What changed
Privacy updates gutted precise targeting, and Meta responded by making delivery algorithmic: broad audiences, machine-matched. The system watches who stops scrolling on your ad and finds more of them. Your creative is the signal. Bland creative equals bland matching equals expensive nothing.
Creative that carries signal
Show the product in use by the person you want more of. Say the specific problem in the first second. Sound like your brand, because the people who lean in are pre-qualifying themselves. Polished brand films whisper to everyone; specific ads shout to someone.
Test like you mean it
Concepts before variations: three genuinely different angles beat ten crops of the same shot. Give each enough spend to learn, kill losers without sentiment, and feed winners' insights back into the next round. The brands winning paid social ship creative weekly, not quarterly.
Where it fits alongside search
Search harvests existing demand. Social plants it. Judge them on different clocks: search on this month's return, social on blended growth over quarters. Cutting social because last-click looks weak is how brands quietly stop acquiring anyone new.