Why is creative the biggest lever in Meta ads now?

Short answer: Meta's Advantage+ system now makes most of the decisions advertisers used to make by hand: who sees the ad, where it runs and how much to bid. The one input it can't invent for you is a good idea, told well. That's why creative is now the biggest lever in Meta ads, and why the brands winning on Meta in 2027 will be the ones feeding the system better creative, not fiddling with audiences.

We've been saying "creative, not targeting" to clients for years. For a long time it was our opinion. Now it's just how the platform works.

What changed in Meta advertising?

A few years ago, running Meta ads well meant building audiences. Interest stacks, lookalikes at 1%, 3% and 5%, exclusions on exclusions. A good media buyer could find your customer before anyone else did, and that was the advantage.

Meta has been steadily automating that work. Advantage+ campaigns now handle audiences, placements and bidding, and Meta's newer AI delivery system reads signals from the ad itself to decide who should see it. Broad targeting with strong creative now regularly matches or beats tightly built audiences.

The scale of the shift is hard to ignore. On its Q2 2026 earnings call, Meta reported that Advantage+ had passed a US$75 billion annual revenue run-rate, and that 9 million small businesses were using at least one of its AI ad creative tools (up from 4 million advertisers at the end of 2024).

So when every advertiser has access to the same machine, the machine stops being the advantage. What you put into it is.

What does "creative is the new targeting" mean?

It means your ad tells Meta who it's for. The hook, the person on screen, the problem you open with and the way you talk all act as signals. Make an ad built around a new mum's 6am chaos and the system finds new mums. Make one about a tradie's ute and it goes looking for tradies.

That changes what "testing" means, too. Swapping a blue button for a red one, or changing the first three words of a caption, barely registers as new creative anymore. The system treats it as the same ad. What it does respond to is a genuinely different idea: a different person, a different problem, a different reason to care.

How do you improve Meta ad performance in 2027?

Here's what we do across the paid social accounts we run at Melbourne Social Co.

1. Write the brief before you make the ad. Who is it for, what's the one thing they should feel, and what's the proof? If you can't answer those in a sentence each, no amount of budget will save the ad.

2. Test ideas, not tweaks. From every brief, make at least two concepts that are properly different from each other (not two edits of the same video). Let the results pick the winner, then make more like it.

3. Feed the system real inputs. AI creative tools can resize, re-cut and write variations all day. What they can't do is invent footage of a real person using your real product, or your team explaining something only they know. Thin inputs become thin ads, just at scale.

4. Keep a steady flow of fresh creative. Ads tire faster than they used to. If frequency is climbing and click-through is sliding, you usually don't need a new audience. You need a new angle.

5. Make it for the feed first. Vertical, sound-on, with a hook in the first second or two. Creative that looks like a TV ad squeezed onto a phone tends to get scrolled past (more on that in our post on social-first content).

Does targeting still matter at all?

A little. Clean conversion tracking matters a lot, because it's how the system learns what a good result looks like. Retargeting, exclusions for existing customers and some tightly controlled tests still have their place. But the hours most teams used to spend building audiences are now better spent on concepts, scripts and shoot days.

What does this mean if you're choosing a paid social agency in Australia?

Ask where their effort goes. If the pitch is mostly about audience strategy and bidding, that's the part Meta is automating. The agencies worth hiring in 2027 can make the creative as well as run it, and can turn out a steady stream of genuinely different concepts without your budget disappearing into production.

That's the model we've built at Melbourne Social Co since 2011: social-first creative and paid social under one roof, for brands right across Australia. The people writing the brief are the people on set and the people reading the results.

Want the bigger picture for 2027?

"The AI makes the ad. You make the brief" is the first of five shifts in The Real Thing: Social in 2027, our free outlook report with ATTN.CTRL. It covers the data behind each shift and what we'd do about it.

Download The Real Thing: Social in 2027 →

FAQs

What is Meta Advantage+?

Advantage+ is Meta's suite of automated ad tools. It uses AI to decide audiences, placements, budgets and, increasingly, creative variations, so advertisers set the goal and supply the assets.

Is creative really more important than targeting on Meta?

For most brands, yes. With Advantage+ handling delivery, the content of your ad is one of the strongest signals Meta uses to find the right people, so better and more varied creative usually beats tighter audiences.

How many ads should I be running on Meta?

There's no magic number, but you want enough genuinely different concepts that the system has real choices. For most of our clients that means new concepts every few weeks rather than one hero ad a quarter.

Can I just use Meta's AI to make my ads?

You can use it to resize, re-cut and write variations, and you should. But the AI works with what you give it. Real people, real product footage and a clear idea still have to come from you.

How much should I spend on creative vs media?

It depends on budget and category, but most brands underspend on creative. If your ads are tiring before you can replace them, that's a sign to shift more budget into making new concepts.

Melbourne Social Co is an Australia-wide social-first creative agency, making content for paid social for brands since 2011. Talk to us about your content for Meta ads.

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by Melbourne Social Co