver. So over relying on AI without a human within the loop I think is today the biggest pitfall. I think there is this idea of like people who are against AI and people are just throwing everything at AI and wishing for the best. I think there's a balance between the two and I think like you were saying authenticity come also from the human touch.
Yeah, for sure. Well, especially with AI creative, like I think it's one you've got to be super careful with. Um, I think there's a lot of value, but I think I see that as like its own vehicle in a way, like it's another messaging vehicle that we use. It isn't, as you say, a replacement to real um real content.
Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. And I think a lot of our fastest growing if I look at the last 12 to 18 months for our client base the type of create and we were looking at like our top assets sorry I would say that the majority of our largest spenders are the ones where you would say they are more authentic more organic and hard and therefore harder to produce with full AI end to end tools right now. I'm sure that'll become easier.
Yeah. But I know the brands you're talking about, but every single one of them also has top spenders that have AI creative to some degree. Even if it was like AI voice over or, you know, how we've used winning messaging in a framework and put that into third person AI generated framework. So yeah, I I it's it's still the still outweighs the balance of AI creative. But I think the best brands are doing authenticity really well, but also doing AI really well and are open to doing AI cuz we have some brands that will not touch it.
Yeah.
Um, which is problematic in it in a different way.
I think it's it's it's part of our job, right? As I'm going to talk about the creative strategy world, it's it's about like making people understand how you meet AI where your creative or your marketing ambitions are, right? And it's like today you may have bigger creative marketing ambitions and today if you're not using AI to reach those ambition it won't be possible for you. So it's like mixing really mixing both of like those creative marketing ambitions and the capabilities that AI provide today.
Yeah, we've had we've definitely obsessed over creative for the last 12 months but measurement is such a fundamental part of of meta strategy. Um, we I guess we're fortunate in a way that the majority of our clients and the majority of our spend right now is is conversion optimized rorowass and CPA easy to fundament a lot easier to track the impact of than when you start getting into sort of brand upper funnel. Um, with all the automation that that's coming and like the the changes in the platform, the changes in creative diversity, how do you think brands should be thinking about measurement and like proving the value of um investment whether that's creative or whether that's in new objectives or just generally in new campaign uh new structures in the ad account or
I think I think the top brands are understanding that today it's not about a one in platform metric and I think they partner with the agency today to really create a more holistic measurement framework. uh I think we all understand that meta is just one piece of a larger ecosystem right and I think it's the top like I said the top uh the top brand really understand and have really advanced analytic when it comes to really understand the interplay not between only uh between the different platform but between the different channels right so it's not just about your page channel but it's also about your organic about your emailing about offline also really combining all of those into bigger and more complex like I say holistic measurement framework. So, it's less about the the one off or like we were saying earlier the short-term win, but understanding how do you do longer and more meaningful winning through those holistic measurement framework.
Yeah. And I think there's such varying degrees of measurement sophistication in brands of all different sizes. There's often like different motivations in different teams trying to prove different outcomes.
There's a CFO who wants absolute clarity on every pound spent. And I think that's that's the the biggest thing I think I would advise all brands is like start building like a measurement process early because it's really hard. We work with a couple of brands that I'm thinking about right now that have that haven't done that have got to a point of really complex media mixes. they've got Amazon, retail, four media channels and then trying to do it at that point trying to set up tests, validate things and uh build cases for further investment in key areas is really difficult.
And and and one point I would make also is invite your creative to those measurement conversation. uh again this idea of not s creating silos within the company even invite the creative strategy invite the creative and I know that maybe for some creative team at the beginning it's like speaking another language when we talk about measurement and performance but the more you integrate those department together the the more you work towards the same goal and like you're saying basically it doesn't feel like you're trying to speak a different language or you're not trying to reach different goals or measuring different you're all measuring the same thing.
Yeah, I think incrementality is an awesome Right. Getting getting to the point where you've got a really good process of proving incremental outcomes on both meta and other other sales channels from the activity you're doing.
Yeah.
So, we're almost there now.
Sorry for the grilling, but
No worries.
I didn't feel like real.
I think um one question that this just bookends this quite nicely. you work with, you know, the top top 1% of brands, the disruptor brands, you will have seen a lot of the nuances, the things that they're doing correctly that gives them that status. If you had to give one piece of advice to a brand that is wanting to move from, you know, where they are today to a disruptor by the end of 2026, what would you tell them?
I mean, I'm going to sound like I'm repeating myself, but embrace a creative diversity with a strategic framework. And that means like stop thinking in terms of like winning and losing ads and like I was saying start building this creative portfolio. Uh going back develop a deep understanding of personas, their motivators, their barriers and really based on that build a matrix of creative concept back to this creative portfolio, right? And not to sound again, but like feed the algorithm like a rich mixed creative and let the algorithm really reward you when you're feeling well or fueling it the right way.
Amazing. Well, I think that's a bit of a mic drop moment. Well, Maxim, thank you so much for for joining us today. I appreciate you coming on. Um, and yeah, if you've enjoyed this episode, please give it a like, subscribe.
Just Yeah, final point. And I know we we've talked about loads of meta updates. Um, where for those watching who maybe find it difficult to stay up to date with those, where should they be heading to to stay on top of all of the algorithm changes, the the upcoming creative similarity rollouts, etc. for for their brand and business?
Yeah, I think the the meta for business website is a great source when it comes to updates and and knowledge, bit of a knowledge center. And there's also like great communities like and great source of information like your podcast for example and I swear I haven't been asked to say that but I think it's also it's good to to bring different vision to the table like the official version with meta for business and then what the community is really experiencing with our updates.
Perfect. Well, yeah, thank you again for coming on. It's been a pleasure.
We'll put the link down below. Thanks for joining us.
Thank you. Cool.