Meta’s AI tools have a new job, generating ad revenue

At its developers conference last week, Meta showed amazing new AI tools for Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp users. It presented a different set of generative AI capabilities on Wednesday for an equally important user segment: advertising.

The new tools make it simpler than ever for individuals to generate ads for Meta’s many platforms by utilizing the capability of AI picture and text generation, potentially giving the $117 billion advertising division of the firm a new tailwind.

Smaller companies like mom-and-pop shops, home contractors, and social media influencers will be able to create online ads with video and images thanks to the AI tools, which will be free to anyone who uses Meta’s self-service advertising management platform Ads Manager. Normally, this kind of work requires personnel with specialized skills.

According to Matt Steiner, who leads Meta’s monetization infrastructure and ranking AI team, these features will unleash a new era of innovation that will maximize productivity, personalisation, and performance for all advertisers.

Any measure that lowers the barrier for advertisers to spend money on Meta’s platforms is a chance for growth as the company has recently experienced a slowdown in the growth of its advertising revenue. The highly targeted ads that formerly fattened Meta’s bottom line have decreased due to privacy modifications made by Apple to iPhones, and ad revenue has been siphoned off by the success of rival platforms like TikTok.

All US-based advertisers on Meta’s platforms will have access to AI background generation, picture expansion, and text variations by the end of the following year. Suah Lee, a director of analytics with eight years’ experience in advertising, said of Meta’s new advertising tools: “This seems really helpful.” These are already-existing tools that have been incorporated inside the platform so you don’t need to leave it to perform [picture scaling, text generating, and background generation].

According to studies conducted by Meta, its new AI technologies helped marketers save an average of “five hours or more” every week, or 10% of their time. Naturally, growing automation also raises the possibility of job losses in the marketing and advertising sector.

While Meta made a point of highlighting that using these marketing tools to their full potential will still require human interaction, such as copy editors, visual editors, and professionals who can customize data insights into successful campaigns, some aren’t so sure.

Yu Yang Pei, the chief growth officer at the marketing services firm AX10, has been in the advertising business for 12 years and has seen how AI has revolutionized the sector. His company recently let go of two full-time employees because AI made their jobs unnecessary. “The issue that most worries me is how we, as people working in marketing and the creative industries, persuade clients that our positions are legitimate. And that a creative individual can contribute more value than just an AI-generated concept, he stated.

Additionally, he made a claim that the prevalence of cost-free, user-friendly artificial intelligence tools like Meta’s may lead many marketers to choose quantity above quality.

Pei stated, “It would be so simple for everyone to just bombard the market with all of these assets that might not seem good.

However, if it results in an increase in revenue growth, investors in Meta will think it is OK.