Meta's targeting got worse and its delivery got better. Detailed interest options keep quietly disappearing, the iOS opt-out cut the signal years ago, and broad audiences now routinely beat the carefully stacked ones that used to be the craft of the job. The lever that still genuinely moves is the creative.
That changes the shape of the work. Less time in Ads Manager assembling audience permutations, more time producing enough distinct ads that the algorithm has something real to choose between. Not fifteen versions of one image with the headline reworded — actually different angles. The founder explaining it to camera. A screen recording. A customer's own words. A plain price card with no design on it at all.
Indian feeds also punish anything that looks imported. An ad shot in the actual office, in the language the customer thinks in, with a WhatsApp button instead of a form, tends to beat the polished production. We stopped apologising for that a while ago and started budgeting for it instead.
Instant forms deserve their own warning. They fill quickly and they qualify badly, and that is the trade you are making rather than a problem to be fixed. If you use them, the follow-up needs to be close to immediate and the form needs at least one question a casual tapper cannot be bothered to answer.
