The One About Meta’s Andromeda

In this episode of Scalability School, Andrew and Brad are joined by Daniel Okon, CEO of ACTIV, a growing digital first agency that has also moved to incubating/growing multiple 7 figure brands in the health & wellness space, to decode Meta’s "Andromeda" update. Andromeda has created a huge shift in the ad ecosystem where the algorithm (via systems like GEM and Lattice) now aggressively favor true creative diversity over simple iterations.

Daniel breaks down why old scaling methods like duplicating winners or making minor tweaks are yielding diminishing returns. Instead, he introduces a research heavy framework focused on identifying "sub-avatars" (specific customer behaviors or pain points, like "bloating after pizza") rather than broad demographics. The conversation covers the tactical "pull forward" method for extending winning angles into new formats, how to conduct manual research that AI can't replicate, and why your creator briefs should focus on trust and niche authority over brand aesthetics.

If you've been stumped by Andromeda, Daniel and the Scalability team do a great job sucinctly explaining the changes and what advertisers need to do to be successful on the platform once again. 

Key Takeaways: 

• Is your ad account suffering because you’re confusing "creative volume" with actual "creative diversity"?

• Why Meta’s new "GEM" system penalizes ads that look different but mean the same thing.

• How most advertisers are capping their own scale by targeting broad demographics over specific "sub-avatars".

• How the "Spray and Pray" testing method has all but ran out of ink and the "Exploration vs. Expansion" framework that is replacing it?

• How a simple "Q&A" static image can easily outperform a high-production video ad in the new world of Andromeda.

This episode of the Scalability School podcast is sponsored by NorthBeam and they just launched Northbeam Incrementality. Northbeam Incrementality gives you easy, automated, self-service incrementality tests, while protecting you from the major mistakes so many people make while running incrementality tests. Your MTA handles the daily tactics, your MMM guides the long-term planning, and Incrementality provides the causal truth. It’s a closed loop that allows you to scale what works and cut what doesn't. Right now when you head over to northbeam.io/incrementality, they’re offering Scalability School listeners 50% off unlimited tests for a year when you join. Just tell them we sent you!

To learn more about Daniel Okon and his team you can follow him on X https://x.com/thedanielokon or head to www.weareactiv.com 

To connect with Andrew Foxwell send an email Andrew@foxwelldigital.com

To connect with Brad Ploch send him a DM at https://x.com/brad_ploch

To connect with Zach Stuck send him a DM at https://x.com/zachmstuck

Learn More about the Foxwell Founders Community at https://foxwellfounders.com/

Learn More about the The Hive Haus Creators Community at http://HiveHausUGC.com

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Full Transcript

[00:00] Like if I search, I'm just going to say, I like searching how to like fix bloating on Instagram, the type of content that I see in the organic side. And if I go into my ad library and I don't see similar type of content, if my product is to help with bloating, then that's a problem.

[00:15] Because the audience that will go and look for or the algorithm that will actually show you this content that's actually doing really well, they're going to want to see the same type of stuff that actually helps them and gives them insights and they will comment and share and like and all those things.

[00:28] And I think that meta is wanting advertisers to create more content like that. In terms of like daily spend around your creatives and you know that, then you can do a few things that can actually build upon that. So that means like building a freelander, listicle, specifically focused on that group of people talking about the problems, talking about whatever that is.

[00:47] If that's your brand, if your brand can do that, if that's something that you would be, that would be helpful for you. That's something I could see working really well. And that does work really well. Then that actually can create more scale behind that group because there you're speaking directly to what the issues are, not just on your ads, but also on like more of a listicle or advertorial type of setting.

[01:04] I come from health and wellness, so that's kind of very focused for me. Not to extend this point too long, but like you just mentioned creators, like when we were talking about landing pages and offers, like that's another way to do it.

[01:12] So you just take the core message and you go find creators that resonate with that message that's working. And then they're best suited to go talk about it. Like when you do your creator briefs, if you find the right creator, you don't have to explain to them the problem that you're solving because it's like they intimately understand it and they make better briefs as a result of that.

[01:27] On the other side, I've been so focused on paid, but it's kind of merging. So that is like, what's your experience going to be across the board? And if you have a bad experience on the organic side, then they're probably going to ding.

[01:37] So you have to really focus on better organic. So that would be one thing. The other thing that I'm focusing on. And now let's take a listen to the Scalability School podcast.

[01:52] Okay. Welcome to another episode of the Scalability School podcast talking about Andromeda. Wow. So congratulations to all the tens of listeners that brought us here with our Ferraris we're getting off of sponsorships and shit.

[02:05] It's insane. So thank you. We were making so much money off of this. It's, it's crazy. It's, I think it's more impressive. This comes out in order of like, if it comes out in order that this is actually 20, I think that would be super impressive.

[02:18] This is coming to probably won't. Yeah. Right. We're, we're a very high production podcast. Somebody asked me the other day if we were going to get better cameras. And I was like, probably not. To be honest with you. We're too locked in on the ad accounts.

[02:29] That's right. Too locked in. Well, for those of you that don't know, Daniel O'Con is a incredible brand owner, agency owner, dear friend of mine, dear friend of the podcast. I'm somebody who I absolutely love and respect so much and is a brother to me.

[02:41] So I'm excited to have you here, Daniel, and talking about everything related to Andromeda and the way things are working for you.

[02:50] I'm excited to be here. And this is the only podcast I listened to. So other than some other ones that are not e-count focused, this is literally.

[02:59] It's super actionable. So it's actually really exciting to be on this and hopefully I can share some dual value as well. Well, that's, I were glad to hear it. Yeah. I mean, we're honored that you chose to take time out to talk about this.

[03:13] So today we're talking about Andromeda and in case you don't know, basically we're just going to run through this really briefly. And Brad, give me some color and Daniel, feel free to chat in. So Andromeda decides, you know, they rebuilt, Andromeda is like how Meta rebuilt, but besides how, what ad gets shown, it's one big system now.

[03:30] And so the smaller ones and the system prefers creative variety. That's the big one. So if the ads look or feel too similar, Meta basically do duplicates them and it reduces your reach. Um, so you need different types of ads, not small tweaks.

[03:44] Then you talk about gem, which this is Meta reading and watching. Your ads more like a human would, it understands the message, not just the words or visuals, and if your ads say the same thing, Meta sees them as repetitive.

[03:57] So again, same type of thing.

[03:58] You know, and then there's lattice, which is the third system, which is Meta figuring out what's working faster. So you don't need to like run things for as long as of a test as you used to and that kind of thing. So these are kind of the three systems.

[04:10] But I think with the advent of Andromeda, especially, and the differences that we've had to see coming out of it in terms of creative, that's what we're talking about today. Right. What are the big swings creatively that people that you've had to go through and that you've had to really develop to be able to reach net new people because you can't keep showing them the variations on the same shit, Brad color on this.

[04:34] Daniel let's rock.

[04:36] Yeah. So I think a lot of people have been, not that it really matters, but like a lot of people have been lumping all of this into just the Andromeda name. But I think it's all kind of goes together. So I actually heard recently, like a way of how this flows really nicely.

[04:50] And it's to your point, it's kind of like gem is like the personalized library on an individual level. It's like what you care about as a, as a potential customer. Lattice is your preferences across content type platform objective.

[05:03] And it tries to combine those libraries into like one general understanding of this is everything that you care about as a person. That's a very simplified version of it. There's one thing that is also useful, which is the sequencing of all that.

[05:15] And I hear this word sequencing several times and it's the way that meta specifically described, it was interesting. And they're like, Hey, think about it is you get served a snowboard ad and you buy a snowboard and instead of seeing a bunch of snowboards moving forward in your ads, it's, you see the ski trip next, like the ski trip to buy or the boots or whatever.

[05:30] It's like, it's a better flow of seeing ads. I'm sure we all have been scarred by like, you want to buy a mattress, you know, three years ago as you click a mattress ad, it's like, Oh my God, my entire feed is fricking mattress ads.

[05:42] I cannot escape. It's like, I bought one, leave me alone.

[05:45] And so sequencing is doing a better job of that. I, my, I think, and I may be wrong on this, so anybody feel free to correct me, but I think sequencing also matters in terms of like an individual advertiser. Right. So Daniel, think about your brand.

[05:58] It's like, I'm sure you think about building ads that speak to people at different phases. It's like, you know, a lot of people talk about this as top of funnel, middle funnel, bottom of funnel, or unaware through product or whatever that, that flow is.

[06:08] So it's sequencing both on a product and what you're interested in, but also sequencing as in people might need to see different messages from advertisers in order to feel comfortable making a purchase.

[06:18] Uh, and then Andromeda is the, is like the thing that it's like way more computing power, I don't know. I'm, you know, whatever. I can't say a touch grass, but maybe I touch grass more than the people that built, built Andromeda, but it's like the power.

[06:30] It's like the power behind all that, that helps it. It goes through the ads at a much faster rate to find the one that matches you in this moment when you open up Facebook, you open up Instagram and start scrolling. That flow of it was, was really interesting to me to hear it kind of positioned in that way.

[06:43] Um, so yeah, hopefully we can give some tactical things to say. I was like, this is what we're doing with that information in mind. I think that's good. I mean, I think Daniel has gone through, Daniel has gone through so much of this and like thinking about this in the last few months.

[06:55] So Daniel, walk us through like you hearing this, the changes, the way that you thought about this, the deep introspection that you've done surrounding this, and then the work that's resulted and results out of it too. Yeah.

[07:06] So I think some of the things that are helpful in this is like, actually as a user, like people need to go onto Instagram, like a lot of people are like, I don't use Facebook, I don't use Instagram. Like go onto Instagram and search for the things that people in your like customer base are searching for.

[07:25] I mean, there's a lot of research that you need to do to understand them better.

[07:28] But I think what's changing is the, the way that people are buying and what, how meta is actually going in front of people is like you said, Brad, like there is this unaware to like, like problem where to solution where to like product aware, and you have to be building out creative and your strategy needs to actually be focused on how are you approaching these people?

[07:50] And if you're actually creating the same stuff, like what I'm seeing is.

[07:54] We saw stuff working in the past that was like doing great, getting to people, new customers and new audiences. But a lot of brands are seeing that like net new reach go down, down, like down further and further and further because they're not actually creating different types of creatives.

[08:08] That's wildly different. So like, if you think about some like AI looking thing that you probably a brand owner would like be scared of to be putting in their ad account versus something that's like wildly interesting and unique, like you have to create wildly different types of creatives.

[08:26] And then you have to understand your customer, like what their like desires or what their like needs are and what their pain points are and like what you're actually speaking to. Because if you look at the core and understanding this audience of your audience, like if, if I search, I'm just going to say, like searching how to like fix bloating on Instagram, the type of content that I see in the organic side.

[08:49] And if I go into my ad library and I don't see similar type of content, if my product is to help with bloating, then that's a problem because the audience that will go and look for or the algorithm that will actually show you this content that's actually doing really well, they're going to want to see the same type of stuff that actually helps them and gives them insights and they will comment and share and like and all those things.

[09:13] And I think that meta is wanting advertisers to create more content like that.

[09:18] So that they actually get, you know, more reach, lower cost per click, higher engagement rates, all that stuff, longer watch time and our engagement. So we need to become smarter at like researching our customers and understanding them deeply and talking and saying the words that they say and actually like creating content they consume.

[09:38] Because if we don't do that, then we're just going to like, if we look at somebody's ad library and try to copy that, it's not going to work. It maybe worked before, it doesn't work anymore.

[09:48] I think you just gave like an insane hack that I had not thought about. And I did it as you were talking. I literally just typed in bloating to my search bar and I'm looking at the visual differences and what I'm seeing. It's like, okay, they're probably talking about similar things, but even the visual distinctness and like what I'm seeing and there's, I'm only, I can only see nine things I haven't scrolled at all.

[10:07] But as I'm starting to scroll, it's like, oh, there's a bunch of different visuals, like this is crazy. Like, and this is sorted by probably the most relevant stuff, maybe to me, right? Maybe there's some stuff that's a little bit more adjusted for me, but have you actually done that?

[10:20] Like, is that what you do when you, when you're, you're doing this research is like, you're going in and researching this thing. And then it's like, you're watching probably the individual content, but also like that grid just gave me like a ton of inspiration for how to communicate these things.

[10:32] Yeah. And, and I think if you, if you go like deeper and in your research and your customer, you're understanding their problems, right? And then you understand what questions they're asking. And then you put those questions into place like that.

[10:44] And yes, that's part of my process for sure.

[10:47] Guess what AI can't do that right now. Like AI is not going to go and tell you like these were the most viral videos. And they're going to tell you exactly what they said. You have to go and do this yourself and do some manual work, which people really see not to like to do.

[11:00] They want to like put a prompt into chat TBT and spit out the best solution. But I think that that to me is like one of the best ways to actually understand your audience because your customers are watching this stuff and you have to understand what they're actually consuming.

[11:15] And, and like, right. It took like 20 seconds. Anybody could do it quickly. That could help you market a lot better as a, as a marketer and a brand owner.

[11:22] Yeah. That's sweet. I'm literally, I think I'm going to send a screenshot of that to our team and be like, Hey, this is a really cool idea. I was like blown away instantly from that. Like it's such a small, super quick thing to do.

[11:32] Okay. So you're mentioning a couple of different points around like visual diversity, like, you know, communicating things in different ways. And there, there was an interesting discussion kind of happening where we're talking about like visually diverse things and looking different.

[11:46] And I think we can actually talk about tactically what you can change. Um, but I think there's, there's a, there's kind of like this important distinction of, uh, like talking through creative and I'm going to see if I can frame this up in, in a way that's makes sense, but let's say you have something in your ad account that's working.

[12:02] Like let's use bloating and let's say you have like, it's a three reasons why video from a female creator. And like, that's the thing that's that's working. What, but I don't think meta is necessarily suggesting. And what we're not seeing is like, you need to completely abandon like that format of video, that type of message, that type of creator, like you can.

[12:20] If you create ads that are similar to that, that meta buckets into similar, like a similar, that similar bucket, what they're not saying is that can't make your ad performance in that bucket more efficient. You can, you can get a little bit more scale.

[12:33] What they are saying is that you're probably not going to get a ton of like volume out of that. Like if you think it's really easy to think about this in the framework of cost controls, right? If you have an inflated budget and you keep making all of the same stuff, it's like, it might get a little bit more efficient.

[12:44] You might get a little bit more delivery, five to 10%. We're probably not doubling your budget. Like you're not really expanding out in a way that's going to lead to like a ton of meaningful scale. So I'm curious, like when you are thinking about making ads, like are you, I've heard this, I think for a manager of affairs, he called, he's like, he's a expansion and exploration.

[13:03] I think it's a really interesting way to frame that up. But, um, I guess like in that context, like, you know, how are you thinking about that piece specifically? Like, are you trying every single piece of creative you make is like completely new motivator, completely new persona?

[13:16] Like how do you diversify within the framework of like what's working today and keeping that thing pulled forward?

[13:24] Yeah. So I think like essentially what we do is we, the best way to go about this, especially if you have limited resources, most brands that do in the smaller medium size is testing through diverse images that either could be native looking short B roll type of stuff with the different type of headlines that you could use based on that avatar based on sub avatar, whatever you call it and doing those tests like wildly different based on the highest possible chance of, of, I would say like winning, winning grouping of, of this sub avatar.

[14:00] So that you would do that.

[14:02] Maybe do these tests, test these concepts out, X amount of like a test you can do depending on your ad budget.

[14:09] And maybe that means like three to five different ones a day or one to two a day, whatever you can do over time to test that out. And then once you find stuff that is actually performing well, because meta is going to pick up quickly.

[14:23] And I think like you guys are going to talk about this where like, actually it doesn't take that much time and spend to see what's working. So you can actually get something like we had something based on our research and we put in that account on Monday and it's now the top spender in one of our accounts and it's just clear that metametano is in the CPA is amazing.

[14:44] Like it's super top of funnel and it's getting people through because we hit on the specific things. And now we're going to take that from that ad, which is just a very simple static ad and we will start to build out briefs on scripts to build out different concepts for like videos that will be specifically based on that.

[15:03] And I think that's what you should be doing is testing stuff that you can test quickly through images, short videos that are really easy to kind of put together for your team and then take those tests and find out whatever those winners are and do it in a systematic way.

[15:19] Because I think a lot of people try to like test in a really like chaotic way. And like try to spray and pray based on your research, based on your highest chance of success, then you should find winners that actually work in our impactful.

[15:31] I mean, that's like a, that's one of the biggest ones, right? Of the actual creative system that you have built in your organization. I think is something that a lot of brands and agency owners even are coming around on and thinking about how do we do this right way?

[15:44] How have you changed the structure of your organization to be creating better ads along with creating more volume of them, you know, what, who have you built in there that you didn't have before and what does the workflow look like? Because even things like tagging is so essential, right?

[16:04] Like versus what it was.

[16:06] I mean, a year ago I was like tagging was like, we would throw it on and then you just like highlighted a certain color on a Google sheet and it was like, and now the volume is such that you're like, I want to kill myself thinking about how I used to do that.

[16:18] So I'm wondering like, how have you built it differently now in your organization and from like a process standpoint? Yeah, it's an ongoing process because we're changing a lot of things right now. So I wish I could tell you that we have this like very clean process.

[16:33] I think some things that we're doing is in our naming conventions.

[16:36] So we have very clear naming conventions around, let's say a sub avatar. We'll just use that word. Avatar is like a core desire. Sub avatars like behaviors, experiences connected to that core desire. So let's say I'll just give an example of bloating.

[16:50] So I want to feel healthier.

[16:52] And in the past, my experience was I've experienced bloating whenever I eat pizza. We'll just use that word. That group of people that could be sub avatar, like avatar one, which I would be healthier sub avatar one is, is the person who ate pizza and gluten.

[17:09] And that would be like how we would do naming conventions in the ad specifically so that we can track what, what grouping is actually getting the most spend. And obviously you can use tools and notice tools like, you know, motion and other tools that you can actually take these and you can track that in those analytic tools, but I think that for us, that's kind of the biggest thing is like, how are we doing naming conventions so that we can keep things in a really organized way that we can find like what's working and what's actually deserving to spend more time to actually scale and our team can actually organize it in a way that they can actually see the results and the data better.

[17:47] And your team now is you, it's you and then you have creative strategists and you have like a how, who's handling creators and what does that look like?

[17:58] So essentially like our creative team looks like we have our head of creative strategy and that would say like overseeing about four brands. So it would say our head of creative strategy, creative strategists, our producer, which is more so like our script writer working with the creators.

[18:14] And then we have our video editors and graphic designers. So that's kind of like the core kind of team structure that would be working on these brands that really focus on like research, the process of getting like the script built and working with creators as well as our video editing team, and then essentially like going through that process on that loop of getting everything right now.

[18:35] I've been spending a lot of time myself doing a lot of research to be honest with you. I'm doing a lot of research in conjunction with my head of creative strategy. So it's, it's just something that I'm reworking a lot of this process around and I need to just do it myself and then be able to implement this process with my head.

[18:52] All right, friends, quick break. This episode is brought to you by Northbeam, the marketing attribution platform that we love over here at the pod. And good news, Northbeam is launching Northbeam Incrementality. Northbeam Incrementality gives you automated, easy self-service incrementality tests while protecting you from the major mistakes so many people make while running these incrementality tests, because honestly, most of these are kind of a mess, right?

[19:15] So what I love about it is you, it gives you a casual truth you can act on every day, not one off siloed reports, and it does it end to end. So it automates lift testing does, it connects you with your MTA and MMM. So you can scale it works and cut what doesn't all in one dashboard.

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[19:46] Get over to Northbeam.io forward slash incrementality and be the first on the list and they're offering 50% off unlimited tests for a year to advertisers who join now. Tell them we set you at the scalability school.

[19:59] I can't wait to hear about it.

[20:00] I don't, I think when people say that they have it all figured out and they have this beautiful system, like it's not true, first of all, and the cell that won. Beefs. And beefs earlier. Yeah. And I think that you, yeah. I have beef with anybody that says that they have it figured out because nobody fricking does because this shit changes like every minute.

[20:18] But until I think to your point, Daniel, you know, you doing it yourself is, is I think maybe something that more founders want to think about and more operators want to think about, right? Because it's not to do this well.

[20:29] It's not something that can be outsourced. I think, you know, it can be to a degree, but to really find true unlocks, you know, I mean, you've been talking on X about how many hours you've dedicated to thinking about this, you're like, I think it's not a hundred hours.

[20:44] It's 300 hours, like of really understanding.

[20:47] And I think that gives to the, you know, you can talk about that, but that goes to that point of how long it actually takes one question I have, which we get asked all the time, I get asked all the time, people in the founders community ask all the time, and this may be simple questions, but your ads, your budget is, is, is high.

[21:05] You have, I think you run cost caps. And so you take a new concept that you said it's the winner. It started on Monday. Now it's like, you know, doing really well.

[21:14] So you put that in there and you're just putting it against preexisting creatives. Or are you starting a new thing to test it? Or like, how are you running it and how are you determining? Are you looking at soft metrics to say it's winter and then scaling it?

[21:26] Or are you just saying, let it fly baby and go from there? Yeah. This is a process.

[21:33] Uh, this is a pre-work process. So there's a couple of different things we're doing for the main, so the main process we were doing now is we do have an account that is fast cap in our, in our winning winners campaign, it would say in that, that we would put anything that we, that is a winner in there and we let it, you know, let things just like roll and get spent, we do have the ABO setup.

[21:58] So we do have, you know, testing campaigns and ABO, you need three to five ads for, per ad set and ABO, and we, we do let that spend and then anything that's promising, we will put into the winning campaign and let that spend.

[22:15] And usually like the stuff that's promising is usually show, it shows up fairly quickly.

[22:20] With not just soft metrics, like your click through rate, cost per click and, and your hold rate, but also just like we see stuff working fairly quickly. And that is kind of finding that this is working. And then we'll, we'll quickly raise budgets in those testing campaigns.

[22:35] Then with stuff that's actually starting to see good success, then usually they'll show up to be pretty strong winners in the, in the scaling campaign. So can we, can we go back to something you were saying earlier? It's like been stuck in my head, wrote down, so I wouldn't forget.

[22:48] You were kind of talking about like how you found with this, with the statics, like you found a thing that's working, but then what you're not doing is, okay, cool. We found that one thing. Like that's, you know, let's go.

[23:00] We need to find more messages. What you're saying is, okay, we've got this thing that's working. We want to pull that forward into new projects and expand the way that we're communicating it, how we're showing it, how we're doing that.

[23:11] Um, I have a couple of like framework things that I can list off for like how we're thinking about pulling that forward. But I'm curious, like when you find a thing that's working and it could be a video, it could be an image and whatever.

[23:21] It's like you have a, what you have to do is like have a hypothesis about what it is about that that's working. And then you pull that forward into new stuff.

[23:29] Do you guys have like a system for how you're doing it, how you think about, because that's like, that is creating diversification from that point.

[23:36] Diversification, like I wanted to find diversification a little bit more. So I'm curious, like, how do you, um, are you taking that and going from there? Do you have any like frameworks for how you do that? Yeah. So generally I always want to see and understand and, and the, the highest percentage of success I think is when you know that the actual like angle, we'll use angle tied to a sub avatars actually the thing, like this is the reason why it's working.

[24:02] And so if you know that if, and if you understand that based on your research and for example, there's one, this was my like second on my list in terms of like top chance of success.

[24:12] Then I know that it's not just because it was like a native image. I know that it was because of this research that I did, that that actually made an impact on the actual typos created that I created. And then this, you know, headline really worked and resonated these people, the content and the copy and then, and all those things actually was resonating with this audience and then that makes it easier for me to say like, well, now I can do deeper research on this specific angle slash sub avatar and uncover more information and find out some details that either people are already talking about on Reddit and other places.

[24:50] There's, there's this thing that I found out in this one process of my research. I'm not going to go deep into the details, but it's like a pyramid and a lot of people talk about how like this, there's supplements that are not effective.

[25:03] And this was their reasoning for why supplements aren't effective. It was essentially in Reddit.

[25:08] Lots of people know about this specific term and, and the word for this thing. Again, I'm, I'm drinking very vague because I'm just trying not to like talk about our specific, like brand. But when we actually dug deep into this, found out that like we can actually talk about the fact that the, our product actually is directly impacting the bigger like problem that people have and the solution to this actually like works its way into being the solution for people.

[25:37] And it's such a weird thing. It's like such a detail, but I wouldn't create a creative around that. I wouldn't have like a creator do a green screen talking about this thing and pointing this out if I didn't actually know that this was the angle that was going to work based on my research.

[25:51] So I would say like, because this process would be like finding out this conflict, the concept to me is, is not as impactful in the framework. It's like the angle connected to sub avatar, then you can make several different types of variations or concepts, whatever you want to call it.

[26:09] And it might be a POV. It might be like a reasons why it might be us versus them, but you should find more winners and you might find it like different types of awareness levels and different parts of the funnel on the phone or middle front top of funnel that actually build more trust and build that kind of funnel, if you will, for this customer base to actually trust you and buy from you based on that.

[26:33] So I would say that's how I would go about it because I think a lot of people will be like, we all we're seeing that this is trending. We're seeing that like, you know, the yapping tick tock, a person is, is trending that type of concept and they'll take that and they'll run with it.

[26:48] But then they're, and I'm like, but why are you, what's the perfect way? Are you trying to tell the customer like, what's your purpose behind it? Do you have any information why this is actually working? No, it's because if you actually went through the process, did the research, got the angle that's actually super strong based on the data and you build from there, you can build tons of different concepts.

[27:08] You definitely find a higher chance percentage of winners because of that process, I think, in my opinion.

[27:13] Yeah. That makes sense. And something that you mentioned, Simon in static, he said something on that episode that I thought was interesting and hopefully I'm not completely misquoting him here, but he was kind of like, you need to figure out to your point the message that you want to communicate and then you find the format for how you communicate it.

[27:28] Similarly, and I'll just kind of contrast with our process. It sounds really similar to yours. It's like, you have to have an idea about what is, what is working. And if you have nothing that's working, okay, that's a different, different process.

[27:38] But like, let's assume you're spending a couple thousand dollars, you know, low thousands, couple thousands of dollars a day, which is probably a lot of people listening to this, so you probably have some theory behind the thing that's working.

[27:46] And it's probably not the format of the ad. It's probably the message behind the ad, how you communicate to your point. So what you can do is if you want to diversify from there, it's like you create, you take that thing, you've got that thing, that thing that you're communicating, that main big point, it's whatever the angle is.

[28:02] And you can maybe diversify that across a bunch of different types of ads. I've been looking at our, we have a, we're starting to build a database of different types of ads across statics, videos, and whatever.

[28:13] So you go through that and you try to match that angle to a different format. So it's like big hero headline is a static review highlights that match that, that message. Native Q and A and UGC, that's one that's working really well right now.

[28:25] It's like, it looks like an Instagram Q and A thing. And it's like addressing that specific angle. It looks like somebody wrote a question and asking about this thing in your answer. So it's like, you take the thing, you can apply it across a bunch of these and statics are super easy to crank out.

[28:38] So the way that we do it is we try to do like four to 10 statics across these different, they all look different. So it's not just like changing the headline, it's the different forms with that core message and you're applying it in that way.

[28:49] So that's like one framework that we use for that. It sounds really similar to what you're saying. It's like take the message, apply it to the format once you have the thing that's working. The other way that I think about it is like from a visual diversity perspective is yes, you can do the, the, the actual like way that it looks with the visual style, visual side, I think is just one of them.

[29:08] But I think you can create diversity through a couple of other things. So like setting, it's like, where's the, like, if you're thinking about creator videos, like where's the creator actually filmed? And it's like, it doesn't mean just go sit in the car because you saw somebody filming a video, somebody sitting in a car.

[29:19] It's like, well, you know, the car could make sense for this reason because it looks less, you know, it looks a little bit more organic, but also like, you know, maybe in a doctor's office makes more sense for your product or whatever it is.

[29:28] Like so you can create a setting composition, which is like POV versus creator talking camera versus whatever context, which is like a product demo versus lifestyle usage versus gifting perspective, which is actually similar to concept visual style, which is kind of what we were just talking about.

[29:45] And then the talents, like the actual person in the, in the, in the ad itself, to give an example of that, we had a, we had an ad that was just like cranking from one of our clients and we took the video and it's like, well, we don't want to just like keep doing this the same way.

[29:58] So we just like sent the script to a slightly older creator and I was like, Hey, this, this message is working. Like she's also sitting in her car. You can sit in her car. It's like, she looks different. She's a little bit older and she starts the video talking about her age and like whatever, and then the script is literally identical otherwise.

[30:13] And it immediately became the, you know, it worked just as well, if not better. And so you don't always have to take these massive swings, but it's like, okay, there's a different type of person that's going to resonate with somebody who's 10 years older than the, you know, the 30 year old versus the 40 year old is going to resonate differently.

[30:27] So just trying to give like a specific tactical example, like where you can take, you pull forward the thing that's working to your point and then just like change a couple of things about it and you, you've get, you've reached diversity and you're not losing the element of what's actually caused the ad to work in the first place.

[30:44] Yeah. And I think like that is such a good point. Diversity doesn't mean diversity of like even angles, tons like trying to reach all these different types of customers.

[30:56] You could have a very specific angle based on a specific niche sub avatar, and that could crush, and you could probably spend five K 10 K a day just on that.

[31:08] If you continue to create really strong creatives, obviously it has to be a big enough grouping of people and a need, but people for me, one of the biggest mistakes I made this year, which I like kick myself for is, is I, I try to go too broad in terms of our focuses.

[31:24] So essentially once I started understanding a deeper understanding of like what we're trying to do, we're talking about lots of different types of desires that people had, we're talking about lots of people, wildly different type of people, how to consume content.

[31:36] And like, then we started narrowing and like, what does this one type of person consume? What, what is their core desire? What are their problems? What are their issues? And I get very, very clear on that. It takes a lot of time to figure out just one type of person and like understand their deepest desires and deepest needs and deepest problems, and then figure out, yeah, you can create a diverse amount of content around that for them.

[32:02] There's so much, there's so many different types of ways you can go about that, but I think that's something for a lot of people to realize and recognize is don't go so broad in your, the way that you go about things, go broad in your diversity.

[32:16] And the way you're talking about, even if it's like a different age group, a person talking about this talk about the same thing, but you need to figure out what that is. But many people are not doing it in a way that's actually very actionable.

[32:29] Yeah. I mean, I think that's really a good point and something that hasn't been said a lot. I think a lot, a lot of the discussion around Andromeda that you said has been around finding, let's say, you know, taking Zach's example of Hollow, right?

[32:40] He's talking about talking to hunters. He's talking about, you know, talking to people that are mountain bikers and these are core different sets of people. And that's how you've thought about Andromeda. That's not necessarily wrong, but to your point, Daniel, it's like go depth within the niche of like within the super sub set of who these people are and understand them before you start to go out into this way, because I think there's more scale in that and more sustainable scale in the depth of understanding the core desire of that particular person.

[33:09] I think that's super interesting. So just for like a tactical standpoint, you're going through, you're doing all this work, you're developing these core desires more appropriately around different segments.

[33:21] How are you designing the customer journey then separately for them too? Are you, do you, is it, you know, landing page that then do they get a different flow? Are they, you know, like you've done all the research on the front end.

[33:35] Are you mirroring it then on the, on the whole thing for them to become a customer and get them to subscribe and, you know, keep them around or how are you thinking about? Yeah. So I think the key indicator is once you get to a certain amount of spend on that sub avatar in terms of like daily spend around your creatives and you know that, then you can do a few things that can actually build upon that.

[33:59] So that means like building a freelander listicle specifically focused on that group of people talking about the problems, talking about whatever that is. If that's your brand, if your brand can do that, if that's something that you, you would be, that would be helpful for you.

[34:13] That's something I could see working really well. And that does work really well. Then that actually can create more scale behind that group because there you're speaking directly to what the issues are, not just on your ads, but also on like more of a listicle or advertorial type of setting.

[34:27] I come from health and wellness, so that's kind of very focused for me. And you know, there's brands that aren't in that group that might not be super, that might not be helpful, but the, the next thing is also your offer.

[34:39] So I think like once you start to get this group of people, you might find that these people aren't willing to spend more than $50 or whatever on their first purchase. So how do you make sure that you cross the right offer for them that actually works well?

[34:53] I think there's a post from Nick Stockes for yesterday, he was talking about how like they, they were scaling breeze and I think they started doing like several different offers, different AOVs, different types of structures, and that helped them scale quite a bit.

[35:05] And I think that's something that more people will want to do. I don't think you should be doing a ton of offers like in the same, at the same time. I think testing different offers are good, but all the stuff that you're doing in terms of research should be kind of understanding what you're like, what your audience or what your new customer, what the new customers would be willing to pay, what's the best offer for them, and then what language is going to be helpful.

[35:30] I would say that those are certainly the most important things, especially with customer acquisition.

[35:35] One thing, Daniel, I've always respected about you is your ability to take on a lot of information and learn relentlessly, dive into a topic and really become obsessed with it. And because of that, you also have to separate a lot of wheat from the chaff.

[35:52] Like there's a lot of that you take, you know, garbage that you take in that you're like, that's not high signal, right? But you have, but you look at it to check it out.

[36:01] What are the pieces of advice that you've received or the frameworks or something, you know, whatever you want to talk about the couple of things this year that have really driven, had made you more money. Like I'll just say it simply that have driven your businesses forward.

[36:18] What are the things that you've listened to? I mean, you could also talk about the inverse and we could get to the segment of beefs and be like, that's some bullshit. Actually, that's some garbage coming out of that place.

[36:27] But I was, I was going to focus on the positives of the things that have really helped you. Yeah. I think the best thing that I've done is like spending less time on Twitter for X and spending more time understanding my customers.

[36:42] And that could be as a creative strategist, as a brand owner, as an agency owner, I don't really care understanding the customers, finding out more about them, listening to like calling them for example, emailing them, you know, the customer.

[36:57] Going to where they're hanging out and doing, I think research based and then building like everything from there. And then I think good communities, sorry, obviously the Foxwell group, I've been loving the group, but also different communities as well as like resources that people are actually like doing the work.

[37:17] I think extremely valuable. So I find that like trusting people, asking questions and for people who are seeing really good results and growing their brands to me is extremely beneficial.

[37:30] To me, that's probably been the most impactful. So yeah, I don't listen to most things. I think there's a lot of people talking a lot of things. I think there's clear value in those places that you can actually learn a lot from other people, but I don't try to listen to many people because it's a lot of stuff.

[37:48] There's a lot of stuff out there.

[37:50] Because like, for example, the ABO testing versus CBO testing, whatever it is, like you could do all this stuff, but does that even matter? It's actually not that important. It's understanding your customer deeply so you can do better work in terms of creating your offer in your phone.

[38:04] Yeah. I mean, I think you also, you think about the beginning of 2025, you know, was when we first all started to have to navigate the health and wellness, you know, categorization and everything that's come through that, which is like just fucking crazy.

[38:19] So talking about that and talking about the taking that as an example, okay, health and wellness categorization, and then we now have, you know, Andromeda has really ramped up this year, creative diversification.

[38:34] We have a whole bunch of stuff we can see that's coming. I feel like right with with meta and the way that that online marketing continues to shift, what are the things that you believe will really like you're preparing for?

[38:52] I assume some of it's our organizational changes, right? And improvements you're talking about, your creative process improvements. What are the other things that you're like, man, I'm really looking at that because that's going to, I know that that's going to be important.

[39:04] Yeah. So if we're talking about, we'll start, I'll start with like meta performance ad stuff. So for example, we're talking about gem. And I think I will be doing more like partnerships with influencers, specifically creators, you call them whatever, and like do like, like collaboration.

[39:23] So they're posting on organic.

[39:25] They're taking the brand. We're posting it on our, on our organic feed.

[39:30] And we're, because as we see meta kind of put everything together, we'll lump it together. Organic is going to be extremely valuable and important for the whole like customer journey. So the not just really great creative, but where are you, where are you living in the organic side?

[39:46] I've been so focused on paid, but it's kind of emerging. So that is like, what's your experience going to be across the board? And if you have a bad experience on the organic side, then they're probably going to ding you.

[39:57] So you have to really focus on better organic. So that would be one thing.

[40:01] The other thing that I'm focusing on is doing a deeper dive on LLM stuff. So like getting, getting found on chat DBT and other places like that. That's obviously a completely different conversation, but seeing how I can, you know, we've, again, people look at Reddit, for example, as a resource.

[40:22] So how can you show up more in Reddit? Don't do stupid stuff and don't do the stuff that's like gray hat or something or not, not so good that I hear people doing cause you're going to get dinged. How do you do it in a way that's, that's above board?

[40:38] But how do you show up in ways that, cause essentially chat DBT and other places will look at some different, stronger resources, including Reddit to find your brand. So as we move towards that way of people, like what is the best bubble block for this?

[40:53] That is essentially what you have to try to rank for. So I'm moving away from focusing on SEO and focusing on LLM and then also focusing on organic type of creative.

[41:03] That can actually like help us scale going in the next year.

[41:06] We had a, so we've been doing LLMs like work for about a year and a half.

[41:12] And it, and the funny story is I have been working with this, these friends that do it and they're doing really well. Like, and they do, they traditionally have done SEO and have done it well, among other things, but they have a particular expertise in LLMs now.

[41:25] And they've been working on that with different e-com companies that I've connected them to and that kind of thing. And they're working with us as kind of, we're obviously a little bit different at Foxxle Digital cause we have all these different properties.

[41:33] But I said, how much of the work is, I said, what's been surprising about working with companies and helping them get their products into LLMs. And they were like, the funny thing is we in like 85% of cases, we aren't even doing LLM like SEO work because they don't even have their core SEO shit.

[41:53] Right. So I'm like, Oh yeah. I mean, cause it's like forever, you know, you, it's a rare thing. If you hear someone be like, yeah, you know, we really dialed in on SEO because it obviously it takes so much patience and it takes it's structural.

[42:08] I mean, it's not sexy.

[42:10] It's not screenshot sharing, but I just thought that was funny. You know, it's like you're, you're focusing on this whole other thing. It's like, well, you don't even have, you're trying to put a second story on, you don't even have a fricking foundation, you know?

[42:20] So that's, that's an interesting topic, but that's just an anecdote. Yeah. There's, there's so many things you can do, right? So she had to focus on, but yeah.

[42:30] You want to, I got beefs ready. I'm unload it up. If you're a, if you're ready to, let's go, let's fire it up. I'm stoked for it.

[42:37] Uh, my, my round one. Yeah.

[42:41] Um, I, I actually think like people, I think there's a lot of like vagueness in what creative diversity means. I mean, like how people are saying it. I think one of the most, I mean, you, Daniel said a lot of like awesome things.

[42:54] Like, I think one of the things you said here, that's like people need to internalize a little bit more is like you, you have to have an idea about what is actually driving the thing that's working behind your ad and like you have to have a hypothesis and you're not just diversifying randomly to get different looking things in your ad account.

[43:09] It's like you're trying to, you're trying to find the format that matches the message that can be shown in a bunch of different ways that like your customer, your potential customers expect that to show up. And so I guess my, my, if I had to summarize my beef, it's just kind of like with the, like saying diversity with that, without defining it.

[43:26] It's like, what does that actually mean? And like, where do you start with it? And I think where you start is by taking the core thing that's working and expanding it out from there, not to extend this point too long, but like you just mentioned creators, like when we were talking about landing pages and offers, like that's another way to do it.

[43:40] It's like, you just take the core message and you go find creators that resonate with that message that's working. And then they're best suited to go talk about it. Like when you do your creator briefs, if you find the right creator, you don't have to explain to them the problem that you're solving, because it's like they intimately understand it and they make better briefs as a result of that.

[43:55] And then they probably make great oil listing partners and blah, blah, blah. You know, it's like you just, yeah. So I don't know. Anyways. I just want to agree with you so much on that, Brad, because the more that we, like there's this process that we had before and it was like, oh, like how are we finding creators, blah, blah, blah.

[44:10] And then like, if you're just trying to find a creator that like meets the brand aesthetic, for example, I am just throw that out the window. If you're going to pay somebody thousands of dollars to create content for you, maybe a thousand dollars, two thousand three, whatever, five thousand.

[44:26] Find somebody who your audience will trust based on your research and based on the actual like grouping, like what are they watching? Who are they listening to? Cause that is, those are influenced, but there's creators that create good content.

[44:41] Find those people based on your research, based on the angle, based on that. And then go pay them money. Cause then you're going to find that that's going to bring a much bigger ROI than going and yeah, like, oh my God. Sorry.

[44:53] Go ahead.

[44:54] Well, no, you can, first of all, you can definitely find great creators at hivehousegcc.com my other creator community that is also for brands. We can find direct access to creators.

[45:04] Um, but the on thing, generally on the point of what you were saying, Brad, and I think there's a fun, there's always been a fundamental issue in creative and Andromeda with the industry that we live in, which is people get clients by scaring the shit out of everyone and making them feel like they are behind and they're fucking up.

[45:29] And by the way, I'm the only one that has the solution. And so they talk about all of these. New wants to crazy, like backwards things.

[45:38] You end up poor brand owners end up being more confused and they come into the founder's community and say, I heard this from this person. I heard this from this person, and I don't know which direction to go. And the answer is, you know, one that, you know, it has many different solutions and it doesn't translate well with nuance.

[45:56] So I think creative and the way that you get creative, like, yeah, it's.

[46:01] That's a beef that I have around all of this and it's, and it's unfortunate. And so anyway, that's one of the missions of what we're trying to do here is like decode some of this crap. So you can actually go and apply it immediately.

[46:13] But anyway, that's, that's my beef for today. My beef is that people want the easy way.

[46:19] It's not going to be easy.

[46:21] And, and you're not going to like, you're not going to win by just like putting a bunch of prompts into jet TBT.

[46:27] Like you have to do work and it's hard and you can be smarter, but like stop trying to just get the easy way out. And there's going to be, you can hire people to try to do stuff. Cause a lot of the work you have to do is yourself, like the work that you have to do yourself.

[46:40] So I think the main takeaway from me is, and the beef I would say is like people trying to like find that comment on this and this post, and then you're going to get the whole guide of all the prompts and all the stuff that's going to make this great ad you're not, it's not going to work.

[46:56] So stop trying to do it. I love it. Yeah. Daniel, I appreciate, uh, we'll put your contact information in the show notes. I appreciate you joining us. Thank you for your insights that you've shared. Always wonderful to speak with you and thanks for listening everybody.

[47:08] Please go rate us wherever you listen to podcasts. The ratings are important. The comments are important to us because it helps us reach another one or two people, which if we do it right by the year end, we'll have many listeners.

[47:20] These are the listeners we'll see.

[47:22] So thank you everybody for being here. And until then take care.

[47:30] This episode is a brought to you by Homestead's email and SMS service.

[47:35] Honestly, we've, we've done an episode with, with Jacob from Homestead. He's the man and he's got, he's got to be probably one of the smartest email and retention operators, like on the agency side. He's hand sound. I look forward to seeing the tweets that he puts out basically every single month with like a recap of the designs and as amazing as the designs themselves are.

[47:54] It's the actual like tactical behind the scenes work where he just like knows what he's doing and the team at Homestead like really know what they're doing on email and SMS probably, if not the number one, very, very close to competing for number one retention agency in the DDC space.

[48:08] So just killing it. Yeah, absolutely agree. You know, if you are looking at your emails and you're like, these are terrible and you know, you can optimize the flows and you know, you can do SMS better.

[48:17] You got to look at the Homestead team. So check them out, reach out and they can definitely help make your entire email and retention and SMS program so much better. And I'm not just saying that we've all seen the work. I actually had a member who sat down with, with Jacob at the founder meetup that we had, and he came over to me and said, I just talked to him for 10 minutes.

[48:39] And literally he, he's revolutionized my entire email department. So agencies are modeling themselves off of what Jacob is giving them for advice. So anyway, onwards to hopefully working with them.

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