Meta is giving advertisers more generative AI tools.
For the past couple of years, Meta has leaned heavily into its AI ad product, Advantage+, which helps advertisers find the best platform and ad to place in front of someone. The tool is designed to steer advertisers toward finding audiences that lead to strong ad performance, which is measured in metrics like sales or website traffic.
Now, advertisers can begin using Advantage+ to create the visuals and text of those ads. Meta's AI can create full image variations — though advertisers need to feed an image to Meta to create an ad. For example, a retailer may upload a photo of a red dress, and Meta's AI can create variations of red dresses with different background colors and text overlays that are designed for multiple platforms like in-feed and Reels. Meta also said it plans to roll out text prompts that allow advertisers to type in what they want their ad to look like.
Meta also said that it is testing a way for gen AI text to reflect an advertiser's tone and voice based on previous campaigns, and the technology will soon be built using Llama 3, Meta's new large language model.
Meta said that it has started rolling out the generative AI features and they will be available globally to all advertisers by the end of the year.
John Hegeman, VP of monetization at Meta, told reporters at a press event that tests using creative tools with Advantage+ decreased the cost per click of ads by 28% compared to other types of testing creative.
"What we are hearing from advertisers is that these generative AI tools are saving time and resources while increasing productivity," he said.
In April, Meta announced that it would begin labeling gen AI content on its platform this month. Hegeman said Meta is "working through some of the specifics" about how that policy applies to ads created with gen AI.
One of the problems advertisers have experienced with Advantage+ is a lack of control over where their ads appear and capping their ad spend — similar to Google's AI ad product called Performance Max.
Alvin Bowles, VP of Meta's global business group, said that Meta is working with agencies and brands to educate them on how to use generative AI tools to make their jobs more efficient.
"It really is about making sure that we're taking some of what we believe to be more mundane tasks and unblocking the opportunity for people that are schooled and trained in their vocation to be able to actually allow those skills to shine in ways that surprise and delight all of us," he said.
