Meta launches its first generative AI-powers features for ad creatives in the MENA region

Today, we’re announcing that we’ve begun rolling out our first generative AI-powered features for ad creatives in Meta’s Ads Manager in the MENA region, including UAE and KSA, with global rollout complete by next year. These unlock a new era of creativity that maximizes the productivity, personalization and performance for all advertisers. The new features – Background Generation, Image Expansion, and Text Variation – will add to the AI-powered experiences and tools we continue to build for businesses.

Background Generation: Creates multiple backgrounds to complement the advertiser’s product images, allowing advertisers to tailor their creative assets for different audiences.

• Image Expansion: Seamlessly adjusts creative assets to fit different aspect ratios across multiple surfaces, like Feed or Reels, allowing advertisers to spend less time and resources on repurposing creative assets.
• Text Variation: Generates multiple versions of ad texts based on advertiser’s original copy, highlighting the selling points of their products/services and giving them multiple text options to better reach their audience.

WHAT WE LEARNED FROM ADVERTISERS

Earlier this year, we announced the AI Sandbox where we’ve been testing these generative AI features with a small and diverse set of advertisers. These advertisers have been providing us with valuable feedback, including helping us ensure these products are built responsibly. Here’s what they’ve said about Meta’s generative AI for ads:

• Generative AI can save time and resources while spurring productivity – According to a survey of advertisers that participated in early testing, most advertisers expect saving time and half of them estimate that generative AI will save them five or more hours a week  – the equivalent of one month per year – noting they’ll be able to create multiple asset variations with the click of a button, reducing time spent between creative and media teams on time-consuming editing tasks and allowing for more strategic work.[1] Nearly all advertisers also agreed that the products being tested in AI Sandbox will eventually help marketers drive campaign performance by enabling quicker development of more ad creative variations at scale.
• Generative AI eases creative fatigue, but there is still room to customize – Creatives have a large impact on the performance of an ad,[2] and yet advertisers find it challenging to identify the best-performing creative at scale. Generative AI enables advertisers to introduce new ad creative faster, yet there is still work to do on delivering outputs customized to every brands’ unique voice and visual style. We’ll need to define new ways of partnering with brands and agencies to help train these models on brands’ unique perspective.

[WIP: Cards that cycle through with advertiser quotes + generative AI product images]

WHAT’S NEXT

Meta’s generative AI investments are focused on helping marketers to do their best work, by allowing them to launch & test ad creatives faster and easily reach the audiences they care about.

Today’s generative-AI powered ad features are just a start. We plan to offer advertisers more ways to generate ad copy to highlight product selling points or generate background images in minutes with tailored themes, like outdoor images for an athleisure brand. And as we shared at Connect, businesses will soon be able to use AIs for business messaging on Messenger and WhatsApp to engage with customers  –  helping with commerce, engagement and support, unlocking instant conversational responses. We’re testing with a small number of businesses in Alpha and plan to scale it further next year.

With millions of businesses advertising on our platform, we will continue to take a collaborative approach in developing these features and experiences so that they provide value to businesses and people.