Google, Meta, Snap and Reddit—AI, search and performance marketing boost results

Meta announced that more than a million advertisers are using its generative AI to build ads and Google shared that brands such as Audi are using its generative AI to help make ads for automated campaigns, also powered by AI. Those and other insights from tech companies’ quarterly reports showed robust advertising revenue and how AI is transforming these platforms. Internet giants Google and Meta were mostly focused on their AI trajectories, while their smaller rivals Snap and Reddit were busy remaking their ad platforms to lure smaller advertisers with performance marketing technology, which they need to grow their revenue base. Advertisers are watching all of these platforms to see how they will affect their work going forward, especially the AI-based automation. Ad revenue was up at the four platforms that reported third-quarter results this week. Google’s total ad revenue rose 10.5% from a year earlier, to $65.9 billion; Meta’s increased 19% to $39.9 billion; Snap’s rose 10% to $1.25 billion and Reddit’s soared 56% to $315.1 million. How brands are using Google’s DemandGen AI ad product “It can be incredibly valuable to how we develop creative and how we reach our consumers,” said Nathan Jokers, managing director of social media at agency VML. “It can also be, potentially, you know, disruptive to a lot of our processes as well.” Check out the latest Ad Age events and award programs With AI influencing all aspects of advertising and even the smaller players developing automation to draw in new marketers, here is everything marketers learned from this week’s quarterly reports about the state of the platforms. Google Google recently unveiled new ad placements in AI Overviews in search, its generative search engine which generates text responses formulated by its large language model Gemini. Google also has new image-search tools with Lens, which uses the camera to initiate searches, and a Circle to Search product, where consumers can point to items on their screens and search from there. These tools could facilitate more commerce-driven searches and appear to be a hot activity among 18- to 24-year-olds, according to Google. Meanwhile, Lens is leading to 20 billion searches a month, Google said. How Google’s Gemini had some early hiccups with AI “In testing this Lens feature, we’ve found that shoppers are more likely to engage with content in this new format,” said Philipp Schindler, senior VP and chief business officer at Google, during its quarterly call. “We’re also seeing that people are turning to Lens more often to run complex multimodal queries, voicing a question, or inputting text in addition to a visual.” For many advertisers, the most prominent AI from Google is within its Performance Max and DemandGen ad campaign products, which automate parts of the creative development of ads and media planning. Google executives talked about Audi and DoorDash using DemandGen, which is an AI-powered ad campaign that is designed to boost new customers by serving ads to consumers that could share characteristics with existing customers of a brand. Audi used DemandGen’s AI for creative assistance, taking a long-form video spot and recrafting it for multiple formats, they said, while DoorDash used DemandGen in media buying decisions. “AI is expanding our ability to understand intent and connect it to our advertisers,” Schindler said. Also: AI-generated avatars are evolving into brand spokespeople Meta Meta, which runs Facebook and Instagram, touched on how AI adoption brings the company closer to search—the company is reportedly developing its own search engine. Meta has been developing an AI assistant, which can operate on connected glasses and other devices. “It’ll be able to not only answer your questions throughout the day, but also help you remember things, give you suggestions as you’re doing things using real- time multimodal AI, and even translate other languages right in your ear for you,” CEO Mark Zuckerberg said during Meta’s call. “I continue to think that glasses are the ideal form factor for AI because you can let your AI see what you see, hear what you hear, and talk to you.” Zuckerberg and his team also focused on the way AI and automation are reshaping its apps, Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, which have 3.2 billion daily users, according to Meta. Meta has AI campaigns called Advantage+, similar to Google’s PMax, and it has generative AI to build ads. “More than a million advertisers used our gen AI tools to create more than 15 million ads in the last month,” Zuckerberg said, “and we estimate that businesses using image generation are seeing a 7% increase in conversions.” AI adoption is being viewed cautiously by brands and agencies that want to maintain closer quality controls over ads and campaigns, according to marketers. However, there is a reality in social media that content must flow, and AI is helping with that, by handling tasks such as taking one piece of creative and reformatting it to run in more places. “It might take a lot of the low-lift burdens off the agency side and allow us to focus on some of the bigger, more innovative ways to reach consumers,” VML’s Jokers said. Meta also highlighted how AI is getting smarter about targeting posts to consumers, including ads. Meta is in the middle of a shift in consumption habits on its apps, pushing more into full-screen, TikTok-style videos served up by algorithm, with a goal of keeping people glued to the apps. Creator and influencer trends brand marketers to know about “Similar to organic content ranking, we are finding opportunities to achieve meaningful ads performance gains by adopting new approaches to modeling,” Zuckerberg said. “For example, we recently deployed new learning and modeling techniques that enable our ads systems to consider the sequence of actions a person takes before and after seeing an ad.” All the tech giants are spending vast sums of money to build AI infrastructure, which some marketers think could influence pricing, if Meta and others must cover their costs. “Especially Meta talked a lot about how their expenses are going to grow with the investment in AI,” said Calla Murphy, senior VP of digital strategy and integrated marketing at agency Belardi Wong. “We saw this a few years back when Meta really tried to build the metaverse, their CPMs, their cost per impressions, really came up because their expenses were so high. So, I’m also kind of interested to watch and see if Meta CPMs are going to come up into 2025 as their expenses in AI grow.” Average ad prices were up 11% year over year on Meta apps. Ad Age Leading National Advertisers 2024 U.S. ad spending, rankings, analysis and profiles for the biggest marketers Click here Snap Snap has also developed AI and machine learning to lift performance on its ad platform, which has been undergoing changes in ad tech to appeal to more direct-response marketers. Snap’s major business push in the past two years was to bring in more small and medium-sized businesses into the ad platform. “There’s a multilayered approach here where we’re executing against a number of different initiatives, to be able to drive that sustained and higher rate of growth on those components of the business,” said Derek Andersen, Snap’s chief financial officer. “First, is the continued ongoing build-out of the ML and AI architecture at the company that feeds into our ability to have better personalization and recommendation of ads.” Snap still lags far behind Meta, Google and TikTok. Snap and Reddit are each valued at about $20 billion, even though Snap went public in 2017 and Reddit this year. However, advertisers are looking for more platforms to spread their marketing dollars around, and not rely on just the larger platforms, according to experts. “There’s a lot of advertising dollars and platforms,” Murphy said, adding that “hopefully means it’s more competitive,” which could keep pricing in check. Reddit This is Reddit’s first year reporting quarterly results, after going public in March. Starting from a lower ad revenue base was partly the reason for its faster growth last quarter. Still, the platform turned a profit of $30 million on ad revenue of $315.1 million, up 56% year over year. Reddit has been launching AI-assisted features in its ad platform, which help marketers construct creative that fits Reddit’s niche communities. Reddit also makes money from licensing its data to large AI platforms, such as Google, and smaller ones, which could open more services to marketers. “We entered into a new partnership with Meltwater, a media and social intelligence company,” said Jen Wong, Reddit’s chief operating officer, during its call. “Meltwater accesses Reddit’s content through our data API, which allows our customers to uncover brand insights, monitor industry trends and tap into the discussions happening on the platform.” Read more about Reddit’s rise in 2024 Reddit’s executives also discussed its growing influence on search, a trend it’s been showing marketers to prove its value. Consumers are landing on Reddit from Google and other search engines. “Social search has been the topic du jour, and we’ve seen that with TikTok and search trends on YouTube and Amazon, but Reddit is one that’s been going to market really hard,” said Deanna Cullen, head of media investment at agency Wpromote. “And we’ve been seeing a lot of momentum and sharing that story with our clients, and then really wanting to understand not just how to advertise on Reddit, but how to actually be on Reddit organically engage with our audiences, tap into the sentiment and trends.” Executives at both Reddit and Snap talked about trying to get brands to post as participants, not just marketers. Reddit recently launched Reddit Pro, which are business accounts. “Prior to this, there’s been no place for a business or entity or even a creator to call their home on Reddit,” CEO Steve Huffman said. “I think that has historically been a gap in our product, and we need a place for them to be, as a launching pad or that’s distinct from the communities themselves, as a launching pad for getting into communities.” NextGen Marketing Summit Join us for a crash course on Gen Z, DTC marketing and the creator economy Register today

Google, Meta, Snap and Reddit—AI, search and performance marketing boost results

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