By
Godfrey Benjamin
April 26th, 2024
Meta explained that AI Sandbox and Advantage service offerings would ensure enhanced and seamless ad campaigns.
Meta Platforms Inc (NASDAQ: META) recently uncovered several new artificial intelligence (AI) resources and services for advertisers. On Thursday, the Menlo Park-based tech giant announced a veritable AI “testing playground” called AI Sandbox to help advertisers build campaigns.
By trying out new generative AI-powered ad tools in the Meta-enabled AI Sandbox, advertisers will have access to several tools. These include text variation (generating multiple text versions for emphasis), background creation (generating background images from text inputs), and image cropping (adjusting creative assets across various surfaces).
Meta also announced other AI services, including updates to its collection of automated tools and services called Meta Advantage. The company disclosed that it is working with a sample group of advertisers to test-run its new offerings and gather feedback for enhancements. Speaking on how Meta’s new offerings would ultimately enhance ad performance, the company’s vice president of monetization John Hegeman said:
“The aim here, again, is really to quickly test and learn and figure out which parts of these new capabilities are turning out to be most helpful for businesses to achieve their goals.”
Meta to Roll Out New AI Services in The Summer
Starting in July, Meta plans to allow advertisers to integrate some of the new AI features into existing product offerings. The company also explained that the gradual rollout of its new services is deliberate to ensure quality value proposition to its millions of ad clients.
As Hegeman put it:
“Overall, the generative AI space is developing incredibly quickly right now, and it’s a very exciting time. Our unique opportunity is to integrate these features over time into our products.”
Meta’s ‘AI Sandbox’ and ‘Advantage’ reflect the company’s ongoing efforts to secure its position at the helm of metaverse adaptation. Furthermore, the multinational technology conglomerate also seeks to stoke investor and advertiser interest in the AI space amid slowing ad growth.
In Meta’s latest earnings call, chief financial officer Susan Li put the company’s full-year capital expenditure between $30 billion and $33 billion. Li explained that Meta’s outlay reflected its “ongoing build-out of AI capacity to support ads, Feed, and Reels.” Furthermore, she added that the company exercised an increased investment capacity for its generative artificial intelligence initiatives.
Leveraging AI tech across all its apps and platforms remains Meta’s core aim as it seeks to improve end-user experience.
Meta Advantage
Meta recently improved Advantage to enable swifter and more innovative ad campaigns and optimized results. The company pointed out that it strengthened its Meta Advantage automated products in 2022 and has seen business adoption grow. For example, Meta noted that three times as many advertisers use Advantage+ shopping campaigns compared to 6 months ago.
New Meta Advantage features include deploying video creative in catalog ads and rolling out performance comparisons. In addition, users can now switch manual campaigns to Advantage+ shopping at the click of a button. This transformation allows such businesses to leverage artificial intelligence quickly and seamlessly.