What is Meta Andromeda?

Andromeda is the ad retrieval engine Meta Engineering introduced on December 2, 2024, for its Advantage+ automation. It narrows tens of millions of ad candidates down to a few thousand for each person before ranking picks what they see. Meta says it brought a 10,000x increase in model capacity and better recall and ads quality on selected segments.

Does Meta group similar ads together?

Yes. In its December 2025 post on creative diversification, Meta for Business says its system groups ads that share key visual and thematic attributes and treats them as variations of the same creative, sharing learning and delivery at the creative level. Meta's own example: two ads with identical visuals and different text CTAs count as the same creative.

How similar is too similar for Meta ads?

Meta has not published a numeric similarity threshold. Its guidance is directional: ads that look or feel alike are treated as one creative. Specific percentage cutoffs that circulate online could not be traced to a Meta page, so treat them as rules of thumb, not platform rules.

How many creative concepts should I run per ad set after Andromeda?

Meta does not give a number. Agency reports vary: Disruptive Digital says it moved from 3 to 5 distinct variations per ad set to 10 to 20, while New Engen declines to set a universal number. Count distinct concepts, such as different personas, motivators and formats, rather than total uploads.

Does changing the person in an ad make it a new creative for Meta?

Meta has not said. Its example of a distinct ad changes the audience, format and messenger together, not just the face. Pigeon Digital argues that many ads with different creators but the same format and message behave like one concept, so pair a new person with a new setting, angle or format for a better chance of reading as new.

Does resizing an ad to 1:1 or 4:5 count as creative diversity?

Almost certainly not. Meta has not addressed reframes directly, but a resized version looks and feels like the original, which is what Meta says it groups. Reframing is useful for covering Feed, Stories and Reels, but do not count it as a new concept when you plan creative diversity.

Meta Andromeda and Creative Diversity: What Counts as a New Ad

Q: Is Entity ID an official Meta term?

No. Entity ID is industry shorthand for how Meta groups similar ads. According to adsuploader, it is an explanatory device rather than something Meta publishes, and Meta's December 2025 post on creative diversification does not use the word entity.

Meta's Andromeda system decides which few thousand ads out of tens of millions are even considered for a person, and Meta now says it groups ads that look and feel alike into one creative. If your ad set holds ten versions of the same video with different headlines, Meta may treat it as one ad wearing ten labels. Here is what Andromeda changed, what Meta has actually said about similar ads, what counts as a genuinely different ad, how many concepts to run, and how to make real versions of a winner.

What Andromeda is, in Meta's own words

Meta Engineering introduced Andromeda on December 2, 2024, as the retrieval engine behind its Advantage+ automation. Retrieval is the first cut: it narrows tens of millions of ad candidates down to a few thousand before ranking decides what you actually see. In that post, Meta reports a 10,000x increase in model capacity, plus 6% better recall and 8% better ads quality on selected segments.

Meta pointed to rising ad volume: according to the same post, more than a million advertisers made over 15 million ads in a single month with Meta's generative AI tools.

On its Q3 2025 earnings call, Meta said it merged retrieval and early-stage ranking into one model in Andromeda, which drove a 14% increase in ads quality on Facebook surfaces. On the Q4 2025 call, Meta said it extended Andromeda to run on Nvidia, AMD and its own MTIA chips, and that this, along with model innovations, nearly tripled Andromeda's compute efficiency.

One thing worth knowing: the engineering post never mentions creative diversity or grouping similar ads. That guidance came later, aimed at advertisers.

Why near-duplicate ads get grouped

In March 2025, Meta for Business explained Andromeda to advertisers and tied it to uploading more creative, and more diverse creative. The clearest statement came in December 2025, in Meta's post "Demystifying creative diversification."

There, Meta says its system groups ads that share key visual and thematic attributes. Ads that look or feel alike are "seen as variations of the same creative," and learning and delivery are then shared at the creative level, not just per ad. In plain terms: if two of your ads read as the same idea, Meta treats them as one bet.

Meta gives its own examples. Two ads with identical visuals and different text CTAs count as the same creative. A Reels ad aimed at Gen Z and a separate partnership ad with a creator who appeals to new moms count as distinct. Notice that the distinct example changes the audience, the format and the person delivering the message all at once.

The same post defines two terms. Creative fatigue is an audience overexposed to the same creative, with engagement dropping. Creative similarity is ad images that are visually too alike, even when they are technically different files.

You may have heard this called "Entity ID." That is industry shorthand, not a Meta term. According to adsuploader, it is an explanatory device rather than something Meta publishes, and Meta's December post does not use the word "entity" at all.

What Meta has not published

Meta has not published a numeric similarity threshold or a recommended number of concepts per ad set. The December post gives no percentage and no ad count. If you have seen a specific similarity score cutoff or a rule like "X ads per ad set," we could not trace it to any Meta page. Treat those as rules of thumb from vendors and agencies, not platform facts.

What Meta does say is directional. Its Performance Marketing page lists creative diversification as a best practice. Its Blueprint training includes lessons on diversifying ads by concept and motivators, and by format. And a Meta spokesperson, Alisha Swinteck, told Marketing Brew in September 2026 that the guidance is to diversify your creative, test, and let the system optimize.

What counts as a genuinely different ad

Meta lists the dimensions it means by diversification:

Customer personas and use cases: who the ad is for and what they use the product for.
Format: for example Reels versus partnership ads.
Messaging approach: emotional appeal versus product features.
Visual, text and storyline differences.
Creative themes: for example humor, nostalgia or savings.

Practitioners draw a similar line. New Engen separates iteration (a new opening hook, headline, length, CTA, or another creator delivering the same message) from diversification (a new motivation, need state, problem, use case or format). Pigeon Digital argues that 25 UGC ads with different creators but the same talking-head format and message behave like one concept. Olivia Cripps of the agency Billion Dollar Boy told Marketing Brew that ads sharing the same look or opening hook get ranked lower. Those are opinions, not Meta rules, but they point the same way as Meta's own examples.

Here is an honest read of common changes. Meta attributes the grouping to its ads system broadly, not to Andromeda by name. "Likely new" means Meta's published dimensions point that way. Nobody outside Meta can confirm how a specific ad gets grouped.

Change	Likely new to Andromeda?	How to make it
New headline or text CTA on the same video	No. This is Meta's own "same creative" example	Edit the ad text in Ads Manager
New caption style, color grade or music on the same footage	Unlikely	Any video editor
Same video reframed to 1:1 or 4:5	Unlikely. Same concept, different placement	Reframe a finished video (Riffkit re-renders it, no cropping)
New person, same script, setting and shots	Uncertain. Meta has not said; some agencies argue it groups	Swap the person on a winner, or film a new creator
New person plus new setting plus new product details	Possibly. More visual distance, same structure	Swap with several changes at once
New opening hook on the same body	Unclear. Agencies say a shared opening hurts	Re-edit the open yourself; Riffkit cannot edit only the first 3 seconds of a file
New angle or motivator (pain point vs savings vs gift)	Likely. Meta lists messaging and themes	Adapt a winner into a new story for that motivator
New persona or use case	Likely. Meta lists personas and use cases	Adapt with a different audience in the brief
New format (demo vs talking head vs skit vs partnership ad)	Likely. Meta lists format	Start from a winning source in that format; partnership ads need a real creator
Static image or carousel alongside video	Likely, as format diversity	A design tool; Riffkit does not make statics or carousels

The pattern: words and polish stay inside one concept. Who it is for, why they buy, and what the ad looks like are what Meta describes as distinct.

How many distinct concepts to run

There is no Meta number. What exists is benchmark data and agency experience.

Motion's Creative Benchmarks 2026 looked at $1.29B of Meta spend across 578,750 creatives in 6,015 accounts, from September 2025 to January 2026. About 5% of creatives became winners, and winners took about 55% of spend. In a March 2026 talk, Motion reported weekly new-creative volume by spend tier: 2.8 a week for Micro accounts (4.8 for the top 25%) up to 18.9 for Enterprise (54.6 for the top 25%). Those figures count uploaded ads, not distinct concepts.

On the agency side, Disruptive Digital says that after Andromeda it moved from 3 to 5 distinct variations per ad set to 10 to 20, refreshed every 1 to 2 weeks instead of monthly. It defines distinct as a different concept, not a small design or text tweak. New Engen declines to give a universal number.

The practical move is to count concepts, not uploads. Take your weekly volume, then ask how many of those ads would land in a different row of the table above. If 15 uploads collapse into 3 ideas, you have 3 bets. Our creatives-per-week breakdown has the volume math by spend.

How this maps to making versions of a winner

Once you have a winner, the question is which kind of "more" Meta will see as new.

Swap keeps the shots, camera and action of a winning video and changes the person, product or details. Use it to put a different face, product or setting into a structure you know works. Change several things at once for more visual distance.
Adapt keeps the formula (hook, pacing, beats) and writes a new story for your product. Use it to test a new motivator or persona on a proven structure, as in testing audience angles without recruiting creators.
Reframe turns one finished video into 9:16, 1:1 or 4:5. That handles placements, as explained in one winning video for every ad placement. It is not a new concept, so do not count it as one.

In Riffkit, you start from a short video that already won: a template from the library, a TikTok link, or an upload (sources up to 45 seconds). It analyzes why the video worked and generates brand-new footage, never re-uploading the source. You can run one template with several characters in one batch.

The honest caveat: versions made from one source share its opening and rhythm, so Meta may still group them. Truly different ads usually need different people, scenes and angles, and often several different winning sources. Riffkit also does not connect to your ad account, launch ads or read performance data, so testing and measurement stay in Ads Manager.

If budget then piles onto one ad, see why CBO starves your best creative. On TikTok, the same logic applies to creative fatigue.

Which move fits your situation

If your ad set is one video with several headlines, treat it as one concept. Add at least one ad with a different motivator or persona before adding more text variants.
If you have one strong winner and need volume this week, Swap it into new people and settings, and Adapt it into one or two new angles. Expect some of these to group with the original.
If your top ads all open the same way, look for a second and third winning source with a different hook and format, rather than more versions of the first.
If you need placements covered, reframe, but keep it out of your concept count.
If you need statics or carousels, make those in a design tool. They add format diversity Meta explicitly lists.

Riffkit bills per second in credits, and failed renders are not charged. On a monthly plan, a 15-second video costs about $2.70 to $3.00 on MiniMax H3. New accounts get free credits with no card, in the web app or as a skill for your AI coding agent.