Your agency might be fighting Meta ads Andromeda algorithm and you’re paying them to do it.
I’ve been going back and forth with a Meta Business Partner agency about why my client’s account has seven active campaigns, duplicate creative running across several of them, and a manually segmented funnel structure that Meta itself has been telling advertisers to stop using.
Their defense? The classic hits:
- “This structure gives us more control.”
- “Consolidating would reset the learning phase.”
- “Look at the ROAS on these remarketing campaigns.”
The best part? Their own company’s 2026 Paid Social Playbook says the opposite. It says Meta’s delivery engine is a retrieval game now. It says audience segmentation alone is a recipe for wasted spend. It says to stop trying to out-target the machine and start out-creating it.
So I’m getting sold a strategy that contradicts the agency’s own published best practices. And when I push back with specifics, I get a longer version of the same argument.
Unfortunately, this isn’t new
This isn’t unique to one agency. It’s a pattern of individuals sticking to “that’s how we’ve always done it” and not keeping up with the changes. Here’s what’s actually happening in 2026:
- Meta ads Andromeda algorithm handles funnel sequencing internally. It optimizes at the individual level, not the audience level. It processes 10,000x more ad variants in parallel than the old system. The whole point is that you don’t need to manually segment prospecting, mid-funnel, and remarketing into separate campaigns anymore.
- Running duplicate ads across campaigns means you’re bidding against yourself in the auction. That drives up your CPMs and fragments your data. It’s not a scaling strategy. It’s self-competition.
- Those 40x and 70x ROAS numbers on remarketing? That’s last-click attribution on people who were already going to buy. It looks incredible in a report. It doesn’t mean the campaign structure is why they converted.
- The fear that consolidation resets learning? Overstated. Adding new creative to an existing ad set is a softer reset than audience or bid changes. A fragmented structure with seven campaigns actually creates more reset risk, not less.
Every major source publishing on Meta ads in 2026 is saying the same thing: fewer campaigns, bigger budgets per campaign, Advantage+ targeting, creative diversity as the lever. This isn’t controversial. It’s the new baseline.
You are allowed to question them…and you should
So if you’re a business owner paying an agency to manage your Meta ads, here are a few questions worth asking:
- How many active campaigns are running for your brand? If it’s more than three or four, ask why.
- Are any ads duplicated across campaigns? If yes, you’re bidding against yourself.
- Is the agency citing remarketing ROAS to justify the structure? Ask them to show you incrementality data instead.
- Have they published or shared any content about consolidation and Advantage+? If so, ask why your account doesn’t reflect it.
- Are changes being made to your account without your knowledge? That’s not optimization. That’s a trust problem.
The new ad playbook launched in 2025…
Agencies aren’t the enemy here. Most are doing their best with the playbook they learned. But the playbook changed. If your agency is still running a 2022 structure on a 2026 algorithm, you’re leaving money on the table and paying them to keep it there.
The algorithm isn’t the problem. Fighting it is.
