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Ecom Growth Insider · Podcast episode

Why Small Meta Ad Tweaks Are Not Enough Anymore | Andrew Foxwell

With Andrew Foxwell · Published 2026-03-16 · 52 minutes · Hosted by Andrej Tumachowitsch

Andrew Foxwell runs Foxwell Founders. It is a community of direct response marketers who work on Meta. He says members come from 30 countries and spend half a billion a month on Meta. Every member gets an account audit each month, so the patterns he sees come from many accounts rather than one brand. In this episode he explains what changed on Meta between 2021 and 2026.

Andrew says small creative tweaks are not enough to signal change to the Meta algorithm. Changing a shirt color or only swapping a hook is rarely different enough. He pushes net-new concepts instead. When he audits a stuck account, the creative is where most of his time goes.

This is for DTC founders and operators who run Meta at scale. It helps most if you are stuck at a spend ceiling. Andrew also covers how to staff creative and what a creative strategist should do week to week. He explains how to tell a brand it is not pulling its weight.

What you will take away

  • Small tweaks are not enough to signal change Andrew says a red shirt versus a blue shirt does not read as different to Meta. Net-new concepts are what move an account now.
  • Consolidation beats funnel-stage campaign structures Andrew says Meta has told advertisers it does not care what sits inside your campaign containers. He consolidates, and splits things out only for smaller accounts or dynamic product catalogs.
  • Creator whitelisting is an underused lever Andrew names creator partnerships and whitelisting as a lever many brands skip. He says it can add to the bottom line and widen creative diversity at the same time.
  • The niche now lives in the creative Broad targeting did not end niche marketing, Andrew says. The niche now sits in the creative. The ad has to name the specific problem that buyer wants solved.
  • Creative is 70 percent of the audit In an account audit, Andrew spends about 70 percent of his time on the creative. The rest goes to campaign setup, then the website and AOV, then the events data.
  • Net-new concept volume drives scale Andrew points to a brand spending half a million a month. It shipped more than 300 net-new concepts in January. He says that was its biggest scale so far.
  • Staff creative strategy as a real seat Andrew's order: pay three strong advertisers for a creative audit, then hire a creative strategist and an editor. He says the strategist's week runs on analysis, customer research, writing briefs, and reviewing what comes back.
  • Top accounts know margin by product Andrew sees one pattern in accounts that scale. Someone there knows the margin on each product, not just on the business. They build bundles and offers around the items with better economics.

"And you really have had to become more of a marketer, really, less of a button pusher as a Meta marketer."

- Andrew Foxwell

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Full transcript

Lightly edited from the episode captions for readability. The episode is the record - where they differ, the audio wins.

00:00 - Intro and Why This Episode Matters

Andrej: Welcome back to Ecom Growth Insider, the show where we get into what's actually working to scale DTC brands profitably. Today's guest is Andrew Foxwell, someone who's been running Meta Ads since basically the beginning and who now runs Foxwell Founders, one of the highest operator communities that I've ever seen. Between the members, they're spending hundreds of millions, even half a billion per month on Meta. So Andrew sees patterns across tons of accounts and not just one brand.

In this episode, we break down what's changed from the 2021 Meta era to 2026. Why campaign structure matters less, why small iterations don't move the needle anymore, and why the real advantage is now your creative system and having the ability to ship net new concepts consistently. If you're scaling Meta or stuck at a plateau and you're not sure whether it's your offer, your messaging, or your creative, this episode is a must listen. Let's jump in.

00:22 - Foxwell Founders: $0.5B a Month Across 30 Countries

Andrej: Andrew, quick intro for the people who don't know you. What do you do in your day-to-day now?

Andrew: Yeah, so my name is Andrew Foxwell. I've been running Facebook ads really since they were invented, and I ran an agency for many years. My day-to-day now is that I run the Foxwell Founders Community, which is the biggest collection of direct response digital marketers that are Meta-forward in the world. We spend half a billion a month on Meta alone. And we have representatives from 30 countries, or members from 30 countries. So it's pretty cool. It's a great group, and that's primarily what I do.

I do that. I do agency owner consulting. I do agency employee consulting, and then I audit accounts as well, and do a lot of consulting on Meta accounts. So yeah, Meta has been my professional life for many years now. So I'm excited to be here. Thanks for having me.

Andrej: Yeah, thanks for being here. The community is amazing. It's crazy what you've built, and honestly I think it's the highest signal operators community that I've ever seen, that I've ever been a part of.

Andrew: Oh, I appreciate that, man.

01:12 - Why Andrew Started the Community

Andrej: What was the original reason that you started it?

Andrew: Yeah, I started it because I was lonely, really. It was the pandemic, and it would be 5 years ago. We're recording this in March of 26, so it'll be 5 years in June of 26. And it was just that we felt lonely, and I felt like there was an opportunity to bring together some of my favorite people that wasn't on X, basically. We'd had a Facebook group for a long time called the Facebook and Instagram Pro Ad Buyers group, which maybe some of you may remember. But that was how it started, and I was like, I love this kind of stuff, so let's just see where it goes and see where it starts. And that's basically how it got going.

And it was totally on a whim. I walked downstairs and talked to my wife and my business partner and I said, I think we should start this. And she's like, all right, sounds good. And we have, and it's been awesome, and I love the work. I love doing it. If you've ever heard of the phrase ikigai, it's that for me, right? It's something that is good for the world, that makes me money, that I have a unique skill set at. And so I love doing it.

Supporting people and helping them navigate the challenges of the DTC Meta world is something that I was alone in for a long time. So to have people to talk about it with and to talk to is huge, right? It just helps you feel like you're not crazy, at a minimum. And then we can help grow people's businesses too. It's amazing what we've been able to do in terms of helping people acquire other agencies in the community, or hire people from the community, or whatever. Whatever it is you're looking to do, that's my goal, is to help you achieve that.

Andrej: That's amazing. When I started the journey of running ads and being in the Meta ads space, it was also really lonely in the beginning. I also met a few people through random Facebook communities, Facebook groups, and that definitely helped a lot. I'm also still in contact with those people. So yeah, I get the reasoning behind why you started that group.

The reason I'm really excited to have you on is because, obviously, with the amount of spend that the whole group has, and with being in the industry for so long, I imagine you see patterns across hundreds of different advertisers and not just one account.

03:53 - 2021 vs 2026: What Would Shock Most Advertisers

Andrej: So I'm curious: if someone really paid attention to paid ads, to Meta ads, the last time in 2020 or 2021, what do you think would shock them about how things are going in 2026 and how the day-to-day looks today?

Andrew: Yeah, I think a big difference is - I think there's a number of major differences. One of the main differences, if we're looking at let's just say 2021 versus 2026, is campaign setup. Just on a simple side of it, it's a lot simpler than it used to be. It used to utilize campaigns and ad sets, and do microtargeting more, utilizing interests and lookalike audiences and things like that. And they were separate, so you'd have funnels set up. You'd have a top of funnel, middle of funnel, bottom of funnel. That's not the case today.

So today it's very much a full funnel setup. In many cases you're throwing all creative in one, or you're throwing it in a consolidated setup, and that can be done in a lot of different ways. That's typically the biggest change I think people would be surprised by. I think the other one is the creative as well, and how much work has to go into it as a Meta marketer now: developing and understanding new personas, new angles, new hooks on your creative, and building new creative to speak to different segments of your customer base, as well as where your different segments of the customer base are, depending on where they are in the journey.

So I think that is a huge one. You spend a lot of time now thinking about how do I expand our total addressable market, essentially utilizing better creative. And that can be done via video, via static ads, or via catalog ads. So the actual formats haven't really shifted too much in terms of the sizing and things like that. I mean, still trying to run four to five aspect ratio videos where you can, etc. But I think that's a major one that's different as well. So the creative, the campaign setup.

And I would think, going into 2026 and even further 2027, the ad serving engines that Meta has are much more sophisticated than they were then. So Meta is really taking time to look at what are the landing pages saying, what's the person doing on the social content itself, how long are they spending on the landing page and are they looking around, etc., etc. So that's something that's there - and what's happening organically as well. That's something that they came out and talked about with GEM, more as the ad serving model under Andromeda.

So it's like, you have to be thinking about that, and it can't just be a picture of a shirt on a white background anymore. It's got to be much more sophisticated than that. And you really have had to become more of a marketer, really, less of a button pusher as a Meta marketer.

Andrej: Yeah, I definitely agree with that side of things. Also, I'm not as long in the Meta ads sphere as you are. I think I started around 6 years probably. But even back then, things have been completely different, and the results that you were getting were heavily dependent on what buttons you were pressing, what settings you would pick, what audiences you would target.

Obviously the creatives were probably also important, but you could have the most basic stuff going on, and it would still convert, it would still get results. And over the past few years, a lot has changed - that is not the case.

07:31 - What People Still Get Wrong About Meta

Andrej: What do you think people still get wrong about Meta right now?

Andrew: I think there's a certain amount of people that still think about it in the 2021 time frame, which is when a lot of us learned Meta. And I think a lot of people are still thinking it has to be done by funnel stage. It has to be top funnel, middle funnel, bottom funnel. I think that's a big one. And people still think that you have to utilize micro-targeting and use things by funnel stage, and not think in terms of creative targeting and consolidation from a campaign setup standpoint. So I think that's a big one that I see people getting wrong.

I also think people get wrong on Meta ads that they're not understanding that small iterations aren't enough to signal change for the Meta algorithm. So you take somebody wearing a blue shirt versus a red shirt and you're like, well, this will be good, I'll try it with a different color. And that doesn't necessarily mean something different to Meta at this point in time.

So really what you're trying to do is push and utilize net new concepts as much as possible, to get them out there and to try to speak to a wider selection of people than maybe you would have, or speak to them differently, or think about the challenges that you're solving from an emotional standpoint, or whatever. So getting into that side of it, more consumer psychology, I think is something that people get wrong.

I think a lot of people get wrong as well the technical setup of it. There's a lot of pixel issues that I see often. There's a lot of double firing. There's a lot of event match quality that's not very high. And that can really hurt things as you try to scale. So those are, I would say, some of the main ones.

The things that have always been on Meta have remained the same. There's always technical errors, there's always glitches, there's always downtime. So that stuff hasn't changed too much. But in terms of what people get wrong, those are probably some of the main ones. Thinking about it in what it used to be versus what it is today, and really studying how Meta is saying that they're looking at this.

I think to be a good Meta marketer today, you have to be pushing boundaries in terms of your understanding of not only a customer base, but of what is currently working from a creative standpoint in the target demographic that you're attempting to go for. So that can mean a lot of different things. That can mean right now it's yapper ads for a lot of the United States, for a lot of the Western world, right? And that's something that's utilized in creator opportunity, or creators are using that a lot. And so that's something that we took from them and are adapting to ads.

So you sort of have to be always hustling and understanding, and knowing that you don't know, to be effective, I think, today.

10:17 - Whitelisting and Creator Partnerships as a Growth Lever

Andrew: And I think another one is creator partnerships, whitelisting. That's such a massive unlock for so many people that a lot of people don't utilize. If you're not doing that, that's something that can add a lot to your bottom line, definitely, and it can help you with creative diversity quite a bit.

Andrej: That's also what we see in the accounts working really well at the moment. And that's also the direction that Meta as a platform wants to go. They want their ads to be as close to the organic content as possible, and ideally for the ads to not look like ads.

Because that's how they make sure, for their users, that the experience of using the app is seamless and they enjoy it. No one wants to just see a bunch of ads on the platform. So it makes sense that they're pushing the partnership ads.

Andrew: Totally.

12:00 - Do Funnel-Stage Campaign Structures Still Matter?

Andrej: And I'm curious, do you still see any use case in splitting up the account based on funnel stages? Because I was just auditing an ad account yesterday where the brand was still doing that. They had different campaigns for different stages of the buying journey, with even different conversion goals. That's what I probably did the last time three or four years ago. Since then I've not been doing that. So I'm curious to hear your thoughts.

Andrew: So I think everybody does this a little bit differently. It depends, and it's always contextual too. A lot of the accounts that I have visibility into, or that I get - every member of the Foxwell Founders community, as you know, gets an audit every month. And so I see a lot of audits that come from accounts that are targeting the US, because for a lot of folks, that's where most high value users are.

So if we're talking about an account in the US and we're talking about that they're spending $100,000 a month or something like that, that sense can lean towards more consolidation. And I think you may have multiple campaigns where you're testing creative, or maybe you're going to go with a setup where you're going to dump everything in, or you're going to go CBO and when you have new stuff you'll just launch a new ad set within the CBO and you're just going to keep increasing the budget.

I don't think campaign containers are necessarily going to be relevant moving forward in a huge way. When we think about looking at funnel stages, Meta doesn't care. Meta has come out and said, "We don't care what you do in your campaign containers. It makes no difference to us. We're looking only at the creative and we're looking at what you're saying and where people are. And that's where we're going to serve it based on where they are dynamically. So you don't have to worry about this." But this is a function of what we're still doing as ad buyers, because that's what we used to do all the time.

So I think it's not necessarily that important anymore. The one caveat to that - well, there's two caveats. One is if it's a smaller account. I think there still can be validity in this. We have some members that are in the UK, and some of these people they're advertising for are spending $5,000, $10,000 a month, or whatever pounds a month. In that sense, I still think separating out stages can be helpful and can be useful, potentially, especially to get sort of initial traction. Sometimes that can be useful, but not all the time. I have seen it work with funnel stages more recently in those areas. So that's why I say that.

I think the other one is with dynamic product catalogs. If you're running a dynamic product catalog and you're customizing it, you could separate that out. That doesn't necessarily need to be sitting in the same campaigns as everything else, but it totally could. To me, I like separating that out because it serves a little bit differently. It lives a little bit differently. But other than that, I pretty much am consolidating. I'm not separating by funnel stage anymore.

So you're trying to make sure that your naming conventions are good on your creative so that you can look at this and sort it that way. So you understand, really, we don't have a lot for middle of the funnel or whatever. And that's the work that you're doing in funnel stages. You're not doing it in the container side at all, really.

Andrej: Yeah, that makes sense. I also like separating the catalog ads from the others. But apart from that, I prefer having everything as consolidated as possible. Cool, that's good to know.

Andrew: Sometimes I'm like, this is what I think, but I don't know. So I'm glad you agree.

Andrej: Yeah, we're all just figuring everything out along the way and testing stuff.

Andrew: Absolutely.

Andrej: Seeing what works.

Andrew: Absolutely.

Andrej: You mentioned that obviously creative diversification is a huge topic. I would say since the beginning of last year everyone has been talking about nothing else, from what I'm seeing. From your perspective, what are the most important dimensions when it comes to actually having creative diversification?

Andrew: So I think creative diversification right now - and let me know if you agree with this - I think it's not necessarily around sizing or around the format as much. Meta is already pushing us on automatic adjustments everywhere, and even if we're turning the things off, they'll turn them on and not tell us. There's just that kind of crap happening. So I think it's important to point out that it's not necessarily around that.

First of all, I like making a lot of 16 by 9 and four by five aspect ratio stuff. Usually four by five is what we'll lead with if the person hasn't done that a lot. That's what you're leaning into, because four by five aspect ratio generally will look good in stories. It's going to look good in the feed, or it's going to look okay in the feed, and there's going to be some places where it might not look that great, but that's okay. So that's just what Meta is today.

And you have to have this conversation with a brand owner that you're working with: look, this is not going to look perfect all the time. You have to be prepared for this. So I think that's one.

So I think when we're talking about creative diversity, we're not talking about sizing, really. We're not talking about even necessarily the type. It's more around how are you speaking to people and what types of ads are you making that are different. So we're looking at one where the founder's got the iPhone and they're talking about a sale and everything, to a high production ad where we're talking about the product quality and how it fits.

I think you have to have that type of thinking, and you have to approach it that way, where you're pushing as much as possible on the button of: this is different, this is unique, and it's not something that the audience has seen before. And if it's speaking to different stages of the customer journey, even better.

We don't talk about it enough and I think we always should. There's all these stages of, okay, there's problem aware, problem unaware, solution aware, solution unaware, brand unaware, brand aware. You have to take people from they don't have any idea they even have this issue, all the way to knowing who the hell you are. So that's kind of like a baseline of beginning at first, and then it's going into: are we talking about a founder connection? Are we talking about how this solves an issue for somebody, etc. And that's really what we're doing with creative diversity.

So I think right now, for the most part, video is still quite good, a main driver of revenue for a lot of folks, because video formats generally are great for giving you the energy and the time to explain what this is or what it might be. And it depends on what type of product you're selling, of course, but I think that's big.

I think that if you're trying to sell to, let's just say, baby boomers in the United States, you want to try to look at what they're looking at in their newsfeed. And typically what boomers see a lot from friends is like long posts without spacing properly and weird pictures.

So I had a person the other day - maybe you saw this post in the community - where I was like, what's the best ads that are running for you? And this guy shared a photo of the ugly feet of like one that had fungus and one that didn't. And then the post had to be like 1500 characters or whatever, but he said it's printing money for them. And I think it's because it mirrors what they would see normally in their feed from other people. So you have to think in that sense as well from a creative diversity standpoint.

So creative diversity, everybody talks about it and they're like, oh yeah, you got to have creative diversity. But really what we're trying to do is, what's different? What are the objections people have, and how are you creating visual elements that are going to pop out in somebody's newsfeed and be different than what they are seeing from a brand normally? And sometimes it's matching the other content in their newsfeed and sometimes it's not. But that's a big part of it, and you don't really know until you start taking swings.

Andrej: Yeah, that makes sense.

20:17 - Why Small Creative Tweaks Are Not Enough Anymore

Andrej: Would you recommend for a brand to still do different hook testing, literally only changing the first few seconds of the video and then keeping the rest the same? Or is that a waste of time with how the algorithm is working?

Andrew: Six months ago I would have said absolutely. And now, with what they've told us about what they're looking at, I don't think so. I mean, it's all right. I'm not saying it's a terrible idea, but I don't think it's necessarily going to be enough to move the account forward in the way that's necessary to really scale, right?

So it might be all right to make a concept live a little longer if you're just changing the hook, but Meta is looking at the whole creative. So if it's not different enough, it's not going to gain traction enough from a scale standpoint for it to really go up. Now, there's exceptions to this all the time that I've seen, but yeah.

21:10 - Riches Are in the Niches, Inside Broad Targeting

Andrej: I've heard you mention the riches are in the niches before. How do you explain that in a world where we are basically only doing broad targeting on Meta?

Andrew: So when we're talking about this, the answer to that particular question is you're trying to make sure that the creatives that you're building are speaking to niche, really specific problems or solutions that that product has, or problems that the consumer is having. So you have to get really in-depth in understanding that customer base in order to be able to do this, but that's something that's very rare, and it's hard.

You can tell a good advertiser because they will really understand: oh, that's what they're thinking about, that's what they're doing. And they've built their own personal news feed, or a fake account on Instagram, to build what that person would be seeing and what they're looking at, because there's a lot of niche issues that people are facing that they're looking for a solution for. And this could be supplements. It's really crazy. Let's just talk about supplements, for example.

So you have some sort of supplement that deals with support on hot flashes or something, and it's like menopause support. So you go through this idea, and you wouldn't know that, but if you start curating your content to know, they'd be like, oh, everybody, they're all talking about hair loss, this, that. And you can see the commonalities between it, but they can see how they're talking about it, and you can build your ad to specifically address those issues.

And that's a massive leg up that a lot of people don't think about. So that's how I tend to start to do it. But to build net new concepts and to build new ideas, it requires a lot of time and energy that you didn't spend doing this before. So it's a different thinking. It's a different way of thinking. But it's really powerful.

Andrej: And then you basically have different problems, and I assume also related to that, different target demographics, like the different dream buyers that you want to target. And then you basically make sure that the creator of the content that you create speaks exactly to those people that have that specific problem.

And then I assume you can create a big variety of different creatives based on matching those different problems that they have with the different personas that you want to target, because most brands, they have not only one target avatar that they're targeting. It's usually two, three, maybe five different ones, and they all also obviously have different problems that they're dealing with, why they would want to buy the product.

Andrew: Yeah, so much of it is diving in way deeper than you ever thought you would need to, in terms of understanding what that is so you can make better creative that's going to speak to those issues, or the solutions that you have. So in terms of the riches are in the niches, that's what it is now. And I've seen ads that shock me in terms of how specific they are now.

There's an insole company that I bought insoles from a few years ago, and I don't use the insoles anymore because I've used them for long enough that they smell. Obviously I have stinky feet. This is who I am. And I got an ad literally two days ago on Instagram that was like, hey, are the insoles you bought from us smelly? Get a new pair for 50% off. And I was like, no, that's the exact issue that I'm dealing with. That's why I haven't touched them.

And obviously now I'm in the retargeting flow. I'm going to be, or whatever, I'll see that after six months. No, but obviously this is coming. They already addressed the issue that I have with it. So it's fascinating in that regard, of how specific you have to be in thinking about it.

So many people that are marketers, and so many of us that came up in this Facebook ads world, the lever that you used to push was promotion. And if you look across marketing, that's used all the time. People are like, oh, let's just put a sale on it. And it's not enough around the product quality, and it's not enough around what makes it different, and it's not enough around what sets it apart. And so that's really something special, that I think if you can start to think that way, you will make better ads and you will have better results in your campaigns.

Andrej: Yeah. Now, a somewhat more practical question. You do quite a lot of audits of accounts and have a lot of insights.

28:42 - Andrew's Audit Framework: Creative, Site, AOV, Events

Andrej: Let's say a brand is stuck at, for example, 5,000 per day in ad spend. For you, what's the fastest way to diagnose whether the issue is the messaging, diversity, creative fatigue, the offer, the landing page? How do you approach that?

Andrew: I think it's all of it. If I'm auditing an account, the first one obviously that I'm looking at is what's the creative saying and how are they talking about it. Usually what you'll see is one winning concept or two, and they've doubled down and continued to create versions of that, and there's not enough net new thinking.

That's usually a function of the founder running the ads, or not having an agency, or they have somebody in house that's also doing 10 other things. So they don't have the time, or they don't have a creative strategist that's in there making banger ads, and there's no system to come up with new ideas. So that's a big one that I'll see, and that's the main one that we'll look at from an ad standpoint, or from an audit standpoint.

The next thing we'll look at from an audit standpoint is what's the setup of it, right? Is it overly complex, and is it hurting because it's overly complex? Typically what I'll see with this is there's testing campaigns and they're still utilizing the graduation method. I'm not saying this is wrong and it still can work for some people, but there was this idea a few years ago that you'd test something and then if it worked, you'd move it over into a campaign. Well, this is a sure way to make sure that what was working does not work.

You should just scale it in place and not have a graduation technique working, or you shouldn't be graduating and not be utilizing the graduation technique. Typically it kills the performance, because it's working and then you're taking it out and being like, "Oh, we'll go over here." And it's like, "Well, wait, I was working over here." So that is another one that I'll see, from a complexity standpoint.

So then we'll go and look at the website itself. What does it look like on mobile, what does it look like on desktop? We're obviously always focusing on mobile, because that's where predominantly people are looking at it from, especially from a first interaction standpoint. Does it make sense? Is it clear? What's the promise, what's the guarantee, what's the feeling of it? So that is something that we're looking at: if I try this, what's my recourse if I don't like it? That is a big one. And how easy is it to return, or whatever?

And is there enough objection busting? And if you have a number of products or a low dollar product, is there some sort of bundle that's making it easier for people to buy more? That type of a thing. Because the more you can obviously raise the AOV, the better off you're going to be in terms of having more room in your CAC. So that's another one, that's the next phase that we'll get into.

And then the final phase is looking at the events and Events Manager and seeing if there's any mismatches there, and saying, okay, looks like there is some issues there. Looks like the match rate's 40% or something like that. But predominantly, if you look across all of those things and you look at it from a percentage of 100% as the audit, 70% of my time is going to be spent on the creative stuff. It's just because that's where the most opportunity lies in most cases.

And usually there hasn't been enough thinking or changes, or even a discussion on offer like we talked about, which can go in under that ad creative piece. I think some people would put that a little bit differently, under promotions, offers, bundle building, things like that. But I'll put that under the creative, because that should talk about that to some degree and be in there. So that's where I'll spend most of my time, and then it goes down from there.

Andrej: I generally agree. The only difference that I personally do is I always start with the pixel and the tracking, just to be sure that the data that I'm looking at is actually accurate and is actually real.

Andrew: Yeah, that's a good call. Well, I'll start doing that now. It's a good idea.

Andrej: But I also would recommend that 70% on the creative is the right way. Let's say an e-commerce brand wants to improve their creative game and they're struggling with that. They know that that's the problem, which leads to them not being able to scale.

31:26 - The Creative Org Chart: How to Staff for Scale

Andrej: What would you say does a good creative structure or creative org chart look like for a brand, depending on the size?

Andrew: If you've identified that creative is the issue for you, the first thing that I would recommend is that you get a creative audit from like three different great advertisers. Get a creative audit, have them look at it, pay them for it. Not just some, hey, can you look at this? Pay a thousand bucks for it or whatever, to have them come in and look. And you will have then a road map of, okay, this is some of the ideas that we can try, these are some of the things that we need.

Then from there, in an ideal world, you're hiring a creative strategist that's working with the media buyer, and you're then also probably hiring a video editor part-time, or some sort of editor. Those are typically the two main ones that we'll see right away, that really can have an impact. Because what you're trying to get at is net new concepts. That's the goal.

Zack Stuck, who I do the Scalability School podcast with, he runs a bunch of brands, and one of his brands is spending half a million a month. And they had 300 plus net new concepts, and it was the biggest. That was in January, and that was the biggest scale they had ever had, that was the most they'd ever grown. And it's because they're speaking to more new people.

You don't think about it, but when you're targeting a certain group of people at $10,000 a month, that's a really relevant group of people. And then as you start spending more, that group of people gets less relevant over time, and so you have to be speaking to them differently.

So that's what I would say. So if you're kind of thinking about it, even if you don't want to hire somebody full-time, you don't want to hire a creative strategist full-time, you don't want to hire a video editor full-time, there's freelance creative strategists in our community. There's tons of them. It's even fractional, like a CMO. But I would encourage you to think about that becoming a full-time position in 2026, because if you want to win and Meta's the biggest arm for you, you're going to have to crank that up.

34:06 - What a Creative Strategist Does Week to Week

Andrej: And in your opinion, what should the day-to-day or the week-to-week of a creative strategist look like? And how should the time be allocated if you have someone full-time for that?

Andrew: So in an ideal world, the creative strategist is speaking to the media buyer and then understanding what the results are coming from. You're usually using a tool like Motion to identify what the results are, what people are looking at, how they are performing. And then basically spending a certain - let's just say that's 20%, 25% of the day probably - analyzing, making sure that you understand. Maybe 10 to 25% depending on the day.

And then another percentage is going and doing customer research. So digging into new angles, new personas they might be going after or thinking about, and developing briefs around those particular areas. So say that's 20%. Or 25%.

And then a big chunk of that is writing briefs. So preparing the work that you've done previously. This is what it looks like. This is what we need. Sending it off to a designer or a video editor and having those creatives be made, and then becoming the pipeline of reviewing and editing and making sure that those go back to the media buyer to be uploaded properly. So that's what I would say a creative strategist should be doing on a regular basis.

I do think that there's a degree to which a creative strategist is spending 10 to 15% of their time, or 20% of their time, understanding and utilizing AI and LLMs to figure out what they can do to continue to expand TAM for the brand. So it feels like it's not as tangible as putting together a brief and putting it over there, but I do think there's more to that. You need to be spending time thinking about this, and you need to be spending time messing around and seeing what we can come up with. And that could be building a bot that looks at Reddit reviews or whatever.

I think that to innovate and to be innovative and growing, you have to have that creative strategist that's experimenting with AI creative or whatever. Because I think that's one way that you're going to stay ahead, because this stuff's evolving so rapidly that if you ever have a creative strategist that's caught on their back feet, it's not going to be as productive. I don't know. What do you think?

Andrej: I agree. I agree. AI is getting huge, and I think it shouldn't replace any work that the creative strategist is doing, but it just amplifies it and makes it significantly faster. Or it should allow the creative strategist to pull the data and make decisions faster, and just take over some of the tedious work that no one really wants to do, but that has to be done because it's important in coming up with the briefs.

Andrew: Absolutely. Absolutely agree.

Andrej: And I'm not sure - without any context it's probably a tough question to answer - but what would you say are the success metrics for a creative strategist? Or what should be the main KPIs to determine whether the person is on the right track and getting the right results?

Andrew: Certainly, are they putting out net new ideas? So that's a huge one. I think, are they putting out net new ideas? I think any employee, creative strategist or not - to me, I do a lot of agency owner coaching, and a lot of it is you have to make sure that the employee is enjoying what they're doing. So I think just being like, do you like this? Are you jacked by this? Are you stoked to do this work? And I think if they are, that's a massive sign that you have the right person in the right seat.

So if they are excited and they're like, "Did you see this? Did you see it working?" And they're excited when something that they're building performs, that's a massive win for you. So I think that's another success metric.

And then of course, performance. I don't think it should be all that they do that's tied to performance, because so much of what the job is is getting throughput, making sure there's a creative system built, and making sure that it's creating net new concepts. But it should be some of it, that they should be like, "Yeah, we have wins and that's awesome and I'm excited about that." And so I think that's kind of how I would gauge that. But if they're not doing the second one, if they're not enjoying it, the other stuff's not going to come. So you really have to be pushing that as much as possible.

Andrej: Yeah. That's very important.

40:36 - How to Be Honest With Clients About What It Takes to Win

Andrej: And if you're a creative strategist and you're working with a brand - for example, a creative strategist from an agency, or part-time working with a brand - and then you put out the best briefs ever, but the brand doesn't implement them, or they don't do a good job at incorporating those briefs, and nothing comes out as you would like it to come out. How would you approach that with a brand?

Andrew: Yeah, you have to - it's a two-way street. It's just like any other relationship. You both have to work, and you have to make sure that that brand is understanding that to be successful, if they're the ones creating the ads and you're just briefing, they have to pull their weight. And if they're unable to, that's not going to make them successful and it will be hindering their results. So I think that's a massive one.

And I think you have to be very conscious of that and be clear about that in the communication with that brand. Look, you've got to pull your weight here. You've got to help us with this. And if you're unable to, then we just aren't going to see the results that you necessarily need. And so we need you to pull that, and we'll let you know if you're not doing that, because we want this to work too, right?

So I think a lot of times an agency or consultant, if they're working with a brand, they're hesitant to be really honest with them because they don't want to lose the contract. But I also think you're going to lose the contract eventually if you're not able to be honest and the brand is slowing down. And so I think you want to try to be - you can be honest, but you can be kind too, right? Just by being honest doesn't mean you have to be a jerk.

You can be like, look, we need your help on this, and if you're unable to do it, who can we bring in, or how can we be supplemented with this, because I'm just a creative strategist that's fractional. I can give you ideas of people we can work with to help create these things if you need that. So I think being honest about what you need to be successful is really big.

And I think some of that too is scoping at the beginning and making sure that they understand the full scope. Making sure that they understand what it's going to look like in terms of you doing the best job that you can. I think that's huge, to make sure that you're upfront about that with them.

Andrej: That's something that we have encountered, or I have already encountered a few times. For example, we work with a client to support them on the creative strategy, but they make the content in-house, or they have someone, another partner, handling that aspect. And then we put a lot of time and work into creating the creative briefs, and then they either don't do them at all or make them very poorly.

And then they just want the next brief and the next brief, and don't listen to our feedback, or not fully, or at least don't understand it in a way that we want them to understand it. Which is why I asked that question.

Andrew: Yeah, I think you have to just be upfront, and you can say, look, I want this to be successful and I want to work with you guys for a long time, and right now I don't have the resources to be able to do that and I'm not being supported in the way that I should be able to do that. So what can we do to make that easier? I'm happy - let's talk about adjustments. Let's talk about what you need to make this happen, because I want to scale you and you want to grow, but I don't have the resources to be able to do that.

Right? Like, you're coming in to do a certain role and they need to understand that. And if they don't, and they didn't from the beginning, then it's okay. You can walk them through it. You can talk them through it, and you can talk about the expectations and how it needs to change moving forward.

Andrej: Across the top performers that you get insights into, that you see, the accounts that are spending a lot on Meta ads - what are the three patterns that you keep seeing in 2026?

Andrew: I would say one is a uniqueness of product. That's big. There's a uniqueness to it, there's something about it that is different, that people haven't seen or heard of before. That's a novelty that's easy to sell. So that's one. You look at something like fashion, that's really difficult, in order to succeed in fashion. It really has to be something that's different enough and unique enough that's going to help them scale in a serious way.

So I think it has to be in a category that's very unique and different enough, that the competition is low, etc. And there's a high total addressable market. I would say from a Meta ad standpoint, there's a creative system. We've talked about this a lot, but there's a way that they are understanding and building new ideas and they're implementing them in their creative, in their campaigns. And usually they're aiming for a ton more than other people. So I talked about that 300 net new. That's crazy if you think about that, right? So there's a push on that lever significantly more than their competitors. That's making them successful.

And I would say a third one is somebody that has someone overseeing the e-commerce side of it that also is really good at understanding the financial metrics around each product. So not just the financial metrics of the business, but they know that the margin is better on this product versus that product. And so they're able to put together bundles and offers that are not only attractive to the consumer.

So from a Meta marketing standpoint, they know what to do in that sense from a net new, and they're solving problems, but they also know how to put together products and bundles that are lucrative and have a better AOV than what another product is that's being pushed, and they can see the difference between those things.

I think for a lot of us it was like, we push all products and that was our goal. It was like, we'd find one winner, two winners, and it was like, great, run with those products. And I think the sophistication of those that are really scaling, there's a three-dimensional chess being played that a lot of other people aren't seeing and thinking about. So that's something I see from those folks.

Andrej: Yeah, we're also definitely, as an agency, making the shift more and more towards being way more involved on the financial side of things with all of our clients, because we've realized over the past few months, even longer than that, just how important that is. And as you mentioned, on the one side it's obviously the overall business metrics. A few years ago when I started, I was always only looking at how are Meta ads doing, how are Google ads doing, what are the in-platform metrics. Then it kind of transitioned to the overall business metrics and the business health as the north star metrics, and then the other ones.

And now, as you mentioned, we also pay more and more attention to deeper financial insights and analytics in terms of how the products individually are doing, how to come up with an offer that has the highest possible profit margins while still being attractive to the customer. Because that's just how those businesses win long term, and how they can afford to be more aggressive on the paid ads, spend more to acquire a new customer, and all of those things.

Andrew: Yeah, definitely agree.

Andrej: Last question. What would you say is currently overrated from everyone talking about Meta ads and scaling brands, and what would you say is underrated?

Andrew: Overrated is, I think, sort of the manace and the stuff that Meta's got it all figured out. I think that's a little overrated, personally. Meta is such a massive company and they generally don't do a very good job of understanding the fundamental consumer, that is the ads people, of what we're doing. And so I think that's overrated, that kind of thing, the optimizations this stuff can make. I think it'll be all right, but I don't know if it's going to be world-changing at this point. So that's, I'd say, the most overrated piece.

And AI generally is a little bit - I mean, AI is underrated and overrated generally, but everyone's building a new thing right now and I think that that's good, but it can also distract from the fundamentals of building better ads, which is what we primarily need to be doing. Underrated right now.

49:06 - Net-New Ideas and Building a Real Creative System

Andrew: That's a good question. In terms of looking through the lens of success on Meta advertising, underrated is probably systems, right? Probably having good systems that are repeatable, that are built on good process, that can bring you more net new ideas into the ad account. And I think there's not enough focus on the system of it and what that looks like and how it's built and how it's going to make sure that you're bringing clients or your company more net new. I think that's a big one.

Andrej: Do you think media buying will be completely automated?

Andrew: No, I don't think so. I think there might be parts of it that are automated, but I don't think it'll be completely automated. I think there's always going to be enough complexity with pixels and everything else, and that's going to be part of it. It depends on how you define media buying. But I think there's complexity enough in that.

I think there's also enough - how do I say this? - laziness of advertisers, or sorry, of brands. Laziness is the wrong word. It's out of their core competency. And so they're like, I don't have time for this. I want to pay somebody to do this. I could build a fence. I have a new fence in my house between me and my neighbor, but I could build a fence probably. I don't pay somebody to do it because I'm not going to do it, and I'm going to hire somebody that's better to do it. I think it's always going to exist, that kind of thing, within Meta ads.

So I don't think everything will be fully automated. I think certain pieces of what we do will be automated and be made easier, but it's not going to be perfect by any means.

Andrej: No. Yeah, I agree. I think they will automate a lot over the next few years, but I think there will still be a lot of things that need to be done for it to work.

50:41 - Where to Follow Andrew

Andrej: Where can people follow you and learn more about the amazing Foxwell Founders community?

Andrew: Yeah, you can go to foxwellfounders.com. foxwelldigital.com/blog is where we publish tons of great content. You can find me on LinkedIn, of course, and on X. But yeah, check out foxwellfounders.com if you're curious, and apply if you feel like it's a fit for you.

Andrej: Awesome. Thank you for being here. It was a pleasure to talk to you, and also thank you for building out the community. Really enjoy being part of it.

Andrew: Yeah, thank you, man. I appreciate it.

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