THE ALGORITHM AWAKENING

The Day Changed Everything

January 2022.

I'd given up trying to outsmart Facebook's algorithm.

We'd had several months of declining royalties.

I'd been testing:

→ New audiences

→ Different campaign structures

→ Off-the-wall ads

→ A simplified account structure 

I'd been doing less with our Facebook Ads. Much less. 

And our results exploded.

In August 2021, our royalties had dropped down to $5,000.

By January 2022, we were upto $11,500.

With less spend and less time in the Facebook Ads dashboard.

The Lie We've All Been Sold

That day in January 2022, I realized something that challenged everything I'd been taught:

We've been fighting the algorithm instead of working with it.

Think about it.

Facebook (Meta) has spent billions of dollars developing an algorithm designed to do one thing:

Show the right content to the right people at the right time.

This algorithm processes:

• 3 billion users daily
• Trillions of data points
• Millions of behavioral patterns
• Real-time optimization decisions

It knows things about user behavior that would be impossible for any human to track:

→ Predicts actions

→ Understands intent

→ Learns constantly

Yet every "expert" teaches us to fight it:

• Restrict its learning with narrow targeting
• Confuse it with complex campaign structures
• Reset its optimization with constant changes

It's like hiring the world's best pilot, then grabbing the controls every five minutes because you think you know better.

The Control Illusion

Here's the uncomfortable truth I discovered:

Most authors fail with Facebook Ads not despite their optimization efforts, but because of them.

Every time you:

• Change targeting every other day
• Create a new Ad Set for slightly different audiences
• Pause and restart campaigns
• Micromanage placements

You're literally paying Facebook to start learning over again.

It's algorithmic amnesia. Self-inflicted. Expensive.

The authors seeing the best results in 2025?

They're doing the opposite of what everyone teaches:

• Simple campaign structures
• Broad targeting
• Minimal manual intervention
• Patient data collection
• Focus on creative over configuration

They've learned what I discovered that day in January 2022:

The algorithm knows your readers better than you do.

The Strategic Laziness Principle

After that revelation, I adopted what I call "Strategic Laziness":

Instead of spending hours in Ads Manager, I focused on:

• Creating better ads (the only thing the algorithm can't do for you - yet)
• Improving our book product pages (where the buying decisions actually happen)
• Developing the back-end side of the business (reader magnets, email sequences, newsletters, etc)

I let Facebook's algorithm handle:

• Finding the right readers
• Optimizing delivery times
• Scaling successful ads
• Cutting underperformers

The results spoke for themselves:

• February 2022: $12,528.63
• August 2022: $15,902.22
• November 2022: $17,396.63

Steady growth. Less work. Lower stress.

The Multi-Billion Dollar Advantage

Think about this: When you use Facebook Ads, you're not just accessing an advertising platform.

You're tapping into:

• Facebook's entire machine learning infrastructure
• Years of optimization technology
• Real-time behavioral data
• Predictive modeling capabilities
• Cross-platform intelligence (Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger)

All of this works FOR you... if you let it.

But it works AGAINST you when you try to override it with manual control.

The algorithm isn't your enemy.

It's your highest-paid employee.

One that works 24/7, never takes a break, and gets smarter every day.

The question is: Are you going to let it do its job?

What This Means for You

The implications are huge:

→ If you're spending hours daily managing Facebook Ads, you're not just wasting time. You're actively sabotaging your results.

→ If you're following the complex strategies everyone teaches, you're not being sophisticated. You're being counterproductive.

→ If you're fighting for control over every aspect of your campaigns, you're not being smart. You're costing yourself money.

The authors winning with Facebook Ads in 2025 have learned a simple truth:

Work with the algorithm, not against it.

In the next section, I'll show you exactly what this means for your campaigns – and why the real battle for book sales happens somewhere you're probably not even looking.