Meta is accelerating AI innovation by investing in infrastructure and generative AI ad tools to enhance business performance and customer connection, especially during the crucial holiday season. New features help marketers leverage AI for sales, including improved product merchandising with Reels and creators, enhanced insights for creative diversification, and easier customer guidance to holiday deals both online and in-store.
Creator and Reels Integration
Marketers can now more easily connect with creators through expanded language and region filters in Instagram’s creator marketplace. Partnership ads can be combined with Advantage+ catalog ads, featuring partnership intro cards and automatic conversion to catalog ads when optimized for product display, leading to a 4% higher click-through rate and 3% higher conversions. Creator testimonials are globally available to boost ad performance by adding product endorsements as featured comments.
Video engagement is rising, with Facebook video time spent up over 20% year-over-year in the US. New Reels ad features include:
- Reel Product Discovery: Testing automatic conversion of single media Reels ads into shoppable formats.
- Swipe Up Enhancements: Providing more advertiser info when users swipe up on Reels ads.
- Video in Instagram Catalog Ads: Adding video to carousel ads on Instagram Reels, boosting conversion rates by 7% compared to images alone.
Creative Diversification and Efficiency
Meta introduces tools to optimize ad creative use:
- Flexible Media: Allows ads to be delivered to new placements predicted to improve performance, resulting in a 23% increase in conversions.
- Creative Insights: Available globally later this year, providing advertisers with feedback on ad effectiveness and improvement recommendations.
- Related Media: Suggests existing media for new ad sets, increasing creative volume and diversity, which led to a 13% increase in conversion rates during tests.
Enhancing Holiday Shopping Experiences
To drive sales online and in-store, Meta expands tools globally:
- Omnichannel Ads: Now worldwide, optimizing purchases across online, in-store, and app channels, showing maps and discounts to nearby stores, with a median 15% cost per purchase reduction and brands like Target seeing a 51% return on ad spend increase.
- Shops Ads Expansion: Extending to subscription businesses and new countries (Mexico, Canada, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Japan), with a 6% lower cost per conversion observed in tests.
- Email Sign-Up Offers: Expanded on Facebook to promote new customer deals, increasing email submissions by 4.6 times over 14 days.
- Highlight Your Promotions: Makes discounts more visible in ads to boost holiday sales.
These AI-powered ad tools and enhanced creator collaboration features aim to help marketers maximize holiday sales by improving product discovery, creative efficiency, and customer engagement across Meta’s platforms.
