So much talk at the moment about andromeda, but this was first announced last December on the Meta eng blog (which should be RSSed for any meta marketer), and its impact has long been felt.
September was brutal, and by many degrees worse than last September.
I published mid September this chart on LinkedIn and it got a lot of conversation going.
Off the back of this, I had five separate founders/CMOs DM each with brands spending between £200k and £2m/month who all flagged they were seeing terrible Septembers.
Many people replied publicly. And in a WhatsApp group I’m in with other CMOs, the same chatter followed.
Blaming external factors is bad for business.
I once had a boss who forbid anyone from using external factors as excuses in meetings. I’m less all in on that than I once was.
But while things like “everyone’s on holiday” feel like poor excuses, blaming Meta seems to be less of an bad excuse for many.
But do you know what else was also down? A lot of repeat behaviour. A lot of organic search volume. A lot of brand search. A lot of retail. A lot of Amazon.
When all of your metrics are lower than forecast and down year over year, there begins to be a part that goes beyond the platform and into wider consumer sentiment.
Olivia Kory highlighted this a lot above.
Everywhere on X and LinkedIn at the moment, people are talking about Andromeda. But that’s been live for months. If you were going to have negative impacts from it, that would have happened already. We’ve not really noticed a negative impact since its launch – and if you look year over year on the whole, we’re way up.
Psychology of action
One thing is clear.
Founders, performance marketers, advertisers all seem to prefer action of inaction.
A lot of this probably stems from psychological fear of your job. Doing nothing is rarely the sort of thing you want to tell your boss or your client is your action plan. You must always have a plan and be acting quickly on it.
There’s two issues here.
One is you can act on false data.
Another example of this is over summer, we saw bad performance on some evergreen ads and so assumed they had finally fatigued. We turned them off.
But as we dug in to seasonal behaviour, we saw that their core market (50+) had dropped out of reach and impressions earlier than last year. And these ads really went after that market. CPAs spiked because the audience wasn’t there. We acted badly because we wanted to act.
We turned them back on in September and they brought some better performance.
We did it again in September too. We tested out cost caps on clients where we’ve never seen it work. We tested new account setups. We wanted to act and test, rather than wait.
The second issue is that it gives us false confidence that we have control. In general, we don’t.
Growth is probabilistic, not deterministic.
Growth is probabilistic, not deterministc.
Growth is probabilistic, not deterministic.
Repeat that over and over.
Success as an entrepreneur or a growth person is coming to terms with uncertainty. Things are always changing.
What *CAN* we do?
This is helping us rethink next year.
One aspect is allowing more buffer in on a monthly basis. We should have more downside factored in to allow for problems like this to spring up. We have no idea what will happen in the world over the next 12 months.
The other bigger thing is about designing campaigns, events, specifics into those softer trading periods.
We had some clients who had great Septembers. Two ran sales and they had great periods. Another had a limited edition launch. Again meant that the month was protected.
If the natural consumer sentiment is low, and potentially could dampen, then what can you do to counteract that?
One-offs
Campaigns
Promotions
Competitions
All of this should be factored into yearly planning outside of seasonal peaks. And it’s likely wise to have some up your sleeve to roll out quickly when you need to.
One of Meta’s solutions managers reiterated this this week: offer, creative, post click. These are the things that move the needle.
For us, when we say “creative” a lot falls under that banner of course. Jobs to be Done, messaging, proposition all sit there. And within Offer can be all those sorts of one-offs.
The market vs your marketing
I soft launched a new tool this week. It’s called COMMONS and its designed to be market intelligence for UK DTC, ECOM, and DIGITAL.
I want us to look not just at Meta data, but also how organic search and brand search is shifting. How does generic search shift across dozens of categories?
If you’re interested in being one of the first customers, then please go sign up to the waitlist.
September was tough and tougher than last year.
But counteracting things like this requires more strategic planning that isn’t in the short term, day trading cycle that so many Meta marketers remain in.
With all of our established clients going into 2026, we’re aiming to have specific promotions on hand ready for when we need them. That doesn’t mean money off, but what about competitions for huge products, limited edition drops, one-offs, special packages. There are mountains of options.
🔗 When you’re ready, here’s how Ballpoint can help you
→ Profitably grow paid social spend from £20k/m → £300k/m
→ Create full funnel, jobs to be done-focused creative: Meta, TikTok, YouTube
→ Improve your conversion rate with landing pages and fully managed CRO
→ Maximise LTV through strategic retention and CRM - not just sending out your emailsEmail me – or visit Ballpoint to find out more.
NB: We support brands spending above £20k/month.
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