Meta is putting new artificial intelligence and automation into its ad platform, including within shopping campaigns, which is part of the overall strategy to adapt to data changes coming from Apple.
On Wednesday, the owner of Facebook and Instagram made an update to automation programs it released in March called Advantage and Advantage+. The ad products made it simpler for Meta’s 10 million-plus advertisers to rely on Meta’s computing power to decide the best targeting, creative assets and campaign settings to reach consumers, instead of having to adjust all the ad knobs manually.
Now, Advantage+ is rolling out to more businesses, and there is a new type of shopping campaign ads, where e-commerce brands can link to a shop within Facebook and Instagram rather than linking to a website outside of the apps. It’s a small update with a potentially large impact on how Meta can track sales and other consumer activity. When a consumer views a product within the Meta apps, Facebook and Instagram collect data about the transaction, which would not be tracked if the consumer left the app.
Nicola Mendelsohn, Meta’s VP of global business group, discussed the automation and AI tools in a phone interview this week. “AI is a really big bet” for Meta, Mendelsohn said.
