Amidst today’s economic uncertainty, the digital advertising landscape is transforming at unprecedented rates. To gain a competitive edge, businesses need to embrace machine learning and AI to navigate ongoing platform shifts and changes in consumer behaviour.
Research shows that Meta’s AI-driven ad tools, now grouped together under Meta Advantage, deliver three times the return for each dollar invested.[1] The Meta Advantage product suite leverages machine learning to connect the right creative with the right audience at the right time, helping advertisers reach valuable audiences with greater efficiency. Almost all of Meta’s advertisers are using at least one Meta Advantage product, meaning millions of advertisers are already taking advantage of AI to reach their goals,
Scaling businesses with Advantage+ shopping campaigns
Part of the Meta Advantage product suite, Advantage+ shopping campaigns simplify campaign set up, audience targeting and creative management. Advertisers can set up a single campaign and Meta’s AI automatically tests hundreds of different creative combinations and delivers the highest performing ads to the highest value shoppers. On average, Advantage+ improves cost per acquisition by 17% and return on ad spend by 32%.[2] Let’s look at a couple of case studies.
Baiia Swim scales from $6,000 to million-dollar months
Jay Wright, founder of Australian agency Ecommerce Equation, shared with me that many of his clients have shifted significant portions of their budgets into Advantage+ shopping campaigns.
“Advantage + shopping is one of the best products that Meta's deployed. We're seeing the performance return and increased ability to scale brands profitably,” he says.
One of his clients, Baiia Swim, a local swimwear brand, has been using Meta Advantage+ shopping campaigns to scale its brand. Baiia delegated part of its audience targeting to Meta’s Advantage+, which found pockets of new customers around the world. By gaining access to international markets and overcoming limitations of seasonality, Baiia went from earning around $6,000 per month to achieving seven-figure months.
Jay says, “The direction that Meta's going, with machine learning and AI, and its ability to deploy algorithms that find people to purchase products, en masse, at scale, is phenomenal… it feels like a golden era of advertising again.”
Princess Polly gains 10X ROI with Advantage
Another of our clients, online fashion retailer Princess Polly, has also been using Meta Advantage+ shopping campaigns to scale its business. Global performance director, Kim Zorn, shares, “We ran some tests and found that Advantage+ shopping campaigns come out of the learning phase way quicker than our BAU campaigns. So, we use Advantage+ shopping to supplement our BAU strategy. The algorithm really works – we see a 12% lower cost per purchase and an ROI of 10x, which is absolutely incredible.”
Changes to the digital ecosystem, notably Apple’s roll out of ATT (App Tracking Transparency), have fundamentally changed the way advertisers can optimise and measure the effectiveness of their ad campaigns. Meta has been developing AI models to fill in those data gaps.
“We used to target really niche, but since ATT, we’ve really struggled with smaller audiences. Advantage+ shopping broad targeting has been amazing – it helps us find new customers and also helps us convert repeat customers,” explains Kim from Princess Polly.
AI is also driving deeper user engagement
Meta’s AI technology is also being used to drive consumer discovery and deeper engagement. AI recommended content from accounts that you don’t follow is now the fastest growing category of content on Facebook’s feed. On Instagram Reels, AI now recommends about 40 per cent of the content people see. Since Reels was launched, AI recommendations have driven more than a 24 per cent increase in time spent on Instagram.
By combining this deeper user engagement with more advanced AI models that improve our delivery and measurement systems, the AI gets smarter about what’s working. This, in turn, improves its ability to select the best ad for each person.
Advertisers are benefitting from this – users on Meta’s platforms are four times more likely to click on an ad compared to other social media services.[3]
Maximise advertising efficiency and performance with Advantage+
Meta’s advancements in AI are revolutionising the digital advertising industry. Our AI solutions expedite backend processes, giving businesses more time for strategic big-picture work.
And this is just the beginning. In the future, we’ll be releasing new generative AI tools like text variations, background generation and image outcropping across both web and app solutions, which will further increase ad personalisation, efficiency and performance. Learn how to maximise business growth with Advantage+ today.
[1] "Learning, Sophistication, and the Returns to Advertising: Implications for Differences in Firm Performance” by National Bureau of Economic Research, Apr 2023.
[2] Meta data, July-Sept 2022.
[3] Source: GlobalWebIndex (online survey of 400,000+ internet users across 50 markets: AE, AR, AT, AU, BE, BR, CA, CH, CL, CN, CO, CZ, DE, DK, EG, ES, FR, GB, GH, GR, HK, ID, IN, IR, IS, IT, JP, KE, KR, MO, MX, MY, NG, NL, NO, NZ, PH, PL, PT, RO, RU, SA, SE, SG, TH, TR, TW, US, VN, ZA), Q3–Q4 2022.
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