Meta Adds More Ways to Reach Customers

Facebook parent Meta recently announced new ways for businesses to reach customers through video, AI-powered tools, and updated ad formats. There are new video options for storytelling in the company’s Advantage+ catalog ads, new ways to drive sales through Reminder ads, and more.

New AI-powered tools provide more information and personalization to people when they’re at "the moment of discovery," the company says, adding that this enables them to gain confidence to make a purchase after seeing an ad. Meta is adding video capabilities to more parts of the Advantage suite, which uses these tools, so customers can use them to drive performance.

"Almost all of our advertisers use at least one of the tools in our Advantage Suite to optimize their ad performance. At the same time, Reels and video on our apps continues to grow as daily watch times across all video types grew over 25% year-over-year in Q4. In fact, people now reshare Reels 3.5 billion times every day."

Advantage+ creative optimizations can now automatically optimize video ads for viewing on Reels or the mobile Facebook and Instagram apps with 9:16 ratio. The company says these optimizations can help advertisers dynamically create multiple variations of an ad so as to personalize it to what the viewer best responds to.

Advertisers who use Advantage+ catalog ads (which automatically deliver product recommendations to people based on their interests) will be able to import and use branded videos or customer demonstration videos instead of only having the option to use static images.

Earlier this year, Meta made it so advertisers can use Advantage+ creative with their Advantage+ catalog campaigns. Now, they’ll also be able to upload a “hero” image in the center of their catalog ad, and Meta will use artificial intelligence to dynamically show people the "best" products from their catalog to drive performance.

Meta is also enabling more advertisers to utilize Shops ads.  They have expanded access to integrations with Magento and Salesforce Commerce Cloud so more businesses can tap into AI-powered performance, utilizing Advantage+ shopping campaigns, together with Shops ads. Additionally, Shops ads are being added to Partnership ads so businesses can run Shops ads with creators, brands, and other businesses.

Advertisers can now include external links to a new product or sale in Reminder ads as a way to turn a consumer’s interest into a purchase. Later this year, Meta will add the ability to notify people when an event starts and before it ends, and add Reminder ads to Reels.

Finally, Meta has added ads with product tags to Facebook Feed. This was previously only on Instagram. They are also launching the global availability of ads with product tags to all businesses, whether or not they maintain a Shop.

Meta has more on the way for advertisers. The company is testing the ability to use Collaborative ads with Advantage+ shopping campaigns. It says recent research showed advertisers have a 14 percent increase in return on ad spend, and a decrease of 13 percent in cost per acquisition.