Meta has introduced a series of new generative AI tools to help advertisers automate and scale the “diversification of their creative,” which company executives said is key to seeing success from advertising campaigns on its platforms, including Instagram and Facebook. The company also announced that it will be expanding its Meta Verified subscription plan for businesses in a number of countries with a new tiered pricing model.
Meta: ‘We’re in the Middle’ of Our AI Journey
Despite the fact that today’s announcements are primarily about new AI tools for advertisers, Meta executives were adamant that “this is not the beginning of our journey [with AI], we’re in the middle; we’ve been doing this for quite some time,” said Alvin Bowles, VP of Global Business Group at Meta at a press briefing. “The personalized content choices that you receive across all of our apps, including all the wonderful advertising experiences that you get, are a result of the investments that we’ve already made in AI, and nearly all of our advertisers are utilizing AI or gen AI some way.”
AI already is having an impact well beyond advertising on Meta platforms. As Meta’s Head of Monetization John Hegeman pointed out, 30% of the posts that Facebook users see in their feed every day are powered by the platform’s AI recommendation engine, and 50% of the content on Instagram is now powered by AI.
Leveraging Gen AI to Enhance ‘Creative Diversification’
Last year Meta jumped on the AI bandwagon with a series of tools to help advertisers more quickly and easily generate and target their marketing content. New enhancements to those tools announced today include:
- Full image generation, which will allow advertisers to create full image variations inspired by their original ad creative. This builds on the previous background generation and resizing tools launched last year. While not yet available, in the coming months advertisers also will be able to tailor image generations with text prompts;
- More customizable text overlays, which will allow advertisers more variability in the colors and fonts for text they place over their creative; and
- Text generation capabilities for ad headlines, in addition to the previously available text generation tool for primary ad copy. Meta also is testing the ability to offer more options in the generated text that are based on a brand’s previous campaigns and inputs, in order to better reflect the brand’s values and voice.
Meta already has begun rolling out these tools and is targeting full global availability by the end of the year. It’s all aimed at helping advertisers quickly create multiple versions of their ad creative in order to easily customize content to various user groups and avoid creative fatigue, which can turn off shoppers.
“We know that continually iterating on your ad creative is one of the most effective performance levers that advertisers have,” said Hegeman. “In one study that we did we found that creative diversification led to a 32% improvement in CPA [cost per acquisition] and a 9% increase in reach, which underscores the importance of rapidly testing and iterating on ad creative. We’re also hearing from advertisers that these generative AI tools are saving time and resources while increasing productivity.”
Positive results like these also are good for Meta. “Not surprisingly, the most consistent lever we see for getting businesses to want to spend more with us is driving stronger performance,” Hegeman added.
Meta’s Gen AI tools are now housed under the Advantage+ ad tools banner to make them easier to find and measure. They remain free for advertisers to use in building their campaigns, and importantly, political advertisers and those promoting a social cause will not have access to these generative AI tools.
Companies in More Countries Can Now Get ‘Meta Verified’
Additionally, the Meta Verified subscription offering is expanding to a host of new countries after debuting for businesses in Australia, New Zealand and Canada last fall. Brands in Argentina, Mexico, Chile, Peru, France and Italy can now test Meta Verified in Instagram and Facebook, and tests of the offering in WhatsApp will roll out soon as well.
Meta Verified offers brands the opportunity to enhance consumer trust with things like a “verified” badge on their profile, as well impersonation protection, high-touch account support and enhanced discoverability through benefits like priority ranking in search results. Pratiti Raychoudhury, VP of New Monetization Experiences at Meta, said at the press briefing that after initial tests it was clear that businesses needed variability in the subscription offering, so this expanded rollout now includes four tiers of membership options, with increasing benefits ranging from $14.99 per month for a Standard plan to $349.99 per month for the enterprise-level Max plan.
Raychoudhury also shared that obtaining a “verified” badge is one of the top reasons people are currently subscribing in initial tests.
“We’ll continue to offer subscribers across all plans a core toolkit of a verified badge, account support, impersonation monitoring and more, while testing expanded benefits that help a business build their credibility and grow their brand — like new tools for profile enhancements, more ways to help create connections and additional ways to access support,” promised a company blog post outlining the expansion.
