Meta continues its land grab for AI. Joining the Meta AI suite of generative AI products (images, text, etc.), the company is now expanding its image generation capabilities for advertisers. This is meant to reduce friction in formulating ads on Facebook with the help of generative AI for product visuals.
This expands beyond Meta’s existing ability to use generative AI for custom product backgrounds (think: beach scenes or tropical forests). Advertisers can now type products themselves into existence. This of course is a potential minefield of accuracy issues and false advertising but we’ll leave that aside for now.
To wrap an example around it, a coffee shop can customize a generative AI image of a logo-emblazoned coffee cup from several angles. It can also create variations and thematic touches like the cup sitting on top of a pile of coffee beans, or other branded fare in the background, such as the shop’s location.
Though this latest update is all about images, Meta reminds us that it can also generate other campaign components such as ad copy and headlines. Next up on Meta’s road map is to emulate a given SMB’s personality and voice. Using previous campaigns as a training set, it can carry forward that tonality.
Learning Curve
For all the above, merchants can tinker until they get the campaigns they want – a process that will involve a learning curve for prompt engineering. That said, it’s meant for any skill level, and will likely have broad applicability to SMBs and brands, which can each benefit from time and cost savings.
Moreover, this addresses an area that’s generally primed for AI: SMB marketing. Early in the generative AI hype cycle, this was the area we pointed to as the most prone to disruption, along with adjacent areas like stock photography. Generating images on the fly scratches several itches for SMB marketers.
In that light, we expect this to be a popular choice for both brands and SMBs – likely in that order of adoption. For Meta, it’s an attempt to appeal to a greater swath of SMBs that are averse to digital advertising complexities. Indeed, it’s always positioned Facebook advertising as the simple option.
Meta says that the generative campaign images will be available to all advertisers by the end of the year. Meanwhile, it’s already working. In early trials, smartphone case maker Casetify boosted its return on ad spend (ROAS) by 13 percent by streamlining the creative process in all the above ways.
Ep. 38 Ponders AI’s Al Dente Test and Tech’s Regulatory ‘Welcome’
AI Infusions
Backing up, Generative AI continues to find new applicability during its early-stage experimentation – or what we’ve been calling the al dente test. Fitting examples and integrations so far include writing copy or conceiving domain names for SMB websites. These address real business pain points.
Search is another area that continues to see AI infusions. Google increasingly integrates AI on the front end (Search Generative Experience) and in merchant-facing ways (SEO tasks like page meta descriptions). As shown today at Google I/O, it’s integrating more AI across search (more on that soon).
But eCommerce is perhaps the most fitting venue for AI, and we’re only seeing the first steps. In fact, Meta’s latest moves follow similar ones from Amazon and Google, which have launched features that automate the production of product images for eCommerce pages and listings (e.g., Google Shopping).
Expect to see more development on this front as eCommerce is a natural point of integration for generative AI. Beyond images, it will have a hand in streamlining ad copy, user targeting, and campaign segmentation. And on the user end, a conversational interface will help users find the right products.
