Meta Unveils AI Sandbox to Empower Advertisers

Big tech companies are throwing generative AI at just about everything. Recently, Meta introduced the AI Sandbox, a testing playground for early versions of new tools and features, including generative AI-powered ad tools. The team is currently developing tools such as text variation, background generation, and image cropping.

Text variation generates multiple versions of text to emphasise important messages, while background generation creates custom images from text inputs, allowing for a greater variety of creative assets. With image cropping, advertisers can easily adjust their assets to fit different surfaces, saving time and resources. 

Meta is currently working with a small group of advertisers to gather feedback and plans to gradually expand access to more advertisers starting in July, with plans to add some of these features to its products later this year.

Meta has also released new Meta Advantage features, such as the ability to switch manual campaigns to Advantage+ shopping in one click, using video creative in catalog ads, rolling out performance comparisons, and allowing Advantage+ audience users to use audience inputs as suggestions to guide who sees an ad. The company is investing billions of dollars in infrastructure, with an increasing portion dedicated to building AI capacity for ads. Building products with generative AI capabilities also means investing more in computing capability.

As part of its ongoing efforts to advance AI modelling, Meta has implemented larger, more complex models in its ads system. This has led to improved performance and measurement, even when access to granular data is limited. 

For instance, previously on Instagram, optimising clicks on Story ads required a separate model from optimising conversions or sales for ads on Reels. However, with the development of more advanced AI modelling that optimises across all surfaces (Feed, Story, Explore, and Reels), Meta can transfer learnings across multiple surfaces simultaneously, helping improve advertiser conversions and enhance the quality of ads that people see.