Your ad creative now does most of the targeting work on Meta. The platform decides who sees an ad largely by reading what the ad is, then matching it to people whose behavior suggests they will respond. For a roofing, HVAC, plumbing, or restoration company, that moves the most important paid social decision from “which audience do we build” to “which distinct messages do we give the system to work with.”
Much of the conversation about this shift runs on a term Meta has not formally published: “Entity IDs.” This piece separates what Meta has documented from what advertisers report seeing, and turns both into decisions you can make this quarter.
What Meta has actually documented
Meta’s engineering team described its ad retrieval system, Andromeda, in December 2024. Retrieval is the first stage of ad delivery. Meta says the system narrows “tens of millions of ad candidates” to a few thousand relevant ones before ranking picks what a person sees. Meta reported a 6% recall improvement in retrieval and an 8% ads quality improvement on selected segments after deploying it.
The same post explains why Meta built it. Advertisers were producing far more creative, much of it with generative AI tools. Meta stated that more than a million advertisers used those tools to create more than 15 million ads in a single month. A retrieval system has to handle that volume and still find the right ad for each person.
Meta’s public creative guidance points the same direction: diversify your creative, and make the differences real. As Meta’s guidance puts it, quoted by Jon Loomer: “You can have two different images that actually look very similar. Unless they’re distinctly different enough, any variation is unlikely to make a meaningful impact on performance.”
That is the documented floor. A retrieval system built for creative volume, and guidance that rewards distinct creative over minor variations.
What advertisers observe about “Entity IDs”
Beyond the documentation, media buyers describe a pattern they call Entity IDs. Treat what follows as observed behavior, not Meta specification.
The observation: when several ads look and read alike, the system appears to treat them as one creative for delivery. Ten versions of the same truck photo with ten different headlines seem to behave like one ad, not ten. Accounts that add genuinely different concepts (a different person, setting, format, or problem) often see delivery spread across more of them and reach new groups of people.
We see a similar pattern in home services accounts, and it lines up with Meta’s documented guidance on distinctiveness, so we plan around it. But nobody outside Meta knows exactly how its ranking models group creative. Don’t build a strategy that depends on the precise mechanics.
Why this changes creative planning for home services
Traditional targeting asked you to guess who your customer was: homeowners, a certain age, a certain income, inside a radius. The guess was always rough. A homeowner with a failed water heater at 6 a.m. does not share an age band or interest profile with the next one. What they share is the situation.
Creative that names the situation does the filtering. An ad about a ceiling stain after a storm pulls in people with ceiling stains. An ad about a furnace that is 15 years old pulls in people thinking about replacement. The system then learns who responds and finds more of them.
So the real question for an owner is how many situations your ads describe. If every ad says “Trusted local roofer, call today,” you’ve handed the system one message, however many files you uploaded.
Build concepts, not variations
A concept is a distinct combination of problem, person, and format. A variation is the same concept with a new headline or color. Plan concepts first.
For a roofing company, distinct concepts might include:
- Storm damage a homeowner can see from the driveway, shot on a real roof
- An aging roof and the insurance or resale question behind it
- A crew member walking through what an inspection covers
- A customer on camera describing how the job went
- A carousel showing each step from first call to final cleanup
An HVAC company would build around a no-heat emergency, a planned replacement, a maintenance visit, and indoor air concerns. A restoration company would separate emergency water response from mold questions and insurance claim help. Each concept speaks to a different moment, and each gives the system a different signal to learn from.
We favor photorealistic, human-centered images of real crews and real homes in warm natural light. Generic stock imagery tends to blur concepts together, which works against the whole point.
Give the system room and clean signals
Creative can only do the targeting if the campaign structure lets it. In practice:
- Run fewer ad sets with more concepts in each, so learning is not split across near-identical audiences.
- Target broadly inside your actual service area, and exclude only what you truly cannot serve.
- Report conversions that reflect real outcomes, sent through the Meta Pixel and the Conversions API.
The last point matters more for service businesses than most. If the only event Meta sees is a form submission, it learns to find people who submit forms, including the ones who never answer the phone. Passing back booked appointments or qualified calls teaches the system what a good customer looks like.
Retire creative on evidence, not boredom
Owners see their own ads constantly and tire of them long before the market does. Replacing a working concept because it feels stale throws away what the system has learned about it.
Keep a concept running while its results hold. Add new concepts beside it rather than in place of it. When booked jobs from a concept drop while frequency climbs, retire it and promote a new one from testing.
Measure at the concept level
Campaign-level reporting hides which ideas are working. Tag each ad by concept and review results by concept every week. Four questions keep the review honest:
- How many distinct concepts are actually receiving delivery?
- Which concepts produce booked jobs, not just form submissions?
- How long does a winning concept hold before it fades?
- Which customer problem or moment has no concept at all yet?
The last question drives the next creative brief. Every new concept should test one clear idea: a different problem, a different person on camera, or a different format. Without that hypothesis you are adding noise, and the system will likely group the new ad with what you already run.
Where to start
Pull every active ad in your account and sort them by concept rather than by file. Many accounts discover two or three real ideas hiding inside a dozen ads. Fill the gaps with concepts built around the specific moments your customers call you, and connect your conversion data to real outcomes before you judge any of them.
Frequently asked questions
What is an Entity ID in Meta advertising?
It is an industry term, not a published Meta specification. Advertisers use it to describe the observed pattern where Meta appears to treat very similar ads as one creative for delivery. Meta’s documented guidance supports the practical takeaway: make creative distinctly different so each ad gives the system a new signal.
Does creative really replace audience targeting for home service leads?
Largely, for finding people. You still set the service area and any exclusions. Inside those limits, Meta’s delivery systems decide who sees each ad, and your creative is the clearest signal you control about which homeowners should respond.
How different do Meta ad creatives need to be?
Different enough that a viewer would notice a new idea. A new person, setting, problem, or format counts. A new headline over the same image usually does not. Meta’s own guidance says similar-looking images are unlikely to change performance.
How long should a home services ad run before it is replaced?
As long as its results hold. Retire a concept when booked jobs or qualified calls from it drop while frequency rises, and add new concepts beside your winners rather than swapping everything at once.
Why does conversion tracking matter for creative-led targeting and lead quality?
Meta learns from the outcomes you report. If you send only form submissions, it finds more people who submit forms. Sending booked appointments or qualified calls through the Pixel and Conversions API teaches it which people become customers.
Need a clearer view of what is actually driving growth? ajile MEDIA helps home service businesses connect marketing activity to qualified opportunities, booked calls, search visibility, and revenue influence. Book a strategy call to see where your marketing is producing signals, and where it is only producing noise.
