Stay Ahead in the Digital Kitchen: Meta’s Latest AI Ad Innovations for Food Marketers
Meta is always changing. As a food company, your primary focus should be on cooking up recipes, not getting lost in the ever-evolving world of AI ads. However, the landscape demands a strong online presence, and that’s where a ‘seasoned’ (pun intended) food marketing agency like ours steps in to lend a helping hand. Whether you choose to embark on this journey with us or venture out independently, there are essential insights you need to grasp. At Branding & Buzzing, we’re excited to bring you the latest updates from Meta. Today, we’re here to share that Meta has initiated the rollout of its first generative AI-powered features for ad creatives within Meta’s Ads Manager. This global rollout is set to be completed by next year. These features flow into a new era of creativity, emphasizing productivity, personalization, and performance for all advertisers. Let’s delve into these innovative additions:
Background Generation:
This feature empowers advertisers to create multiple backgrounds that perfectly complement their product images. It allows for tailored creative assets that resonate with diverse audiences.
Image Expansion:
Seamlessly adjusting creative assets to fit various aspect ratios across multiple surfaces, such as Feed or Reels, this feature ensures advertisers spend less time and resources repurposing creative assets.
Text Variations:
Advertisers can now generate multiple versions of ad texts based on their original copy. This feature highlights the key selling points of their products and services while providing multiple text options to enhance audience engagement.
What Advertisers Have Taught Us:
Earlier this year, we introduced the AI Sandbox, a testing ground for these generative AI features, involving a small and diverse group of advertisers. Their feedback has been invaluable, ensuring responsible product development. Here’s what advertisers have shared about Meta’s generative AI for ads:
Generative AI can save significant time and resources while boosting productivity. Survey results from early testers indicate that most advertisers anticipate saving a substantial amount of time, with many estimating up to five or more hours per week, equivalent to one month per year. This newfound efficiency streamlines the creative process, reducing time spent on tedious editing tasks and fostering more strategic work. Advertisers are overwhelmingly confident that the AI Sandbox products will ultimately enhance campaign performance by enabling quicker development of a wider array of ad creative variations at scale.
“As an early adopter of Meta’s AI Sandbox, Publicis is excited to explore how it can be applied to critical client use cases,” said Keith Soljacich, EVP, Head of Innovation, Publicis Media Content Innovation. “Faster, smarter ad creative development integrated into the larger Meta ad platform will be a game-changer.”
Generative AI alleviates creative fatigue, yet there’s room for customization. Ad creatives significantly impact ad performance, but scaling them can be challenging. While generative AI accelerates the introduction of new ad creatives, there’s still work to be done in delivering outputs tailored to each brand’s unique voice and visual style. Collaborative efforts with brands and agencies are necessary to train these models according to the brand’s unique perspective.
What’s on the Horizon
Meta’s investment in generative AI is primarily geared toward empowering marketers to excel by launching and testing ad creatives more efficiently and effectively, reaching their desired audiences.
Today’s generative AI-powered ad features represent just the beginning. Our plans include offering advertisers additional ways to generate ad copy, highlighting product selling points, and creating background images in minutes, tailored to specific themes such as outdoor imagery for an athleisure brand. Furthermore, businesses will soon be able to use AI for business messaging on Messenger and WhatsApp to engage with customers, enhancing commerce, engagement, and support with instant conversational responses. This feature is currently being tested with a select group of businesses in Alpha, with plans to expand it further next year.
With millions of restaurant and food businesses advertising on our platform, we remain committed to a collaborative approach, continuously developing features and experiences that deliver value to businesses and people alike.