it makes sense why X is the worst performing but mystery as to what makes Meta so special.
My experience:
For most ad campaign types, YES, Meta works far better than any alternative.
In my view, this is because its underlying machine-learning algorithms are better. Not the generative AI mentioned in the article, but the core ML-based learning strategy that every modern ad platform has been based on for over a decade now, allowing it to learn to find buyers for whatever you are selling. Meta is just better at that than anyone else - far better. And has been for years.
Linkedin is quite interesting and can reach audiences no other ad platform can. The problem with LI is that it is tremendously expensive. Think $50-200 per qualified lead, so it only makes sense for very high ticket offers. I've never been able to make LI ads work for lowticket offers (i.e. under $500 gross margin per sale).
I have attempted to run ads on X/twitter several times in the past 5 years, and each time gave up because of how terribly it performed. Literally zero sales from the ad spend, using the exact same ads which worked great on Meta. X is kind of infamous among media buyers for how bad it is. But I haven't tried it in over 8 months, so maybe it has gotten better now. Grok/xAI is quite good, so I am not sure why they haven't made the X ad platform a priority. If they did, I bet they could eat Meta's lunch.
Google is really 3 ad platforms: Youtube, Google Display Network (GDN), and keyword search. These are all radically different in many dimensions; the only thing they have in common is that Google lets you set them all up through the same web interface.
Mostly I run ads selling mid to high-ticket stuff to sophisticated buyers, and I think most of those people have Youtube Premium, which makes YT ad-free. So I haven't tried running ads on Youtube much. My media buyer colleagues who are into it are mostly selling mass-market offers that most people on HN would consider kind of scummy. They tell me it can work well, but requires a lot of ad spend over weeks to start working. In contrast, I can often get a Meta ad campaign profitable within 48 hours.
Keyword search works great, but only for "bottom of funnel" buyers (i.e. people who are actively looking for a solution they can pay for right now). There are only so many of those, so generally you cannot scale up ad spend (and thus absolute profit) very high. In contrast, Meta can create new "top of funnel" buyers, which is a larger audience by many orders of magnitude, which allows you to ramp up some Meta campaigns to a very high level of profitable ad spend.
GDN has been tricky for me. I think it has a lot of potential, but it has a very different model, and so far I have not been able to make it profitable for my offers. It certainly seems easier to set up a successful campaign with Meta.
Short answer to your question: Yes, even with the things the article is justifiably griping about, Meta is just way, way better than any alternative right now.
Is it possible to start small with Meta and then ramp up? Any principles to adhere to increase probability of success?
It depends. What kind of offer are you selling?
Generally the learning curve is massive, long, stressful and expensive. I lost tens of thousands of dollars before I could consistently make ads which were profitable.
It's not like learning coding. Imagine if every time you saw a stack trace, $250 was deducted from your bank account. Learning media buying is kind of like that.
Another path is to get hired by an ad agency. They will train you and give you a budget to manage; if you lose that budget, the worst that can happen is they'll fire you (rather than losing all your stuff).
But that would be a switch in career path, which I do not think you are asking about.
what is the source for that uphill curve is that because its not clear what your user wants or optimizing ad copies ?
im definitely not looking to spend thousands of dollars, figured starting out small hmmm
getting hired by ad agency seems interesting reminds me of trading desks a bit
There is also the investment in learning, which would require 5-10 hours per week that whole time.
I say this because anything short of that is likely to lose money and accomplish little.
Not trying to gatekeep, so feel free to try it however you like. Maybe it is worth you trying to set up one ad just to see if you like the process enough to continue.
do you have any recommendation for an alternative? seems like for now i am going to defer the Meta ad experiment , was thinking of targeting TikTok videos
If are worried about the significant expense and high risk of paid ads, which is very reasonable, I recommend you do not do paid ads at all.
I think a better alternative for you is to learn to create organic content, e.g. videos for IG and tiktok, or text posts for platforms like X. And learn to stimulate sales of your app that way.
This also has a long learning curve, but dodges the financial risk of paid ads. Once your organic content is dialed in enough to make consistent profit, you'll be much better positioned to start with ads and be successful.
Good luck!