You May Be Surprised Who Converts

Restricting age and gender feels like smart budgeting, and it's the most understandable mistake in Meta advertising. But when you optimize for purchases, Meta already wants what you want, and every restriction you add just shrinks the pool and raises your costs before the algorithm gets a chance to surprise you. Jon explains why you should start broad, when value rules are the better tool, and why refining your audience based on results almost never holds up.

Most advertisers still obsess over targeting controls, remarketing campaigns, and which single ad won. But the foundations of Meta advertising today point the other way: consolidate your budget, trust the algorithm, and let creative do the reaching. Jon breaks down the core elements that actually matter now, and the old habits worth abandoning.

For fifteen years Jon has written every word on his blog, so publishing an AI-generated post cut against everything he believes about content. But the master brief behind it was consolidated entirely from his own work and labeled as AI up front. Jon explains why transparency and a real problem to solve are what separate useful AI content from the empty kind.

Advertisers treat every drop in performance as creative fatigue, but what they're actually seeing is Meta shifting delivery from remarketing audiences to prospecting. That initial boost from low-hanging fruit isn't sustainable, and the decline that follows is normal, not a sign your creative is exhausted. Jon explains why creative fatigue is far less common than it used to be, how to use audience segment breakdowns to see what's really happening, and why the ads that survive the shift to prospec

Once campaign construction is simplified, it's just you and your ads, and advertisers tend to either micromanage everything or freeze up and do nothing. Jon explains why starting with one or two ads is enough, how to evaluate performance in aggregate rather than obsessing over individual winners, and when to shift focus from creating more ads to fixing your landing page.

Jon's profile was incorrectly flagged for suspicious activity while posting in his own private Facebook group, and after identity verification failed without explanation, he was locked out of group activity with no timeline or recourse. He wasn't violating any rules, and Meta isn't even claiming he was. Jon explains why this experience exposes how broken Meta's AI-driven moderation and verification processes are, what it means for businesses that depend on the platform, and why Meta's push to re