With the holiday season fast approaching, Meta has announced a raft of new ad updates, including AI-assistance tools (for Meta ads and for your own website), creator collaboration options, new product stickers for Reels, and more.
Some really interesting notes, which could be relevant to your planning.
First off, Meta’s launching an expanded “Business AI” option, which will enable any business to create their own, dedicated AI agent for their website, powered by Meta’s evolving AI tools.
As you can see in this example sequence, now, Meta will facilitate the creation of AI bot creation for external sites, which will be able to answer questions about products, assist with custom options, and drive sales, all without you doing a thing. Well, other than setting it up in the first place.
As explained by Meta:
“Business AI is available as a free customizable sales AI agent that you can add directly to your business website. Your AI agent will be trained on your website and product catalog, guiding customers from discovery to purchase and helping your business to get more sales.”
Brands will be able to create their own Business AI within the Meta Business Suite platform, with customization options that will make it easy to build the right AI bot for your needs.
Meta says that the implementation of these bots won’t require coding knowledge or experience, with the bot learning from your website info, and on your social posts.
“Business AI learns from your existing social posts, ad campaigns, and website to provide more immersive responses for customers.”
So Meta will draw from a range of custom sources to build your bot’s model, which will ensure more uniformity and brand consistency with your bot experience.
All of your Meta business bot conversations will be stored in your Meta Business Suite inbox, so you can refer back to what’s been asked, and answered, whenever you need.
And you’ll also be able to use the same chatbot in Facebook and Instagram campaigns:
As you can see in this example, once you’ve set up a chatbot, people who view your ads on Facebook and IG will be able to tap the queries at the bottom of the ad, which will take them through to a response from the bot on your site.
It could be a handy option, though it does also mean making Meta a more significant part of your business, which could be problematic if/when Meta decides to start charging for access, or cuts them off entirely.
It’s also interesting to note that Meta’s introducing this at the same time as it’s updating its terms to use any conversations with Meta AI in its ad targeting. You can bet that it’ll also be using any conversations with your branded chatbot as well, and because these will be product-specific, that will give Meta valuable data on what people are interested in, helping to supercharge its ad tools.
Is that good for your business? Well, if you pay for Meta ads it probably is, as you’ll be able to retarget users who’ve engaged with your bot. But it will also mean that Meta can use that same info to power your competitors’ ads as well. Presumably, there will be some level of privacy and proprietary protection of the specific details of any engagement with your bots. But if Meta knows that a user used your chatbot to search for a certain item, that seems like a solid opportunity to then retarget that user with other promotions for similar or related products, be it yours or another brand’s.
But concerns aside, it may be a simple way for brands to jump aboard the AI trend, and provide evolving experiences that better align with shifting habits and expectations.
Meta’s business chatbots will initially be made available to companies in the U.S.
In addition to this, Meta’s also got a new Meta AI Business Assistant, which will be active within Meta Ads Manager, and will be able to provide answers to questions relating to your performance in Meta’s apps.
The tool is designed to help business owners and marketers improve the performance of their Meta ads and posts, based on Meta’s ever-growing pool of user data.
Meta says that the bot will also be able to “easily resolve account issues,” including disabled accounts and spend limits.
We’ll see how it performs on the front.
Meta’s also trying out new virtual try-on options, which will give people new ways to see what clothing items look like on them before they make a purchase.
So you upload an image of yourself, and Meta’s system will show you what different clothing items look like on you, which is similar to the virtual try-on options from Google and Pinterest.
Meta says that it’s also testing a new experience that will use generative AI to show a “dynamically created personalized page” after a user clicks on an ad, highlighting relevant details to each specific customer, based on their query info and Meta’s understanding of their interests.
It’s also trying out new AI sticker CTAs for Stories and Reels, which will provide a custom call to action.
Meta’s also got some new creation tools for ads, including AI-generated music (which will produce custom audio based on ad content), AI dubbing to expand your potential ad audience, and HDR enhancement for video, which will use generative AI “to deliver videos with higher contrast and more vibrant colors.”
It’s also adding “persona-based image generation” for ads, which will create several different versions of an ad, “each designed to appeal to a specific type of customer or what's performed well in the past.”
Finally, Meta’s also adding some new options to make it easier for brands to partner with creators on campaigns, including creator content recommendations in its Partnership Ads Hub, and AI-recommended Collabs, which will make it easier for brands to find and activate campaigns.
It’s also expanding the opportunity for creators and brands to add product links to Instagram Reels, while it’s also expanding access to its creator APIs, which will enable more third-party platforms to support creator collaborations for campaigns.
A heap of considerations here, with many implications for the upcoming holiday season push, and beyond. Clearly, AI is where Meta is headed with its AI tools, but the enhanced creator collaboration options also provide more food for thought for your approach.
