Steal Like an Artist: What Alex Hormozi’s Meta Ads Strategy Reveals About Creative Targeting

There is a useful way to study great advertising without pretending you invented it: steal the principle, not the execution.

That is the idea behind this analysis. I looked at the supplied examples of Alex Hormozi’s Meta ads and focused on the repeated creative patterns rather than trying to reproduce any individual ad.

The first thing that stands out is not the hook. It is the volume.

The supplied analysis describes roughly 513 active ads across video, image and carousel formats. Whether that exact number changes from day to day is less important than the strategic signal: this is a high volume creative system.

Instead of searching for one perfect ad, the system creates many opportunities for Meta to understand different messages, formats and business contexts.

But there is a pattern inside all that variation

Look across the examples and one format keeps returning: the ad calls out a very specific type of business owner.

The copy does something deceptively simple. It identifies the person before presenting the message.

That creates a strong relevance cue. A commercial real estate broker can immediately recognise that the ad is meant for someone like them. The same logic can be repeated for another vertical without forcing one generic creative to speak to everyone.

This is where Andromeda matters

Meta describes Andromeda as a personalized ads retrieval engine. Retrieval is an early stage of the recommendation system that narrows tens of millions of possible ad candidates into a much smaller set of relevant candidates before later ranking stages. Read Meta’s engineering explanation of Andromeda.

That supports an important strategic shift: creative can carry more contextual information about who an ad is relevant to. It does not mean the creative literally replaces targeting, but it does make the message itself a more important signal in the system.

This is the part worth stealing. Not the exact wording. Not the exact design. The principle that specificity can be built into the creative itself.

The caveat: micro ads are not universal winners

There is a tradeoff. If every creative speaks to a different business segment, each individual ad can become highly specific. That can be excellent for relevance, but it can also mean that you are building a collection of micro ads rather than one universal winner.

For a large account, that can be a feature. For a smaller advertiser, producing dozens of highly segmented creatives may spread the budget too thin.

That is why the strategy is hybrid

The most interesting lesson is that Hormozi does not appear to rely on one creative formula. The supplied examples show a mix of direct callouts, founder led content, expert explainers, behind the scenes content, headlines and other variations.

The strategic role of each format can therefore be different:

What I would actually steal from this strategy

1. Turn the audience into the headline. Instead of saying “we help businesses grow”, test “if you own a [specific business] doing [specific threshold], this is for you”.
2. Create creative around business identity. Industry, business model, revenue stage and role can all become creative angles.
3. Separate micro ads from scale ads. Do not expect every specific creative to become a massive spend winner.
4. Keep format diversity high. Images, videos, carousels, founder content and explainers give the system more creative signals to work with.
5. Use specificity where it creates real relevance. A callout should describe a genuine problem or identity, not just insert an industry name into generic copy.

The examples

Now we can look at the creative system one ad at a time. Each example shows what the ad is doing, why the structure matters and how the message is built.

CREATIVE 01

Business specific positioning

The audience is built directly into the creative. Instead of opening with a generic promise, the ad first signals who should pay attention. This makes the message feel selective and relevant while giving Meta stronger contextual information about the type of person the creative is designed for.

CREATIVE STRUCTUREAudience callout → specific business context → growth promise → next step

CREATIVE 02

Vertical specific callout

The industry is not hidden inside the body copy. It is part of the main message. The revenue threshold adds another layer of qualification, making the creative relevant to a narrower commercial profile rather than every business owner.

CREATIVE STRUCTUREIndustry → revenue threshold → relevant offer → response prompt

CREATIVE 03

Professional services segmentation

This is a strong example of turning market segmentation into the hook. The advertiser does not need the viewer to infer whether the offer applies to them. The business model is stated immediately, reducing ambiguity and increasing message relevance.

CREATIVE STRUCTUREBusiness model → qualification → problem or opportunity → offer

CREATIVE 04

Identity based targeting through creative

The important idea is not simply mentioning med spas. It is making the viewer self identify before asking them to consider the offer. A qualified owner can recognise themselves almost instantly, while an unrelated viewer has a natural reason to keep scrolling.

CREATIVE STRUCTUREIdentity → qualification → desired outcome → call to action

CREATIVE 05

Founder and workshop format

This type of creative adds breadth to the system. Instead of relying only on vertical specific messaging, it can use the founder, education and workshop concept to build interest across multiple business categories while still qualifying the intended audience.

CREATIVE STRUCTUREFounder authority → educational promise → qualification → invitation

CREATIVE 06

Industry plus scale qualification

The message does two jobs before the offer is even considered. It identifies the business category and signals the scale of business being addressed. That creates a much more precise commercial context than a generic statement about helping businesses grow.

CREATIVE STRUCTUREIndustry → scale → business challenge or opportunity → solution

CREATIVE 07

Niche professional audience

The strength comes from specificity. A tax firm owner immediately knows whether the message is intended for their type of business. This approach lets multiple creatives speak to different niches without forcing one broad message to cover the entire market.

CREATIVE STRUCTURENiche identity → qualification → relevant promise → action

CREATIVE 08

Healthcare niche creative

The underlying framework stays consistent even when the vertical changes. The creative names the business type first, qualifies the commercial profile and then connects the audience with the relevant opportunity. This creates a repeatable creative system rather than a collection of unrelated ads.

CREATIVE STRUCTUREBusiness type → qualification → relevant outcome → action

The bigger lesson for performance marketers

The lesson is not “copy Alex Hormozi”. The lesson is to stop thinking about creative as decoration placed on top of targeting.

In a more automated Meta ads environment, creative can communicate the audience, problem, offer and context at the same time. That gives the recommendation system richer information to work with while giving the user a message that feels immediately relevant.

Meta’s own description of Andromeda emphasises the scale of creative candidates and the role of AI in retrieving relevant ads. Meta Engineering explains the retrieval system here.

For advertisers, that points toward a different testing question:

What different versions of the market can my creative clearly describe?

That is a much more interesting question than simply asking which interest targeting option to select.

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