Generative AI for ad creative is coming to Meta’s Ads Manager.
On Wednesday, Meta announced it’s starting the process of rolling out three of the AI-powered tools that it’s been incubating within its AI Sandbox so advertisers can implement them for ad campaigns.
The tools will gradually be made available to more and more advertisers through next year.
Meta first introduced the AI Sandbox in May as a “playground” for testing early versions of new AI features before they’re distributed out more widely. A small group of advertisers and media buyers, including Publicis, has been helping Meta test the tools, said Matt Steiner, Meta’s VP of monetization, during a press briefing on Tuesday.
“There’s immense value in being able to experiment with generative AI tools and having the opportunity to provide feedback and improve the tools,” Steiner said, particularly during the early stages of product development.
Testing, testing
The first three tools to make it out of the AI Sandbox and into production are text variation, background generation and image cropping.
- The text variation tool generates multiple versions of ad copy to use with different audiences.
- The background generation tool automatically creates multiple background images to complement different products within creative based on text inputs.
- The image-cropping tool automatically adjusts the aspect ratio of creative assets so they look OK regardless of the surface. (What works for a Reels ad, for example, might not work in the feed or as a Story, and vice versa.)
According to Steiner, the AI models are trained “from a variety of sources,” including ad data from Meta’s platforms, data licensed from partners, vendors and third parties, and some publicly available data sources.
But Steiner declined to share what else is being tested now that these features are out the door.
“We have nothing new to share at this time,” he said, “but you can imagine we’re always iterating on the features that we can offer to our advertising partners.”
Strategy vs. tedium
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Meta executives spent most of the press briefing making well-worn points about the value of generative AI.
For example, gen AI tooling can save creative and media teams time and resources they can redirect toward higher-orders tasks, like strategy, rather than wasting precious minutes on tedious ones, like creating a zillion versions of the same creative or message.
Everyone loves touting the time-saving benefits of generative AI.
To be fair, though, some of the advertisers surveyed by Meta that tested these tools within the AI Sandbox estimate that generative AI will save them five or more hours a week – which, as Steiner pointed out, “is an entire month of time saved in a year.”
So … move fast and save things?
“We believe in a world where AI unleashes the potential of marketers to do more of the creative, strategic work that really drives their business forward,” Alvin Bowles, VP of Meta’s global business group, told reporters. “With AI, everyone across the industry, from marketers to advertisers and agencies, can really perform at the top of their game versus grinding on tiresome, tedious tasks.”
