128 - 3 Changes with Meta That Affect Your Ads (and How to Sell More Tickets Anyway)
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Aug 20, 2025
Meta has recently changed the ad landscape, making it crucial for marketers to adapt. Discover how weaker targeting affects ticket sales and learn to harness custom audiences instead. The podcast highlights the importance of creativity over targeting and explores new ad placements on Threads and WhatsApp. Gain insights into Meta's shift towards AI-driven marketing and the 'fishbone effect' for testing ads. Finally, find out tactical tips to optimize your marketing funnel and boost conversions!
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Meta Is Constantly Shifting The Rules
Meta keeps moving the goalposts and old ad approaches now waste money.
Adapting to Meta's changes can make your ticket sales cheaper and more effective.
Meta keeps moving the goalposts—and if you’re still running ads like it’s last season, you’re wasting money. In this episode of Sports Marketing Machine, Jeremy Neisser breaks down the three biggest changes Meta has rolled out—weaker targeting, new placements, and the launch of its AI engine Andromeda—and shows you how to stay ahead so your ads actually sell tickets instead of just burning budget.
Sports marketers who adapt will get cheaper ads and more conversions while their competitors are left scratching their heads.
Key Topics Covered
Why Meta stripped out many interest categories (and how to replace them with custom audiences)
The power of local radius targeting paired with AI expansion
How to use new ad placements on Threads and WhatsApp to follow fans across platforms
Why Meta’s endgame is no longer being the “biggest social network” but the world’s most powerful AI ad engine
How creative—not targeting—is now the #1 driver of ad performance
What the “fishbone effect” means for testing and scaling multiple ad formats
Tactical tips for building the right funnel with top, middle, and bottom audiences
Practical examples of creative that sells (e.g., reels of fireworks night vs. static graphics)
Timestamps
00:00 – Why Meta keeps changing the rules 01:30 – Change #1: Targeting got weaker (and what to do about it) 05:40 – Building custom audiences and giving AI guardrails 08:15 – Change #2: New ad placements on Threads & WhatsApp 10:30 – Meta’s real endgame: AI-first ad engine 15:20 – Change #3: Creative is king thanks to Andromeda 17:45 – How Advantage+ campaigns scale the right creative 20:00 – Main takeaways & what to adjust first
If your ads feel more expensive or less effective than last year, it’s not you—it’s Meta. Adjust your funnel, upload fresh creative, and let AI work for you.
Share this episode with a teammate running ads, and leave a review on Spotify or Apple Podcasts if you found it helpful.
Sports Marketing Machine Podcast