Meta integrates generative AI into its advertising products

It was only a matter of time given the progress made by artificial intelligence applied to images. Like Amazon, Meta is also beginning to integrate generative AI into its advertising products. Facebook’s parent company unveiled its “AI Sandbox” on Thursday in New York, a suite of tools that should facilitate and automate advertising creation using this technology. A first for the digital advertising giant, but which could well upset the professions in the sector, from “creative directors” to copywriters.

Concretely, advertisers will be able to use this tool to generate text, by multiplying the tones or language levels, and thus choose the one that best suits a particular audience. It will also be possible to automatically create images from a simple textual request. Or to adapt the size of the images so that they are more easily usable in Reels or in Story. This suite of tools is currently being tested with a small number of advertisers, but starting in July, the “AI Sandbox” will be more widely available.

At the same time, Meta announced three new features in Advantage+, a tool launched in August 2022 that allows advertisers to automate their advertising campaigns. All at no additional cost to advertisers, the idea being to improve campaign performance to encourage them to spend more in the Meta ecosystem.

10 million advertisers

“This will save advertisers time and increase performance,” said John Hegeman, vice president of monetization at Meta. Other features will be added by the end of the year. John Hegeman notably mentioned conversational agents (which can inform a customer before buying a product, for example), an area where there is “a lot of potential”.

In any case, the maneuver is far from trivial. “10 million advertisers use Facebook advertising products,” said Nicola Mendelsohn, vice president in charge of all advertising. However, until now, artificial intelligence was mainly used to target adver or analyze their performance. And to push content: 40% of content viewed on Instagram is pushed by artificial intelligence, according to Facebook.

SMEs increasingly present on Facebook

On the other hand, AI was less used for advertising creation strictly speaking – even if Meta had started working on the subject. A few weeks ago, the French teams of Mark Zuckerberg’s group worked with Peugeot to add some introduction plans generated with AI in a video.

By integrating generative AI, Meta wants above all to attract “small advertisers”, such as restaurants or neighborhood businesses. Since the pandemic and the return to local commerce, these SMEs are even more present on Facebook. However, they do not have the same means as the big groups in terms of advertising.

This initiative also comes at a time when the digital advertising market is picking up. Meta has just published better than expected results for its first quarter of 2023. Its advertising revenue increased by 4% and its overall turnover by 3%, a marked improvement after the annus horribilis of 2022.