By Anne O’Leary, VP of Mid-Market Global Business Group, EMEA Meta
As the nights are drawing in, many businesses are finalising their holiday advertising plans.
This year is gearing up to be a big one for digital marketers, as the first-ever artificial intelligence-powered peak season. AI is taking centre stage across the advertising industry, with more tools available to marketers than ever before.
Anne O'Leary, Head of Meta Ireland, chats to Alexander Lodeweyckx, Head of Performance at Loop Earplugs
Creativity continues to be a critical part of a digital ad campaign's success. According to a recent Deloitte study, creativity in marketing not only contributes to growth, but is also an increasingly important element to an advertiser’s success.
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That is why it is critical to think about how to unlock new ways to fuel your creativity. It may sound counterintuitive, but using AI based advertising tools can help unlock your next campaign’s creative idea. Using AI might seem daunting, but AI-powered tools and algorithms have been integrated into the marketing industry for some time.
AI is not a new focus for Meta which has applied AI and machine learning to their ads ranking system to show ads to the right people for many years. But now Meta is using AI to unlock new experiences for advertisers, helping them to optimise campaign results and deliver greater efficiencies in order to save time and money.
This year will be the first AI-powered holiday season, and there are plenty of opportunities for Irish advertisers to use AI to provide more strategic value to their businesses.
Anne o leary
Brands like Lounge Underwear and Loop Earplugs are already using AI tools to ensure that they can reach the right consumers at the right time, with messaging that is relevant, and that will grow their sales.
Here are a few ways you can use AI to improve your advertising and creative strategy for the peak selling season.
‘Tis the season for automation
Meta has a suite of AI-powered products known as Meta Advantage, which can either automate one part of your advertising campaign or almost all of it. Nearly all of their advertisers are already using at least one of the AI products in the portfolio.
Constant testing drives performance
By using AI to find new customers and generate new ad concepts, marketers can move faster than ever before. The insights that businesses gain from constant testing of their marketing strategies is invaluable as a signal of what is working, and where they need to focus their efforts.
Did a creator do a better job of explaining your value proposition than your existing messaging? Let them generate a Reels review for your most popular products. Did a new model in your campaign unlock a new customer demographic? A great sign to further a relationship. By using AI and social media as a feedback loop, marketers can continue to refine their strategies with confidence and optimise their investments for incremental performance gains.
Personalise creative for customer needs
When an ad works the first time, continuing on the tried-and-true path with messages meant for large audiences can be tempting. But over time, showing the same creative to the same audiences can become stagnant and result in diminishing returns. AI unlocks an advertiser’s ability to test and learn faster by finding the best customer for your ad at the right time by testing multiple types of creatives.
Using tools like Meta’s Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns, advertisers can gain insight into what ad creatives perform best, and what campaign components to shift to unlock new customer segments.
In tests last year, Meta found that adding Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns led to an average of 17 per cent lower cost per acquisition and a 32 per cent increase in return on ad spend. Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns help advertisers find new customers by automating the targeting and delivery of your ad campaigns.
Another AI-driven feature Meta recently launched is Advantage+ audience, which automates the audience selection part of ad creation. On average, businesses that used Advantage+ audience saw a 28 per cent decrease in average Cost per Click, Lead, or Landing Page View.
Optimise your content
AI is not just limited to data and targeting; it is rapidly becoming a tool to expand artistic expression. By harnessing AI-based tools, campaigns can be streamlined and personalised while optimising results, ultimately saving advertisers time and ad spend.
With new AI-powered digital tools emerging, an indispensable opportunity exists to create cutting-edge campaigns with which you can target the most relevant audiences. Whether used for ideation support, creative enhancement or personalisation, advertisers can embrace AI as a supportive leg up on creativity like never before.
Anne O'Leary, Head of Meta Ireland, chats to Kiran Sahota, Chief Marketing Officer at Lounge
Advantage+ creative standard enhancements, which uses AI to help advertisers automatically apply small enhancements, such as adjusting brightness, aspect ratios and text placement to improve the performance of ad creative. In a large-scale study measuring incremental effects, we found that ads that used Advantage+ creative standard enhancements delivered 14 per cent more incremental purchases per amount spent.
A New AI Holiday Hub to Help Small & Medium Sized Businesses
Finally, to help more small and medium-sized businesses make the most of our AI-powered tools, Meta has launched a new Holiday Hub and Guide, featuring best practices and tactical guidance to maximise ad performance during this peak sales period. Whether you are an e-commerce brand or a professional services entrepreneur, you will find tailored resources to take the guesswork out of your ad campaign.
