Meta has revealed how it is using AI to improve the performance of ads for businesses.
The tech giant shared a first look at its AI Sandbox that’s testing generative AI capabilities for advertisers, new features in its Meta Advantage suite of ad automation tools and more details on our AI infrastructure and modelling investments.
AI Sandbox
The AI Sandbox will act as a testing playground for early versions of new tools and features, including generative AI-powered ad tools. The goal is to learn what works for advertisers and make these features easy to use in our ads tools. Among the tools being built are text variation, background generation and image outcropping to do things to make an ad’s text more engaging or improve parts of its creative.
• Text Variation: Generates multiple versions of text to highlight the important points of an advertiser’s copy, giving advertisers choice to try different messages for certain audiences.
• Background Generation: Creates background images from text inputs, allowing advertisers to try various backgrounds more quickly and diversify their creative assets.
• Image Outcropping: Adjusts creative assets to fit different aspect ratios across multiple surfaces, like Stories or Reels, allowing advertisers to spend less time and resources on repurposing creative assets.
Meta is currently working with a small group of advertisers to quickly gather feedback that we can be used to make improvements. In July, the tech giant will begin gradually expanding access to more advertisers with plans to add some of these features later this year.
With millions of businesses advertising on our platform, we are being deliberate in how we develop and roll out these tools, helping to ensure they are built responsibly and provide value to our customers.
Improving Meta Advantage to make campaigns smarter, faster
Meta has introduced new Meta Advantage features that will allow advertisers to take advantage of AI quicker, give them more flexibility in the creative they use and help them measure what’s working. Meta Advantage is a portfolio of automation products that use AI and machine learning to help optimise campaign results, personalise ads by matching them to the right people at the right time and ultimately help advertisers save time and money.
Such features include:
• Switching manual campaigns to Advantage+ shopping in one click: Businesses will be able to transform their current campaigns into Advantage+ shopping campaigns, allowing them to take advantage of AI quickly and easily.
• Using video creative in catalog ads: Catalog ads allow an advertiser to import a catalog of products and run ads to promote those products. Now, instead of only being able to use static product images, advertisers will be able to import and use creative like branded videos or customer demonstration videos.
• Rolling out Performance Comparisons: This new automatic reportallows advertisers to compare existing manual sales campaigns to Advantage+ shopping campaigns to better understand the positive performance impact of automation. This is already rolling out gradually to advertisers using Advantage+ shopping campaigns.
• Improving performance with Advantage+ audience: This is a new Meta Advantage product that will provide advertisers with an updated way to reach people and drive conversions. Instead of using an advertiser’s audience targeting inputs as hard constraints, such as Men, 18-35 years, who like baseball, advertisers who use Advantage+ audience will add their audience inputs as suggestions to guide who sees an ad. This allows Meta’s ad system to find more people outside of those suggestions if they think they will be interested and likely to convert.
AI Infrastructure and Modeling Investments
Meta has invests tens of billions of dollars annually in our infrastructure, and an increasing portion of that has been dedicated to building out our AI capacity for ads. Those investments are what ensure that the AI-powered tools advertisers touch-and-feel reach their full potential at scale – like generative AI, which often requires more computing capability to work effectively.
Meta is now using larger, more complex models in its ads system to further improve performance and measurement when there is no access to the same granular level of data. These enhancements share learnings across its ads system and ultimately achieve better results for businesses and create better experiences for people.
Naomi Shepherd, director at Meta ANZ, said: “We know growth is the top priority for businesses everywhere, and our announcements today show that Meta continues to build innovative products to help businesses achieve growth that lasts.
“AI has been powering all of our services and ad systems for years, and we wanted to build on these products so that all businesses can take advantage of AI and automation to help achieve their goals.
“That’s why we’re excited to be opening up an AI Sandbox – a testing ground for new features, including generative AI tools, and adding new, exciting features to Meta Advantage.”