Meta’s AI advertising tool Advantage+ was launched in August to overcome restrictions introduced by Apple two years ago that forced apps to get permission to track users and serve them personalised adverts.
Meta has allowed advertisers in the past to target users on Instagram and Facebook apps based on users’ online activities outside the platform, as well as personal characteristics. The tech giant reportedly lost up to £8.2 billion ($10 billion) in revenue nine months after Apple introduced restrictions on advertising and data privacy.
Now, Advantage+ uses AI to immediately generate several adverts tailored to the objectives of marketers and decides on the most effective ad to run. As opposed to personalised advertising the tech giant is using AI to generate numerous variations of adverts.
Multiple brands have told the Financial Times (FT) that the Advantage+ tool is boosting the success of ad campaigns. IProspect associate director Roberto Mendoza told FT: “It’s been very lucrative for us, and we’ve been ramping up.” He added that for every $1 spent on ads, clients were receiving $7 in return.
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In spite of this, however, three companies informed FT of their apprehensions towards the AI tool and the extent to which they had to hand over management of their campaigns to Meta.
“We have now made the active decision not to use the Advantage+ feature due to the amount of control that you have to give up as a marketer,” one UK-based games company told FT.
“The results are vastly better [but] you give over control,” a UK-based retailer added. “You are effectively looking at a black box solution where there is an algorithm saying it can do better [marketing] work than you can.”
