Why your ads didn’t break — the game did (and how to win in 2026)

Hey Everyone,

I’m excited to send on final Creative Discipline in 2026. I was inspired by Dara Denney’s video on her channel about the Andromeda & Gem - it’s worth the time to listen and learn.

Below I’ve written my takeaways.

If you think Andromeda “killed” your Meta ads, this might sting a little. But it’ll save you a lot of money in 2026.

Here’s the truth no one wants to say plainly:

Meta didn’t break your ads.
It reassigned responsibility. (make sure you take this point)

Over the last year, Meta quietly finished a transition that’s been coming for a long time. With systems like Andromeda, GEM, and Lattice, Meta now handles:

• Who sees ads

• When they see them

• What context they’re in

• Which ad is most likely to resonate in that moment

That part of the game? Done. Automated. Ruthless.

What’s left for advertisers is exactly one job:

Supply the algorithm with enough high-quality, meaningfully different creative options that it can win on your behalf.

Most brands didn’t lose performance because targeting went away.
They lost because their creative systems didn’t evolve fast enough.

New Partner Offer 🔥

If creative velocity and execution are now the bottleneck (they are), then infrastructure matters more than it used to — especially for teams shipping fast, testing often, and iterating across channels.

That’s why we partnered with Aithen Labs.

They’re a senior AI + custom development studio we trust, and they specialize in exactly the kind of work most teams are struggling to keep up with right now:

• Fast, clean website builds

• Shopify and standard web implementations

• Custom AI and workflow development without enterprise bloat

To kick off the partnership, Aithen is offering something genuinely useful to our community:

For the first 100 companies:

• A free website build (Shopify or standard site)

• $3,000 in development credit toward custom work

No prior setup required.
If you don’t already have AWS, you can create one for free and still qualify.

This isn’t about “getting a prettier site.”
It’s about removing friction so your team can:

• Launch faster

• Iterate without rebuilding from scratch

• Spend time on creative strategy instead of technical drag

If 2026 is about speed, systems, and leverage, this is one of those unsexy moves that quietly compounds. If you want to get this insane offer - email [email protected]

The big shift (this is the part to internalize)

In 2026, performance isn’t about:

• Interests

• Lookalikes

• Prospecting vs retargeting

• Clever account structure

It’s about creative optionality.

Meta doesn’t need your best ad.
It needs a deep bench of good ads that express the same idea in different ways:

• Different hooks

• Different emotional entry points

• Different visual grammars

• Different awareness levels

The algorithm selects.
But it can only select from what you give it.

Your competitors didn’t beat you because they’re smarter.
They beat you because they fed the system better inputs.

Volume isn’t the answer — velocity and efficiency are

This is where people get it wrong.

“Just make more ads” doesn’t work.
Random variation doesn’t work.
Spray-and-pray doesn’t work.

What does work is:

• Structured iteration

• Intentional variation

• Learning systems that compound instead of reset

• Faster loops from idea → asset → signal → next idea

Creative is no longer a craft problem.
It’s an operations problem.

And the brands that figure this out first will keep winning while everyone else argues about CPMs on Twitter.

Personas still matter — but not how you think

Personas are no longer for targeting.

They’re for creative lenses.

Each persona represents:

• A different problem framing

• A different emotional trigger

• A different story you can tell with the same product

In 2026, you don’t segment audiences.
You segment ideas.

One more thing that matters a lot

The wall between organic and paid is collapsing.

Organic content is now:

• Top-of-funnel R&D

• Idea discovery

• Signal gathering

Paid is simply:

• Distribution of proven patterns at scale

If your organic and paid teams are still operating separately, that’s a tax you won’t be able to afford much longer.

How to think going into 2026

If you remember nothing else, remember this:

• Meta decides who sees ads

• Meta decides when they see them

• You decide what Meta has to choose from

The winners in 2026 won’t be the brands with the cleverest hacks.
They’ll be the brands with the best creative systems.

Not louder.
Not luckier.
Just structurally better at producing, learning, and iterating.

That’s the game now.

And once you see it, you can’t unsee it.

— Chase