Meta’s Big Shake-Up: What Schools Need to Know About the Meta Andromeda Update

If you’ve been running Facebook or Instagram ads for your school, you might have noticed things feel a little different lately. Ads that used to work have slowed down, the dashboards look new, and “Advantage+” seems to be everywhere. That’s all thanks to Meta’s new Andromeda update - a big behind-the-scenes shake-up that’s quietly changing how school marketing works online.

So, what on earth is Meta Andromeda?

In short, Andromeda is Meta’s new ads engine. It’s a clever system powered by deep learning networks that now sorts through millions of ads and decides which few thousand should even be shown before ranking them.

Translated out of tech-speak: Andromeda rewards variety, simplicity, and authenticity. It’s less about setting up a hundred tiny ad sets and more about giving the system plenty of strong creative options to learn from. It thrives when you feed it broad audiences, real conversion signals, and a rich mix of creative... short videos, long clips, Reels, images, and stories that actually sound human.

Why schools should care

If your school has ever run a campaign that relied on one polished promo video and a few stills, this update changes the game. Meta now favours advertisers who give it a variety of creative “signals” to learn from.

That means schools that invest in a bank of authentic content (think teacher interviews, parent testimonials, student life snippets, and emotional storytelling) will see stronger results over time. It’s less about targeting parents of “kids aged four to six in South Perth” and more about helping Meta find those parents through content that connects.

What changed inside Ads Manager

Under the hood, Meta simplified a lot this year:

• You no longer choose between “manual” or “automated” campaigns. Advantage+ is now the default, automatically applying AI optimisation.

• A new Opportunity Score gives your campaign a health check before launch. Super handy for catching small setup issues early.

• And the new Advantage+ Leads campaigns are built to reduce cost per qualified lead by around 10% on average.

For schools, this means you can get better enrolment leads with fewer manual tweaks... but only if your creative library is strong enough for Andromeda to work its magic.

Here’s the thing. Even if we nail the creative, the filming, the editing, the captions, and the Ad setup... it can all fall apart if your school doesn’t respond quickly to new leads. - Monday Media

How Monday Media has adapted

We’ve been deep in this space for a while now, and here’s the big shift we’ve made: instead of delivering one promo video and calling it a day, we now help schools build entire suites of creative assets... short-form Reels, doco-style stories, testimonial videos, and quick-cut visuals.

Each video gets multiple caption variants (sometimes three or more) so the algorithm can A/B test tone and emotion. The goal is to give Andromeda a buffet of creative inputs - not just one main course.

When you do this right, the algorithm learns faster, the cost per lead drops, and your ads start finding genuinely interested parents rather than just anyone who scrolls past.

A quick note on tone (and why short captions matter)

In the Andromeda world, shorter captions often perform better because they send cleaner emotional signals. It’s about clarity, not complexity. You don’t need to hard-sell every ad with a big “Book Now” either. The system works better when it sees natural storytelling early in the funnel and clear calls to action later.

So if your captions feel shorter, warmer, or less “salesy” than what you’d expect... that’s on purpose.

And honestly, no parent has ever thought, “I’d love to enrol my child, but this caption was 40 words too short.”

The forgotten ingredient: response speed

Here’s the thing. Even if we nail the creative, the filming, the editing, the captions, and the Ad setup... it can all fall apart if your school doesn’t respond quickly to new leads.

We’re not talking about same day or “when the enrolments officer gets a moment.” We’re talking minutes. Yes, minutes!

The data is brutal: if you respond within five minutes, your chances of converting that enquiry are strong. Wait an hour, and they drop off a cliff. Wait a day, and you may as well be sending a carrier pigeon.

When a parent fills in a lead form, they’ve just taken the first step toward potentially spending hundreds of thousands of dollars over the next decade of their child’s education. That moment deserves your full attention.

Letting those enquiries sit in an inbox for days isn’t just inefficient... it’s a little arrogant. These are major life decisions for families. Respond fast, respond warmly, and you’ll see the impact instantly.

Need to catch up on school marketing?

If you missed our earlier deep dives, check out:

• Decoding Digital Marketing Strategies for Private Schools (Part 1)

• Digital Marketing Strategies for Private Schools (Part 2)

Together, they unpack how schools can make the most of META and storytelling-led content.

Let’s talk about your school’s next campaign

If your school’s ready to step into this new era of digital marketing, or if you just want to understand how it all works over a flat white, drop by our studio in Joondalup. We’ll show you how we plan and structure school campaigns built for the Andromeda era, and how you can future-proof yours for what’s next.