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When to iterate on a winning Meta ad vs make a net-new concept

Diversity (net-new concepts) explores new personas; iteration exploits a proven persona × angle combination — how the 2025–2026 practitioners split effort, what counts as each, and the cases where a small tweak is enough.

Updated 2026-10-24·5 sources·meta-adscreative-strategycreative-testingiterationandromeda

Iterate vs net-new

TL;DR

  • Net-new (diversity) = explore: a different persona, angle, emotional territory, visual style or context. Iteration = exploit: new hook, talent, body, audio, CTA or a mash-up of winners on a proven combination. You need both.12
  • Under Andromeda, every iteration must still be visually different from the original, or it gets clustered with it.3
  • Triage rule (Josh Brampton): test e.g. 10 angles on a persona → kill the ~5 that fail, tweak the ~2 that are OK, make several visually different versions of the ~3 that work.4
  • Zach Stuck (Mars Men, Hollow) now spends little time on iterations — net-new concepts produce more winners; after a winner he tests a new landing page rather than iterating the ad.5
  • Small tweak is right when engagement is strong and one metric lags (e.g. great hold rate, weak CTR → change only the end/CTA).6

Details

Definitions. Manchi (Ready Set): diversity means genuinely distinct assets for different personas, messaging angles, emotional territories, visual styles and contexts; iteration means incremental changes to an existing ad based on its signals.71 When a winner emerges, exploit it into other formats — UGC video, animation, partnership ads — while keeping the dimensions that won.8

Fatigue response. When a former winner’s CPM and CPA rise, the fix is iterate/refresh/rotate from what already worked.9

How big the swings should be depends on stage. Dara Denney: at the growth stage ($30–50K/month) variations inside a test should take big messaging swings and test different hooks and video lengths; at $1M+/month brands already know what works and test slighter variations — but also bigger production swings like celebrities or a high-production version of a lo-fi founder ad.1011

What net-new looks like (Zach): a different person, a completely different style and format — a “yapper” talking-head vs a claymation AI video — not a native static vs a designed static.5

Persona × angle grid. Brampton: after Andromeda many teams declared iterations dead, but the best brands run hard with combinations that work — if “eliminate guesswork” is the winning angle for one persona, make many visually diverse versions of it.123

Disagreements / caveats

  • Zach (net-new first) vs Brampton/Manchi (balanced explore/exploit) is partly about budget: Mars Men runs 5 agencies plus internal pods, so it can afford constant net-new; small teams may get more from iterating proven combos.
  • Smart Marketer’s 2023 tactic — refresh by swapping only text overlay — squeezed ~$100K extra spend then, but predates Andromeda’s similarity clustering.13

See also

Footnotes

  1. Andromeda 2.0 Explained: How Meta's Algorithm Actually Picks Your Winning Ads @ 15:45 — Ignacio Manchi ↩ ↩2

  2. Andromeda 2.0 Explained: How Meta's Algorithm Actually Picks Your Winning Ads @ 16:32 — Ignacio Manchi ↩

  3. Andromeda demands this new ad structure | Do it easily with Motion @ 17:14 — Josh Brampton ↩ ↩2

  4. Andromeda demands this new ad structure | Do it easily with Motion @ 39:18 — Josh Brampton ↩

  5. Meta Ads Creative Testing Framework Every DTC Brand Needs in 2026 ft. Zach Stuck @ 51:00 — Zach Stuck ↩ ↩2

  6. Andromeda demands this new ad structure | Do it easily with Motion @ 28:14 — Josh Brampton ↩

  7. Andromeda 2.0 Explained: How Meta's Algorithm Actually Picks Your Winning Ads @ 13:56 — Ignacio Manchi ↩

  8. Andromeda 2.0 Explained: How Meta's Algorithm Actually Picks Your Winning Ads @ 18:32 — Ignacio Manchi ↩

  9. Andromeda 2.0 Explained: How Meta's Algorithm Actually Picks Your Winning Ads @ 20:06 — Ignacio Manchi ↩

  10. How to Test Facebook Ads Creatives at Every Budget (2026) @ 09:16 — Dara Denney ↩

  11. How to Test Facebook Ads Creatives at Every Budget (2026) @ 13:53 — Dara Denney ↩

  12. Andromeda demands this new ad structure | Do it easily with Motion @ 14:07 — Josh Brampton ↩

  13. What's Working Now With Meta Ads with Molly Pittman @ 39:24 — Molly Pittman ↩