How Facebook’s AI Decides Who Sees Your Ads

Something didn’t feel right after the third shot.

Not panic. Not danger. Just… off.

And I knew better than to ignore it.

My firearm had jammed — again.

I was at the range. One of my newer rifles — solid on paper, barely broken in — was now failing on repeat.

Couldn’t cycle. Couldn’t shoot. Couldn’t be trusted.

So I packed it up and put it away.

I knew what happened:

Carbon buildup. Dry internals. No maintenance.

It hadn’t been broken down or cleaned since I bought it — and I’d put hundreds of rounds through it.

It reminded me of when my wife was in the police academy.

Every night, without fail, she’d clean her firearm, shine her boots, prep every single detail.

Not because she had time. She didn’t.

But because if one thing was off, the whole unit got punished.

Hundreds of people didn’t make it through.

She did. She earned that badge.

And years later, she made the decision to retire and focus on our family and our businesses.

I’ll always be proud of her for that.

Back then, I started helping her with the cleaning.

I got good at it.

Not just wiping down the obvious — but going deep. Catching the things that cause problems later.

Because whether you’re protecting your home… or building a company…

It’s not just about the threat.

It’s about the tool you trust to handle it.

And if you ignore the tool — it becomes the problem.

Digital Advertising Is the Same Way

Most advertisers and business owners still believe success with ads comes from two things:

1. Calling out your avatar in the ad
   

2. Setting the “right” targeting on the backend

But here’s the truth:

Calling out your avatar is not good messaging.

It’s lazy. It’s overused.

And for the audience, it’s a terrible experience.

You’ve seen the ads:

“Are you a 6-figure coach who’s tired of doing sales calls?”
“If you’re a stressed-out agency owner…”

It’s templated. It’s flat.
It doesn’t match how people talk behind closed doors.
It doesn’t make people feel seen — it makes them feel profiled.

And here’s what most don’t realize:

The AI knows it’s lazy too.

It’s been trained on millions of ads like that —
And it’s seen the drop-off in engagement, the weak follow-through, the high churn.

It recognizes when the copy is low-effort and performs like it.

So not only do real people tune it out…
The platform starts deprioritizing it as well.

Even if you do call out the right person, and even if you do target the right audience…

That doesn’t guarantee your ad will reach the high-quality segment inside that group.

Because targeting lives on a spectrum — and the AI still decides:

• Who in that audience gets served your ad
  

• What kind of user behavior is rewarded
  

• How your ad expands or constricts from there

You can select all the right inputs… and still get junk leads.

The Platform AI Doesn’t Just Deliver — It Decides

Ad platforms crawl and remember:

• The words in your ad
  

• The layout of your landing page
  

• The behaviors of users who engage
  

• And how similar campaigns have performed

They use that data to build predictive models — not just on performance, but who the ad is likely meant for.

If your early clicks come from unqualified people, or your copy looks and feels like lower-quality funnels...

That’s what the AI assumes you want.

And that’s exactly what you’ll get more of.

You’re Not Just Writing Ads — You’re Training a Machine

And that machine is learning in real time.

Every word. Every bounce. Every conversion or scroll sends a signal.
Those signals shape who sees your ad next — and whether or not they’re even a decent fit.

So if your messaging is off — even slightly —
You’re not just missing buyers…

You’re teaching the platform to send you the wrong people at scale.

That’s why “good creative” isn’t enough anymore.
The real question is:

What does this ad teach the platform about who I want?

How We Fix It — With The Marketing Brain

We don’t guess.

We use The Marketing Brain — our proprietary AI system built to analyze thousands of:

• Sales calls

• Applications

• Testimonials

• DMs

It finds what your best buyers say behind closed doors — When they’re being real.

We’re not looking for hooks.

We’re looking for patterns — the kinds of phrases people use when they’re about to take action.

What they search late at night. What they say to a friend when venting. What they admit to a sales rep when they finally open up.

That language is powerful — because it’s relevant.

The AI Matches What People Say in Private to What Your Ad Says in Public

Here’s what most advertisers don’t know:

The platform AI is constantly pattern matching.

It connects what people are texting, speaking around their phones, typing into search…

To the copy, visuals, and structure of your ads.

And when it finds a strong match — when your ad mirrors what someone just said or searched — That ad gets higher relevance.

Relevance determines:

• Who sees your ad

• What kind of quality shows up

• How far the ad expands to adjacent audiences

The strongest pattern match wins.

And the only way to win that game is to feed the AI the same language your buyer is already using — not surface-level call-outs.

That’s why we don’t write ads to stand out. 

We write ads that sync up.

Because when the message reflects what the buyer’s already thinking…

The AI prioritizes it.

And the right people click — not by accident, but by design.

And If You’ve Trained the AI on the Wrong People… You Can Still Fix It

If your lead quality was strong — but then performance started sliding — You’re not just dealing with bad traffic or “low intent.”

You’re dealing with one of three root issues:

1. The AI is confused — it’s seen mixed signals and doesn’t know what kind of buyer you actually want.
   

2. Your data is polluted — maybe from too many tests, inconsistent messaging, or mixed objectives.
   

3. Your ads are weak — they may sound okay to humans, but the AI recognizes them as patterns that typically lead to poor outcomes.

So when lead quality drops, that’s just the symptom.

Here’s what we do in those cases:

We duplicate the campaign — same structure, same ads — to trigger a pattern reset in the AI.

This forces the system to rebuild its prediction model temporarily.

It usually works — for a few days.

But it’s not a fix. It’s a pause button.

Because unless you fix the inputs — the message, the pattern, the signal — The AI will go right back to delivering junk.

The Real Fix: Build a Signal System

Every business should have their own version of what we use:
The Marketing Brain.

It’s not a copywriting tool — it’s a decision engine made up of:

• The actual language your ideal buyers use
  

• Insights pulled from sales calls, DMs, applications, and support threads
  

• Competitive messaging breakdowns
  

• Winning ads, angles, and patterns
  

• Offer positioning and emotional triggers that consistently convert

This is how you feed the platform clean, consistent, high-relevance signals — instead of guessing.

But if you don’t have that yet, just start here:

• Listen to your buyers
  

• Pull the real words they use
  

• Use that language in your ads
  

• Watch what happens over time

One Last Thing Before We Wrap

If you’re wondering how to know whether your signals are actually matching — Whether the AI is picking up on the right patterns…

You track that through lead quality.

But that’s a conversation for another issue.

For now — just know this:

You’re not just running ads.

You’re shaping the system that decides what kind of business you get to build.

So shape it with intent.

—Lance C. Greenberg