With its AI ad tools driving improved performance for many ad partners, Meta has posted a new overview of how brands can make best use of its latest ad tools and options, including AI content generation, customized ad targeting, AI-powered video promotions, and more.
Which could provide some food for thought for your holiday campaigns, with Meta’s various options now generating strong results, and enabling more businesses to tap into video and AI targeting.
First off, Meta says that brands should lean into its AI targeting creative tools, which are now helping many brands maximize to get more out of their campaigns.
As explained by Meta:
“By uploading multiple creatives with different themes and messages, businesses can leverage Meta’s AI to test and optimize at a scale that isn’t possible manually. For smaller advertisers with fewer resources, tapping into generative AI to build more creative variety, including video content, can be a game changer.”
Meta says that almost 2 million advertisers are now using its updated video generation features “with small and medium-sized businesses seeing strong adoption of image animation in particular.”
The capacity to tap into video, even without dedicated video assets, could provide a significant for your ad efforts, ensuring that you’re aligning with the latest shifts in usage behavior, while also creating standout, engaging ads that will resonate with users.
Meta currently provides AI tools that can generate images from text, generate video from text or images, add backgrounds to product images, generate ad copy, and more.
For example, Meta says that Ben and Jerry’s saw a 7% increase in link clicks, and a 6.5% reduction cost per link, when they utilized Meta’s AI background image generation feature.
And video is also helping to drive interest.
As per Meta’s Q2 earnings, overall time spent watching video on both Facebook and IG is up more than 20% year-over-year, with Meta’s improving AI targeting showing users more content that they’re likely to find interesting and useful.
Reels are the main driver on this front, and that also opens up new opportunities for brands.
Meta says that a recent survey of its users showed that 79% have purchased a product or service after watching Reels. Which is probably not entirely indicative of the general population, but it does show that Reels can be a powerful driver of brand response, not just entertainment.
So how do you make the most of Reels for your promotions?
“Savvy advertisers are upleveling their Reels strategy by tapping creators who are masters of creating entertaining, digestible, and relatable video content. By mixing creator content into always-on campaigns with partnership ads, advertisers can reduce acquisition costs by 19% and increase brand lift by 71%, on average.”
Like TikTok and Snapchat, partnering with creators can enable you to link into video trends, using their expertise and nous to maximize your resonance. Meta’s Creator Marketplace can help you find relevant creators to work with, while Meta has also included some technical notes for your Reels efforts:
Build for vertical with 9×16 (“by adding 9:16 video with audio to always on strategies, on average advertisers have seen 34.5% lower CPA than image ads on Reels”)
Add audio
Build in the safe zone (ensure your key message isn’t overlapped by the Reels user interface).
Finally, Meta also advises that advertisers should make use of its new “Value Optimization” and “Value Rules” elements, which provide more ways for advertisers to optimize for the outcome/s that they care about most.
Meta’s Value Rules enable you to focus on different users based on specific behaviors, demographics, and more, in order to reach the most valuable potential customers for your products.
Essentially, Value Rules will help you reach people who are more specifically aligned with your goals.
Meta’s Value Optimization process, meanwhile, utilizes AI and machine learning to predict how much return on ad spend (ROAS) each potential ad viewer may generate, in order to then ensure that you’re bidding on your highest value customers.
The two options give you more control over who you’re pitching to in the app, and enable Meta’s AI targeting to align with the specific customers you want to reach, using smarter bidding insights to maximize your results.
These are some handy notes on key trends of impact with Meta’s ad system, which are driving significantly improved results for many brands.
Worth considering in your planning.