Explore is Instagram's biggest discovery surface
Hundreds of millions of people discover new content on Explore every day. Meta's engineering blog (2023-08) pulled back the curtain on how the system works internally. Useful background for any Instagram advertiser.
Source: Meta Engineering — Scaling the Instagram Explore recommendations system
How Explore ranking is structured
Multi-stage approach:
- Retrieval — Pull tens of thousands of candidates out of billions of pieces of content (fast filtering)
- First-stage ranking — Score relevance with a Two-Tower neural network (mid-level filter)
- Second-stage ranking — Heavier model for final ordering (precise evaluation)
- Final layer — Apply business rules like diversity and safety
In other words, each user's Explore screen passes through four stages of filtering. Ads are mixed in between them.
What advertisers should take away
1. Explore ads land in an "active discovery" context
On Explore, users are actively hunting for new interests. Unlike Feed (updates from people you know), Explore is "what's interesting today" mode. Click intent for ads tends to be relatively higher on this surface.
2. What the Two-Tower model means for you
The user tower and the content tower each compute their own feature vectors and then match at the end. The more your ad creative matches the style of Explore content, the higher your relevance signal.
- Creative that fits: vertical format, short video, UGC tone, visual variety
- Creative that doesn't: static banners, TV-ad style, landscape aspect ratios
3. How multi-stage ranking affects performance
Even if your ad clears Retrieval, if it loses at Second-stage it won't be shown. An ad with low early CTR also gets a lower chance of passing Retrieval next time — a snowball.
That means the first 24–48 hours of performance locks in long-term reach. If your creative or target is off during that window, the campaign will struggle to recover.
How it differs from Reels
Explore and Reels look like separate surfaces, but they share the recommendation engine. The weighting is different:
- Explore: relevance first (exploring interests)
- Reels: dwell time first (entertainment consumption)
Creative leans slightly different too:
- Explore ads: curiosity hooks + informative
- Reels ads: immersive + story-driven
Should you lean into Explore or not
Worth leaning in when:
- New-audience discovery matters for your category (D2C ecommerce, beauty)
- You have strong visual creative
- Purchase decisions are interest-driven (fashion, home, food)
Worth skipping when:
- B2B or professional services (Explore users aren't in business mode)
- You need long videos (Explore favors short content)
- Reels and Feed are already delivering for you
Placement strategy
- Use Advantage Placements by default (Explore included)
- If a specific creative does unusually poorly on Explore, exclude Explore only for that creative (keep manual overrides minimal)
- Explore taking 15–25% of total impressions is normal
You can't directly manipulate Explore ranking as an advertiser. But knowing this context helps you interpret why some creatives take off and others die.
Placement allocation and surface-specific creative strategy are covered in Meta Ads Book 4.