Meta has new AI tools for mobile video and retail media—how brands can use them

Meta is making upgrades to the artificial intelligence in its ads platform with new tools to put video into shopping ads and bring more automation to retail media partners, which place ads for brands on Facebook and Instagram. On Tuesday, Meta released a slew of updates to its AI-based ad platform called Advantage+, which is an automated service that relies on AI to target audiences on the social network, and it is increasingly using generative AI to assist in building the ads. The updates are a sign that Meta is leaning more on AI to power performance marketing on Facebook and Instagram, and brands are handing more tasks to Meta’s machines to manage campaigns, including large retail media network partners such as Lowe’s and Ulta. “Nearly all of our advertisers are using at least a piece of AI today in terms of how they’re setting up their ads,” said Karin Tracy, Meta’s head of industry—retail, fashion and luxury, during a press event on Monday. See all of Ad Age’s 2024 Agency A-List winners here Since 2022, Meta has been building out with what it calls Advantage+, an automated platform for shopping and performance advertising, which is geared toward driving sales. This week, Tracy discussed updates to Advantage+, and shared how brands such as jeweler Wear Felicity, beauty products maker Fresh and Swiss sneaker brand On have used components of the AI-powered platform to run campaigns. Some of the brands are starting to dabble in the generative AI tools, too, which create large varieties of ads, and machine learning can test the different ads against audiences to determine what works best. For instance, On used the text generator, which is similar to an AI chatbot, to create multiple versions of copy for its ads. “This is a group of advertisers that’s really careful about the way they show up in our platform, really understands their customer,” Tracy said, adding that they have “been really very disciplined about audience segmentation, about understanding who to target. And what they’re seeing is that these automated solutions, through this power of AI, has become even more effective for them.” More news: How brands can avoid AI marketing mistakes This week’s updates were mostly incremental for Meta’s AI ad tools, but they showed the direction in which the platform is heading as it grows its ad business. (Meta’s fourth-quarter revenue jumped 25% to $40.1 billion.) Now, Meta has enhanced its shopping ads product by enabling AI to create new video formats, which can reshape ads to appear in Reels, its TikTok-style video feed. Also read: Meta shines the spotlight on Reels at Cannes Lions On Tuesday, Meta also announced the ability for AI to construct catalog ads that have video assets within them, so products appear in videos within vertical video ads. Those ads can carry a broad appeal brand message in the main video and display the product catalogs. Meta also announced that it would allow retail partners, naming Lowe’s and Ulta, to use its automated ads platform to manage campaigns for brands within their retail media networks, and use advanced analytics to measure the campaigns, according to Tracy. “We can now run collaborative ads [with retailers] using our fully automated Advantage+ shopping campaigns, end-to-end performance campaigns,” Tracy said. “So, it’s bringing AI-powered performance to these collaborative ads, again, giving more efficiency and effectiveness for the retailer to prove to that brand … what they’re driving.” Meta’s AI embrace is part of a broader movement in advertising toward more automation, with fewer controls on the levers of campaigns. Meta is making its pitch to advertisers that the automation is positive for steering return on ad spend and driving down the costs of customer acquisition. AI has become particularly important in making decisions for marketers as platforms such as Meta restrict how they share data with brands. There have been privacy changes to the ecosystem, best exemplified by Apple turning on anti-tracking measures on its devices and Safari web browser, and those moves made it harder for marketers to target and measure ad campaigns. The changes also meant platforms such as Meta had to build new tools to prove the effectiveness of their ads. Also: Meta touts way small advertisers can avoid Apple’s fees Meta promotes AI partly as a salve for the data shortfalls. “We have less granular data to work with but we’re still seeing massive performance,” Tracy said. AI, though, also comes with a host of concerns, not the least of which is that it could replace jobs in marketing. There also are concerns about generative AI making decisions for brands without a brand fully understanding why it made those decisions. AI could also create work that is out of alignment with a brand’s values. Last month, Google became a cautionary tale in generative AI, when users found its Gemini chatbot returning images that some people found distasteful. On Monday, Tracy said Meta was working with AI experts, ad industry stakeholders and others to develop its AI responsibly. Tracy announced that brands would have the ability to train Meta’s automated ad tools, which use generative AI for copy and background imagery. Brands could impart their own rules on the machines, Tracy said. “Something that many of the brands that I work with have been asking for are [for] brand guidelines to be built in,” Tracy said. “So, we know the way that your brand has to show up, so the creative is as in line as it possibly can be with what your brand stands for.”

Meta has new AI tools for mobile video and retail media—how brands can use them

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