The only part I’m still grappling with is when you argue that the lack of audience controls:

"shouldn’t be a problem when optimizing for purchases. If Meta can get you more purchases by ignoring your inputs, that’s a means to an end. (…) I’ve seen this become an issue for leads, too, though it isn’t always. Meta can dedicate a high percentage of my budget on people 55+ because it results in cheap leads. But I’ve also found them to be low quality.

The same can be true with customers even though they paying you upfront! I've run a lot of studies on my clients and it’s not uncommon to find that certain demographics—while having a lower CAC on the first transaction—can come with significantly lower LTV, higher return rates, increased support costs, and other less-than-ideal outcomes.

Don’t get me wrong—I’m fully on board with the idea of leaning on the algorithm and letting it do its thing! That said, I do think we, as marketers, often have access to critical business insights that the algorithm simply can’t consider. For that reason, I feel Meta needs to give us back just a bit more control to help steer things when those nuances come into play.

Oh, and number 10 on my list would have to be the ability to break down Flexible Ads results by creative. I get your point on caring more about the end result and not the creative details, but flexible format is such a practical way to launch and test creatives.

It's super frustrating to add 5-10 very different creatives for a sale event and not be able to tell my creative team which ones worked better so we can iterate on the best concepts on the next big sale and leave the losers behind.

By the way, happy New Year and please keep working on your content, you're one of the best guys around!