How Meta is combatting Apple data limits with ad targeting automation and AI

Meta is putting new artificial intelligence and automation into its ad platform, including within shopping campaigns, which is part of the overall strategy to adapt to data changes coming from Apple. On Wednesday, the owner of Facebook and Instagram made an update to automation programs it released in March called Advantage and Advantage+. The ad products made it simpler for Meta’s 10 million-plus advertisers to rely on Meta’s computing power to decide the best targeting, creative assets and campaign settings to reach consumers, instead of having to adjust all the ad knobs manually. Now, Advantage+ is rolling out to more businesses, and there is a new type of shopping campaign ads, where e-commerce brands can link to a shop within Facebook and Instagram rather than linking to a website outside of the apps. It’s a small update with a potentially large impact on how Meta can track sales and other consumer activity. When a consumer views a product within the Meta apps, Facebook and Instagram collect data about the transaction, which would not be tracked if the consumer left the app. Nicola Mendelsohn, Meta’s VP of global business group, discussed the automation and AI tools in a phone interview this week. “AI is a really big bet” for Meta, Mendelsohn said. The whole Advantage platform is one example of how Meta is adjusting to changes to how data is collected and shared throughout the internet. Apple is the prime example of restricting data signals that make marketing on iPhones and the Safari web browser more difficult to measure. Apple’s anti-tracking policies have made marketing less of a precise science online. Meanwhile, Google is following suit with plans to kill cookies on Chrome in 2024 and disrupt device data sharing on Android. Meta has been developing its own “privacy enhancing technologies,” which rely less on data sharing about individual consumers and more on aggregated and anonymized data sets to target and measure ads. The Advantage program is a part of that project, where marketers relinquish some of the direct control over how they manage ad campaigns and leave it to Meta’s algorithms to make the decisions. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg addressed AI and automation in an earnings call last month. “Advances in AI enable us to deliver better-personalized ads while using less data,” Zuckerberg said. “It powers automated messaging and creation tools that let businesses run better performing campaigns, which is particularly important for small businesses that don't have big marketing departments and that have been hit hard by Apple's policy changes.” Meta is trying to maximize return on ad spend for advertisers, and “really bring in automation to help with our ad product,” Mendelsohn said. Mendelsohn said that shopping and app-install advertisers could see higher performance by letting the Meta automation do its work. Those conversions—generating sales and downloads—are important goals for marketers, but with the new data policies on Apple, it is harder for Meta to precisely measure conversions. Meta execs have discussed the importance of updating the ad platform, which generated $28.15 billion in the second quarter this year, in order to maintain efficiency by sharing less data with marketers. Advantage campaigns are a sign that the AI vision is “alive on the platform today,” Mendelsohn said. “We’re updating Advantage+ to increase performance.” Meta pointed to Rothy’s, an apparel brand, which used Advantage+ to set the target audience for its campaigns. Meta’s AI decided to target more men in the potential consumer pool, Mendelsohn said. Rothy’s has a men’s line but even the women’s line of shoes and bags could appeal to men, shopping for partners and family members, Mendelsohn said. “It optimizes for conversion,” Mendelsohn said. “It helps the advertiser discover and target new audiences that they might not have thought to target.” Meanwhile, the ad platform can also experiment with 150 variations of creative, selecting the best version for a particular audience.

How Meta is combatting Apple data limits with ad targeting automation and AI

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