
Loading summary
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Hey, real quick, before we dive in, if you've got a brand or marketing tool that marketers need to know about, sponsor the show here at Perpetual Traffic. Perpetual Traffic puts you in front of thousands of seasoned marketers, CMOs and agency owners. So head on over to perpetualtraffic.com to apply to be a sponsor of this show. I can never predict which image is going to create more conversions. Then that's the beauty of Advantage. Plus there's this new feature inside Meta which you've tested. Maybe we can just sort of go through what are the do's and don'ts.
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Andromeda demands creative diversity. So what's really great is you're listening to Perpetual Traffic.
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Hello and welcome to the Perpetual Traffic podcast. This is your host, Ralph burns, founder and CEO of Tier11, alongside my incredibly amazing co host, Blair E. Petrulo, the.
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Founder of Mongoose Media.
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So glad you joined us here today. I don't know why this makes you laugh every single time. Cause we've just been like chit chatting for the last hour here, but all of a sudden we go into like podcast mode and you get.
B
But we've been like on deep and behind of what's going on with life and taxes and all the things that come with being a business owner. And then it's like, oh yeah, this is the fun stuff.
A
This is the fun stuff. You know, actually part of having a podcast, which is really fun, is doing that stuff. And it's like we met Andrew Miller face to face in San Diego. It's like, it's cool, like you get to meet so many cool people. It's like you went, apparently Oren Clough wasn't in his like Beverly Hills office, but you were going to go see him. It's like you start developing these relationships and when we go to conferences, I bump into people that have been podcast guests and it's. I don't know, it's like, it's a cool side effect of having a podcast. I don't think we've ever really talked about that because it certainly helps business, it helps, you know, authority and all that other sort of stuff. And yeah, we've got like 19 million downloads and blah, blah, blah, but it gets the relationships that really matter. So it's like I time shooting the shit, like when I did this with Kasum or Molly or whoever, like that is always going to be something that will always have that time you spend together. It's like, it's like it forces you into friendships, which is actually pretty cool. Especially if you have an awesome, amazingly awesome co host such as yourself, so.
B
Oh, I. Thank you. Thank you. I mean, like, I think we were just in San Diego with Andrew, right? And there was this speaker's dinner for the event that you and I co paneled with. And I remember, like, oh, my gosh, I'm getting, like, middle school vibes again, where I was, like, totally bullied and left out of, like, so many conversations. I was like, are we allowed to be at the speaker's dinner? And Andrew, you went inside. Ralph, like, again, part of this is, like, you have, like, a business bestie, like, you being there at the San Diego conference. And I was like, thank God he can go ask the questions. I'm too embarrass. Ask. And so you were like, kassum, we're here. Right? And he was like, absolutely. But I was like, outside with Andrew. Andrew, like, what if we're not allowed? What if we're not the cool kids? Oh, my gosh. This is. This is. Oh. So it was like, the virtue of this stranger who we had two episodes with.
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Two episodes, right?
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Because one twice. Yeah, we did Riverside. How dare you. But it was, like, cool. He was at a different conference that was happening at the same time. And, like, again, you just connect with humans that understand. There's a lot of things that happen behind the scenes of being a business owner. And I love all my W2 friends. Don't get me wrong.
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Sure.
B
But sometimes it's really nice when someone is like, hey, it's okay that you're stressed about this situation. Or, like, hey, when you travel, of course it can be lonely or, like, difficult because you're navigating so many different people you're running into, and it's. I love it. Love you, Ralph. Thanks.
A
Love you too, Lauren. No, it's true. Because, I mean, you. If you're running a business or you're running a department, if you're a director of marketing, you probably have five or six people or maybe two or three people that report to you. Like, these aren't really your peers. Like, when we go to conferences, we're speaking with peers. Yes, we're speaking with potential clients in some cases, for sure. However, it's like, it's the peer conversations that I enjoy the most. Like, we saw, you know, Jason Fladlin, we saw Kasum, and we saw Mercer. It's like, all these kinds of people.
B
Wait, how can we. Adley, Heather Wags, Wagon Hole. Oh, my gosh.
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Wags. You know, like, driving a McLaren now.
B
Apparently, Travis, a blue one, it was very pretty.
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So, like, it's cool. People like that. And once you go to these conferences. We've talked about conferences and masterminds plenty of times here on the show, but I do think it is the people and the connections that you make. It's. You can't do this stuff just sitting in your basement and, you know, getting on zoom. You do have to get out there. And I've done my fair share of conferences, and I. I have to sort of pick and choose the ones that I think are worth my while, too, so. Because, you know, you. And I get invited to a lot of things, and it's like, yeah, I'm.
B
Going to High Level this weekend. I'm going to Elite Seller Summit, beginning of November. Get scalable live. Oh, I'm really excited about that one in November. So, like, in a month and a half, like, there's a lot of really great events, but you can't do all of them. So you have to pick and choose. And that was the first conference we had together as a PT host. It was very fun.
A
It was a lot of fun. That was very cool. Yeah. There was a time I got a text message from an old employee of mine. He said, like, I'm at this conference, which I couldn't go to. I was supposed to be there, and then I couldn't go due to some, like, personal stuff here with my mom. But the point is, is, like, I couldn't attend. And he's like, you know, all the people that I know here through you, and he's, you know, really grateful for that. I was like. That made me feel great. Like, you know, as soon as I'm checking my text in the morning. So there was a point in time where I didn't know anyone. And now we know a lot of people in the space. The same thing with you. And so I think you just have to get out of your comfort zone. I'm not like a normally extroverted person. I am extroverted, but I'm like a. What do I say? I'm a charismatic hermit. In a lot of cases, it's like, you know, I'm an introvert. Yeah.
B
Like when I first met you. And then again at, like, this conference, I'm just like, yeah, like, I know you virtually so well. And then, like, you've been such a good friend that then it's like seeing the version of you that's in this conferences alongside a lot of people who know and recognize you because you've been doing this podcast for so long. It is interesting, but, like, I see the fanboys and the fan girls being like, hey, that's Ralph.
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It's very strange. But anyway, it's, you know, just because we do this thing every single week, we've been consistent with it and hopefully bringing it to you. And hopefully today we'll be able to do that in today's shortened episode. Because today, transitioning away from that over to the actual content, people are like, when are they going to stop talking about themselves and get to something extra very meaningful. We have a live test that's going on right now, and if you have been a listener of this show for any period of time, especially the last year, we have been talking about the importance of creative and creative diversification, how important it is now, actually, Meta, in a couple of shows ago, we mentioned this. We put this in the show notes. We could put it in the show notes again. The creative diversification playbook. It's like the practitioner's guide. I went to a conference in New York about this. It's all about creative now. And not just the same creative over and over again, but in our tests that we're doing, which we show all these tests every Friday and we sometimes we rebroadcast them here on Perpetual Traffic. And not for a plug for tier 11, but tier11.com forward/YouTube. Check it out. Check out our lives. Because John and I go through all of this and it's really. It's all about creative diversification and then getting the algorithm, the, you know, the brains behind Meta, like, all of that AI, that $61 billion investment to be able to show the right ad to the right person at the right time, which is what we've been saying for years, like, is the key to marketing, but now it's actually happening. So there is that side, but also there's this new feature inside Meta, which you've tested. I have not tested it. And it's their new, like, creative testing feature. And you've actually given it a shot here. And maybe we can just sort of go through. If people are seeing this inside their ad account and. Or your team is thinking about doing this, maybe what are the do's and don'ts? Because your test so far hasn't ended up the way that you want, but you've learned a lot in the process. So maybe we can do a screen share on that to get into it a little bit further.
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I will say that, like, the concept of being able to test inside of a campaign is amazing. Like, we were doing this. I feel like we started doing this a couple of months ago like some adsense, like there's been some testing within a campaign and I remember being like what? We don't have to have a test campaign that isolates the AB so that you have like true independent variables versus like audience overall and stuff. So if that's new to you, you can do the test. This is like the creative testing at the ad level which makes sense with everything as it relates to Andromeda. They're trying to pull away every decision you can make who to target. It's all broad. Everything you do is a suggestion anyways. And they've just updated like even more objectives and more conversion types of whether you're optimizing for link clips or landing pages. They've increased more variables where they say any lookalikes, detailed targeting any of that is just food for thought and a recommendation or suggestion rather than what they're actually going to adhere to from the campaign side. Right. With tailored ad campaigns like you're not making the same number of decisions for your objective is. So the more removers that they have from the decision making and media buying, the more time the business owner and marketer can spend on the offer and on the strategy and on the creative.
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Yeah.
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So what I'll share on my screen is I'm going to go inside this campaign. So I've got a webinar this Friday 1010 at 10 and so I'm just generating ads for a very shortened live event.
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We're going to do a screen share here. We'll show inside the aton. These are your actual ads for the webinar which is literally three days away here. So if you're just listening to this, we'll try and narrate as much as possible. But always best to go over to perpetual traffic.com YouTube, subscribe to our YouTube channel and actually watch this live. So we are actually inside Lauren's ads manager. Wow. This is like woohoo.
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I know I can share my stuff. It's not my clients mono have all the numbers full exposure. If you have critiques go ahead and email them to me at lauramax Media Us and I'm open to it. But what I have on the screen now is like one of their normal notifications that you're getting so you can see how again new way to edit lead campaigns. You're maximizing performance with AI and it's just having these notifications I'm going to hit don't show again because I don't need to see this every Single time. But for those who haven't seen that type of stuff, or maybe you're the business owner, not inside of it a lot. At least if you're watching, you can see what your team is looking at. So this campaign, it's a single campaign with a single ad set.
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One campaign, one ad set.
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One campaign, one ad set. Fourteen creatives.
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No targeting on the ad set side.
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Good question. So, I mean, I don't mind showing you, I'll. For us, just if you're seeing the name, it's Campaign 7. Sandbox Mongoose Media LP. Cause I was the one who personally launched this. It's a leads objective in the date that I launched the ads. And so Campaign 7 for us just means it's a lead registration through a website. It's just part of our naming convention. The daily budget is 800 bucks. So this is like a short time period. I'm just doing. It's a very small budget of $2,000 for the webinar that we've got coming up. But you have this, what I want to call attention to. You selected $160 to go to test ads. Hmm.
A
Okay, that's cool.
B
Daily budget of 800. You select 160 to go to your test ads. For my two day creative test, this is a live event. I advertise live events three to five days before it happens because it helps increase show rates. And I'm only running this creative test for two days because the whole event is for three. And I just, I want to get my hands on it. But this, if you're saying this is because I'm elected into the creative test. If you're looking on the screen on the left, you can see of the 14 creatives, we've got the testing. What do you call beaker?
A
Yeah, little, little test beaker there. So we knew which ads are actually the test ads. And there's three of them. Well, actually there's five of them.
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Correct, There are five. But I got lazy because it was taking a lot of work to do them all. So I was like, okay, let's just do four. But you can choose how long you want your creative test to be, and you can choose what amount, what percentage of the 800, which is my daily budget to be affixed to the new test ads.
A
Makes sense.
B
That's important because what happened on day one is what I had told you was like when we went into it, if we go into the 12 ads themselves. Here, let me just pause that for a second. So now you can see on the screen, the ads. Oh, hiding my face, sorry. What you can see on the ads is one of our creators I actually had to turn off yesterday when I went online to check it, it had 41,000 impressions and not a single other creative received an impression. Over half the budget had gone to that one ad. And I was like, wait, meta. We just saw that it was supposed to be $160 per day distributed across the test, but instead it took over half the total budget. So my initial thoughts are like, okay, what the f just happened? So I turned it off. I wouldn't normally recommend it, but this is like, you should do the creative test in a longer period. I was like, f this. I'm so mad at you, Meta. You broke your own rules.
A
But. But in defense of meta, you've given it only three days. Really? I mean, it's cool that you're doing the test. So I don't know what that factors into our conclusion here, but I would say they're lying.
B
They said 160 of your test is supposed to go to the of sixteen hundred dollars to go to test ads. And so when I saw that it was so vagrantly lying and it had gone well past the parameters, and when I talked to other friends.
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Oh, I see what you're saying. Okay, so we selected $160 to go to your test ads.
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However, they spent $400 and they, they deprived any impressions to the other creatives. So 160 is supposed to go to these tests distributed with the remaining. Right. $660 budget. No, $640 budget. It didn't do that. So that's where I was like, it starved every ad of any impressions.
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But that's a total gotcha right there.
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Gotcha moment. Yeah, like, that pissed me off so much so I turned off the ad. I never recommend people turning it off, hence the delivery error or. No, sorry, the delivery error was on the original, but I turned this ad off. And then I can come on this morning and I can see all the other ads are getting impressions because he told it.
A
Just to summarize. Okay, you said don't spend any more than $160 on my test.
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Correct.
A
Came out of the gate, spent $400 on one of your test ads.
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Correct.
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With one lousy conversion.
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Yeah. At 405 a lead. Like, I didn't understand why it would keep pushing to it. And I'm okay with like, it's, it's a long term goal. I just was really annoyed that when Meta set a promise, I'M okay with expanding a little bit beyond it, but to starve every other ad of impressions was just like.
A
Do you have different conversion events under results? Because I see website leads and I see website lead.
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No, that's just the plurality of it because it's gotten more than one.
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Okay.
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So there hasn't been a single website lead, but once it becomes plural, it's just. That's just the naming convention. Still the same conversion objective, but. Good point. Fair, fair, fair. Because you're like, well, let's double check. But I'm going to show you now. I'm going to open up the ad to show what the creative feature looks like so that, like, I can take. This is one of our regular ads putting into it. If I go back down to show you on the screen, I'm at the ad level and you can go down to get this creative testing. So here you can see in the ad, compare up to five different versions of your creative in a test that helps ensure delivery to new test ads. And when I click this, it opens up a side window that's about creative testing. That will tell you how you can get greater insights. Now, I already have an ad test running, so I cannot make a second test.
A
Right, Right. But on the little.
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This allows you to compare five creatives.
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Right. On the. Not the test tube, the beaker. We were just deciding what that was. The little beaker that notates. That's a test. You should have what, five variations of those individual ads?
B
Up to five. You can choose how many you want in the five.
A
Okay.
B
And so, like you're saying this, I turn on every AI enhancement possible. Like you. You can see the creative that I have is if you're spending $5,000 a month on ads and ignoring. You're being dumb. Right. So that's what the creative is. I do use, like, every AI piece possible. Something I'm really excited to show is. Which was newer for me is when you're in the. I'm just going to duplicate this ad because I don't want to mess up the existing one and have meta hate me. But when you go into the edit images, well, you'll see, like here I have both identities, so it's advertising from my page and my own personal Instagram. So it's getting some of that overlap. When I go into editing our media, it's going to open up where we go into media. Let's say that I'm just going to choose this image as a different one. Your first email deserves the same effort you put into your dating profile. Right. So I'll always go in and I'll size it so that it makes the most sense. And then what I like going into the image generation we're going to. I have all the extra ones. What I've seen now is you can do a product image or a full image. This was really interesting that I haven't seen with the Advantage plus Creative image generation before because I'm used to seeing the full image and the full image is when it takes your seed creative. So what I had was a picture of a dating profile saying that your first email needs the same effort as your dating profile and then it's going to generate these new images and they're going to look cuckoo crazy different.
A
This is cool. So this is inside the ad level. And then you are then going into Meta's AI Advantage plus Creative Image generation AI. We've never shown this on this show. So it's actually creating new variations of your image as we speak. And that took for the time for me to explain it. Now We've got what, 10 different new versions? 12 versions.
B
Usually it's been 10. And Ralph, we've been doing the cuckoo crazy differences and we've seen like a 300% increase of click through rate. So some of these look like really bad Canva 1995. But you'll see the difference. Like how cuckoo crazy the way I describe it because creative for Meta to be considered different has to be at least 25% difference and text is never considered full factor. But like look, you have illustration, you have like realistic images, you have like stock photos, you have like, like very. This girl's maybe in a threesome. I don't know what's happening. Like these are multicultural people.
A
They're taking the data like taking the, the words that are actually on the the overlay on the image and then doing variations based upon it. And that literally took like 30 seconds for it. Like some don't look great.
B
It's 12 now it's 12. It's always been 10. And before when we do it is like you said, they keep the copy. So the image copy is your first email should have as much effort as your dating profile. So we can see this image on the screen of the girl between two men, whatever she's going through, her throuple situation is the same.
A
It's complicated. That would have been it's complicated way back when.
B
Maybe it's not complicated for them, I don't know. But it's not. Whatever pass judgment. We're not going to pass judgment to these artificially created people in the ad. But so this is verbatim the same text copy on the image. But then we look. This is stand out with a great first impression. Boost your dating profile's response rate now. Get notice on dates. Okay, obviously that's not correct, but I can adjust this and be like, give me an attractive blonde in a pink jacket so I can adjust this and change it to whatever I want. Or I can tell them how to edit this and be like, because boost your dating profile response right now. Like, that has nothing to do with what we're talking about. Right. I'll say change the copy to boost your email's success rate of landing in the primary inbox. So again, you can see I'm typing on screen how I'm making edits to the versions that meta supplied for me.
A
This is cool, by the way, you type really fast and accurately. I'm so bad at that, especially when I'm doing sort of screen share. All right, so now that, like, it went from a. So it took your dating language, which it kind of got confused with because, like, treat your first email that you outreach like your dating profile, I think was kind of like the idea behind it. But then the first iteration of this Advantage plus Creative image generation through AI was like more around dating. And so now you're adding in prompts to make it correct and also even change the background image from a dude to a blonde wearing a pink jacket, which is. So now, I mean, this looks a little canva e. Not bad, but who the hell knows? Like, what I figured out in 15 years of doing this is that I can never predict which image is going to create more conversions, even though I think one or the other will. It's like, then that's the beauty of Advantage plus Sales right now is that. And obviously image generation is that they're creating this for you based upon what they think, based upon, you know, millions and billions of pieces of data in.
B
Yeah.
A
In the platform itself, what may or may not convert for your particular offer.
B
Correct me if I'm wrong, it's a hundred percent. They're saying, like, okay, what you think is a good creative may not be the best. Here's alternatives. We don't know if it's going to work, but Andromeda demands creative diversity. So what's really great is you need a creative team to design your initial seed creatives so that then meta can make complementary ones. But what I really like about this is like it's saying in our experiment, adding AI images on 11% click through rate and 8% conversion lift. I am telling you, I have seen the AI supported images. When you have a good seed image and the additional AI ones that you can, you can't just select all of them because like you can see this one, this has crafty zar Reverend Right. Like this looks like Sora from a year ago. But you see the very. Yeah, very different images. I mean again, what I like is you have, you have people, you have non people, you have illustration images and you are able to have the control. But what's newer, another piece that I haven't seen before, this is on the full image. There's a lot of people who are like, I don't want AI because I don't want it to devalue my brand. These don't look like Mongoose Media or Lauren Patrol branding things at all. But if we go to this product image. So I'm still inside of ads and I'm in the edit the media thing. If we go to product image, it takes your seed creative and then it makes versions of your seed creative, which I've never seen them do that. So you can have on brand images and I'm putting on brand in air quotes. It's calling it product image. So say you have an E commerce brand and you have like your coffee cup. When you do product images you're going to see the coffee cup with different background removers. But if you're watching on YouTube, which I strongly recommend, you can see that it takes my initial creative. And now I have your first email deserves the same effort you put into your dating profile. Now I have a brunette female and then I have these different power backgrounds. Like I was trying to go for this like liquid glass look, but I can go in and change this to be like I'm like attractive black woman with natural curls. So I can still make that effort and I can say like, okay. Rather than having someone on my team make versions of swapping the person out, I can invite Meta to change who the. Oh, well, never mind. If you're watching this live. They just totally disregarded.
A
So it's not perfect by any stretch.
B
It's not perfect.
A
I know what you were. I know what you meant. Like you can revert back to the original. So now you just like change the man in the. What is that? That looks like an iPad maybe. Not really sure. Yeah, no, it does like make it look more like an iPad. Like you're actually getting a. I don't know because there's all Right. If you're not watching this on YouTube, there's basically this. It's like a, it's a 9 by 16 image, but it is got like an iPad kind of thing in the background and it's used your branding with the swirls. So it's stayed true to the brand initial.
B
And the initial created the seed. And you can see that like again if you're watching. The mistake that I made was I said I want to see an attractive black woman with natural curls. And so it actually rewrote the entire image versus now I changed the edit, change the man in the picture to an attractive black woman with natural curls. And look how great that was. I don't have to have my creative team make five other versions of this same creative. Right?
A
Yeah, that's. That's pretty sick.
B
So I can change the man in this image to a Latina 40 year old plus your old mom change. Okay.
A
With edits.
B
Click. So this like, what you can see is like, that's the creative that my team made. And so now with one sentence, I just saved my team an hour of editing and research and however long they could have spent on it because it just did that image swap.
A
This is pretty cool. So, yeah, I haven't seen a live demo of this. When did this actually occur? Because you, I know you've like ran. You started running this what, two, three days yesterday?
B
Yes.
A
This is the first time you've seen it?
B
Because it's the first time I've seen the ability to do product image versus full image. So I've only ever seen full image. And so then getting to like, literally this is my exact ad now with an attractive Latino woman in her 40s versus like the. If I go back to the seed creative I had like this looks like a college guy, probably only speaks one language, but I can make those edits and have different versions. So especially when you're thinking about these creative tests where you're saying like, well what works? And I know that like changing this man to a black woman, like that's not enough of a differential for meta to say this is going to penetrate new audiences. But with a test, what it can allow you to see is like, is there a small lift? Because when we looked at the version of full image versus product image, these aren't 25% difference. Like this doesn't hit what Andromeda has wanted or even what Matt has appears.
A
I mean, they're using a different avatar on the image, but it's not a distinct image. I mean, we'll leave links in the show notes for the creative diversification playbook. And this does not adhere to that, nor does it adhere to the creative diversification strategy we've been talking about, because it's gotta be very different. Those are similar, but with only maybe like a, you know, whatever it is, 15% difference because the. The avatar is slightly different. So, yeah, not exactly what we're talking about, but still like meta created this without the effect of. Without the input or, well, the need for a creative team, you know, to go back in, you know, and then have the approval process go back out. You can literally do this inside Ads Manager, which is amazing.
B
Cool. And going back to this, like, I re changed the full image so again, you can see how different the designs are. Like, it looks like you hired people from Fiverr and you hired four different designers. What was new for me that I discovered yesterday was that you can have 12. I've been used to maybe 10, maybe 11, because you can get 10 new ones plus your seed. Now I'm having 12 new ones plus my seed. So that's 13 creatives. And the ability for us to edit within Meta AI has just. I mean, it's getting better. It's not perfect because again, we look at this one, it says craft your perfect opener. Best match chances with personalized emails. That's not the copy direction, but I'm playing off of Mongoose Media's branding of like we give condoms for business cards. Because I want you to practice safe marketing, right? So I'm promoting to the world fewer STIs, more ROI. So the your first email to this and effort as your dating profile fits within the Mongoose Media branding branding, so to speak.
A
But you can edit all that anyway, just like we should. Just to take this a step further, I know where we're getting to the end here is this is awesome. There's the next step after that, which is enhancements, which maybe is, you know, part of the Mongoose Media branding. What does that actually bring to the equation?
B
So show us that Omnis enhancements, right? Like, I know a lot of people don't like doing the translate text. I believe in translate text because I've told you and I've told a lot of clients that we work with, we're doing so many multilingual ads that we're doing ads in Mandarin and Farsi and French and Spanish. Like when I ran all of Mitsubishi Canada's ads, I was doing like Quebec qua French and English because you have to do it in Quebec. Like we have to have bilingual ads. And even when I was at Disney and we're doing all this stuff in Portuguese, I saw the power of tapping into your backyard by going internationally. So I love the translate text because someone can see this. Like, okay, so that's, that looks like it's in Portuguese. Okay, I don't speak Portuguese, but let's pretend it is. The ad is still in English. The destination is still in English. But someone who maybe lives in Florida, where 2% of Brazil's world population lives. 2% of the entire Brazilian world population lives in the state of Florida. Someone might see it and they're from Brazil. And their Instagram and Facebook is all in Portuguese, but they've lived in the US for 20 years. So it stands out by fitting into their normal profile feed. And because it's in English and it goes to an English page, they probably speak English and so it's relevant for them. So I, I vouch for translated text, but I know many people don't and then like music. A lot of people don't like because they feel like, oh, the music isn't on brand and you can customize this so you have the ability to, to say, do you want to choose the song?
A
So good.
B
Which I again, for me, I'm like, I'll give you all the advantage plus placements. Is it going to be as successful? Maybe, I don't know. The ad site links, this one I think is the most, honestly the most controversial one because if you don't set it up correctly, you might be pushing someone a different product than is necessary. But what I like about these ad site links, it's like, you know, on Google when you're searching for something and you have your site link, so your, your Google search, instead of it like the size of a quesadilla, it becomes the size of like a Jimmy John super sub. Because it takes up so much more real estate when you have these ad site links. I have a pro max. My phone is like the size of my forearm, right. When you add the site links, you don't have other ads and feed, you dominate the entire profile. So it gives you so much more real estate to push others to be concentrated on you. So I love the ad site links. And you're allowed to edit these like you can have. I'll show you. Like this is how the examples are. It'll take you and it'll pull automatically from your website pages that they recommend. So again like meta's making it so you have less decisions to make and they're giving you suggestions like content solutions. They're pulling from my most visited pages on my website and giving them as recommendations. And then look, they're making a carousel. So they're making different ads, which is where we go back through what we've talked about with Unbounce what we've talked about with like the importance of like structuring your website. We're going like, what is old is new. You need to have a great website because meta's gonna use stuff on your website to make your ads better, to give you more real estate and give the user the better experience that they want.
A
This is awesome. I have a feeling we're gonna do a follow up episode on this because I think this is something that we need to delve into deeper. But this is just an introduction to. First off, we were talking about meta creative testing. You know, there's some gotchas there. However, this part of it, which is something that we've discussed so many times on this show, it's like, how do you get diversity in your creative? These tools are cutting edge now and it doesn't necessarily like, if you're doing this work for clients, obviously this becomes maybe a bit of a challenge because they want to keep things on brand and there's an approval process that you have to go through. So there is some gotchas there. However, the point is, is that you can actually diversify your creative. Right. Inside Ads Manager based upon a lot of different factors here. And this is super impressive. I mean, you're not using this yet. I would start testing it or at least trying it out on your own. And if you haven't, if you're listening to this on the audio, just make sure that you go over to our YouTube channel over at perpetualtraffic.com forward slash YouTube.
B
Can I give two more comments on.
A
Like two more things? Here we go, two more things and.
B
Then I'll let it go. Just if you're not doing relevant comments. That's silly. Do that anyways. But I will say the thing I like the least. So this Flex Media, what's great is if you have a stack like you know when you're going through your profile or your, your stories on Instagram and then you see a square ad.
A
Yeah.
B
Okay, well this is obviously not a story, this is an ad. Because it's like awkward in the wrong placement. Flex Media allows you to take it expands the dimension, stretch it or just.
A
It stretches that above and beyond. Above and below.
B
Yeah, like I've seen it add arms to people. So if it's like just my profile and don't see my arms, it extends it so that you can see the rest of my body. Like, it uses like, like what? Adobe's doing really well with their AI tool. So I like Flex Media because if we read it, it's like delivers to show your media for a specific aspect ratio across all placements when it's likely to improve in performance. So what's good is it shows like it, it messes with the dimensions of your ad for ideally better delivery. But we've had several clients that say, like, hey, this is showing up weird for me in feed. I don't like the way it looks. It's one of those things where if you're doing this for clients, for me, it's mine, I don't care. I want to test every creative AI opportunity possible, as long as Meta doesn't lie and say, I'm going to spend all your money and not give any other ads impressions. But I'm going to test it all. But I know clients don't like that this image, like, it gets stretched or like it might even just cut off this whole side. There's the Flex media means that it's going to be testing a lot more than you expect. And so with AI and with the enhancements or whatever you're using, you just need to make sure that your client is on board to what level of risk tolerance they have. Because when you use AI, there's a risk. If these images are completely off brand, you have the ability to refine the AI inputs. So you have this in the image generation section, you have two questions that you can answer to and it's like 200 characters. Or you can make sure you're providing it the right prompts to fix the creative if it's not going the direction you want it to. And then you just have to make sure your client, whether you're using full image for a lot of differences or product image for more on brand and any enhancements you take, if they care more about brand than performance, if they care more about the data than the actual direction of the conversion, you have to take it with a grain of salt. Because we've had clients that are like, I want to know which ad, which combination that matters more to them than the actual conversion. Like, okay, that's your decision. So you just have to be mindful of when you're layering an AI, that you have their permission, you know what their risk tolerance is. And then you always start with a really good Creative because all the images they generate, I don't think any of them top to one are initial one, but I'm down to test.
A
Yeah, absolutely. And it's so easy to be able to do it. And since you're doing it for your own brand, it's like it's really. It's you that's in there that's making those decisions. So the branding questions is always going to be the question, but there's the ability to be able to pull in brand here and then make those offshoots. And you know, if you have a small team or if you have an agency like this is a. Or you're just doing it on your own. This is an incredible feature and they've been talking about this for so long. The next step of this, which is maybe another show, is the video side of this equation as to whether or not that actually will come in, because that's obviously a huge part of this. But this is primarily a walkthrough for this Advantage plus Creative image generation, which is amazing. So we're going to leave links in the show notes obviously for all of this and we'll follow up with this. We'd love to see how the campaign actually does with the testing stuff when all is said and done. But there's a gotcha there. So not everything that is doing is perfect by any stretch, but the AI part is in its man. It's like cutting edge right now and it just is so in alignment with this whole creative diversification strategy which is the key to everything with Advantage plus Sales right now thanks to the Meta Andromeda update, which we've. You don't know what that is. We've done like 20 shows on it. So we'll leave links in the show notes on that. So, all right, so wherever you listen to podcasts, make sure that you do leave us a rating review. Helps us get to a wider audience and teach people how to do this stuff the right way through metrics that matter and growth that scales. And of course, if you want Tier 11's help, plug plug here, tier11.com forward, slash, apply. And of course we'll leave links in the show notes to Mongoose Media and everything that Lauren is doing as well as all our social profiles. She's way more social on the socials. All right, so anyway. All right, so on behalf of my amazing co host, Lauren E. Petrulo, ciao till next show. See ya.
B
You've been listening to Perpetual Traffic.
Episode Title: Did Advantage+ Creative Image Generation Just Kill Manual Ad Design?
Air Date: October 21, 2025
Hosts: Ralph Burns (Tier 11), Lauren Petrullo (Mongoose Media)
In this episode, Ralph Burns and Lauren Petrullo dive deep into Meta's new Advantage+ Creative Image Generation tool for advertisers. They explore whether this cutting-edge AI feature is truly replacing manual ad design, breaking down its current capabilities, “gotchas,” and its impact on creative strategy for Meta ad campaigns. Lauren provides a step-by-step screen-share walkthrough of a live test campaign using these automated features, sharing hard-earned tips and pitfalls.
“It’s all about creative diversification and then getting the algorithm … to be able to show the right ad to the right person at the right time, which is what we've been saying for years … but now it's actually happening.” (08:19 – Ralph)
“So my initial thoughts are like, okay, what the f just happened?” (13:01 – Lauren)
“That's a total gotcha right there.” (14:54 – Ralph)
“Some of these look like really bad Canva 1995... but we've seen like a 300% increase in click through rate.” (18:59 – Lauren)
“With one sentence, I just saved my team an hour of editing … it just did that image swap.” (26:09 – Lauren)
“It looks like you hired people from Fiverr and you hired four different designers.” (28:23 – Lauren)
“I vouch for translated text … someone might see it and they're from Brazil … their Instagram [is] in Portuguese, but they've lived in the US for 20 years. So it stands out by fitting into their normal profile feed.” (29:39–31:15 – Lauren)
“You just need to make sure that your client is on board to what level of risk tolerance they have … Because when you use AI, there's a risk.” (34:30–36:46 – Lauren)
On unpredictability of creative winners:
“What I've figured out in 15 years of doing this is that I can never predict which image is going to create more conversions… that's the beauty of Advantage plus.” (22:11 – Ralph)
On the purpose of AI image generation:
“…You need a creative team to design your initial seed creatives so that then Meta can make complementary ones.” (22:29 – Lauren)
On automation overstepping parameters:
“We selected $160 to go to your test ads... however, they spent $400 … and deprived any impressions to the other creatives. … It starved every ad of any impressions.” (14:33 – Lauren)
On saving time with AI:
“With one sentence, I just saved my team an hour of editing and research ... because it just did that image swap.” (26:09 – Lauren)
On clients vs. creative risk:
“…if these images are completely off-brand, you have the ability to refine the AI inputs. … You just have to be mindful of when you're layering in AI, that you have their permission, you know what their risk tolerance is.” (36:13 – Lauren)
| Timestamp | Segment | | ------------ | ---------------------------------------------------------- | | 06:29–08:40 | Why creative diversification matters more than targeting | | 08:40–14:54 | Overview & live test of Meta’s new in-campaign creative test | | 16:00–25:28 | Walkthrough of Advantage+ Creative Image Generator | | 25:28–29:22 | Product vs Full Image differences; branding implications | | 29:22–31:15 | AI enhancements: translation, music, and site links | | 34:00–36:46 | Flex Media risks, risk management for clients | | 36:46–38:41 | Final cautions and next steps |
Resources mentioned (available at perpetualtraffic.com):
Summary written in the direct, enthusiastic, and pragmatic style of Ralph and Lauren. For actionable insights and live demos, reviewers are encouraged to check out the full video version of the episode.