In its ongoing effort to leverage AI to drive ad performance across Facebook, Instagram and its messaging platforms, Meta has unveiled a number of new innovations for advertisers.
Among the new capabilities are virtual try-on personalized to a user’s own image; new tools to ramp up creators’ effectiveness, including affiliate and product linking; and persona-based image generation that will allow advertisers to easily create ad variations to appeal to different audience sets. But perhaps the most interesting new tool is what Meta is calling Business AI — a customized AI agent that brands can use to help guide shoppers and answer questions, both within their Meta ads and on their own websites.
“AI is changing how people engage online, including changing how they shop,” said Clara Shih, Head of Business AI at Meta at a press briefing on Wednesday. “If you think about the commerce flow that all of us have been used to from the last two decades — where you see an ad (often on Facebook or Instagram), you click on the ad, you go to the merchant’s website, you look at the product, you consider the product, then maybe you add it to your cart and check out — that flow hasn’t changed much over the last several years, but it’s about to change dramatically.
“We’re seeing this shopping funnel collapse; [with AI] we’re going from clicks to conversations to relationships,” Shih added. “What this means for consumers is a lot less friction, a lot less getting stuck in one of the steps from before and getting distracted by our busy lives. It’s equally compelling for businesses who’ve told us that they feel overwhelmed, especially small businesses, by the number of different tools and technologies that they had to stitch together. But now we want to simplify that.”
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Meta Business AI: A Turnkey, Low-Cost AI Agent for Brands
Because implementing AI assistants is proving overwhelming for companies, especially small businesses, Meta’s new Business AI tool is presented as a turnkey solution to that problem. Companies can easily embed Meta’s Business AI agent in their Facebook and Instagram ads for free, as well as on their own websites (currently available to U.S. businesses only) for a fee that Shih promised will be a “a fraction of the cost compared to market alternatives.”
Here’s how it works: A brand trains Business AI on its offerings via its Meta social posts, ad campaigns (helpful because Meta knows which have been successful), as well as its product catalog and website content. From those inputs Business AI develops a customized AI assistant that companies can then tweak and test.
Once live, the chatbot will be available to answer customer questions and guide shoppers within the company’s Meta ads and on their own website, if they choose. The chatbot will be able to handle everything from size and pricing questions to queries about customer reviews. A performance dashboard also is available for companies to track the results of the agent’s performance.
Business AI’s goal is driving sales growth, according to Shih. As such, Meta has developed it as a targeted, no-code tool for businesses to drive engagement and results from their ads.
Meta AI Agent will Coordinate with Third-Party Agents
“We also heard from businesses that it’s important for that sales concierge experience to continue on for customers who visit their website, so we’ve extended Business AI so that businesses can also make that concierge experience available on their website,” Shih said.
And for companies that already have a third-party shopping assistant integrated on their site, Meta has partnered with some of the top customer support platforms to ensure a simple handoff from Business AI to these other dedicated chatbots. Among the partners already working with Meta are Salesforce Service Cloud, Microsoft Dynamics 365, ServiceNow and Zendesk.
“The best analogy is, if you as a customer ask a salesperson about warranty information or returns, often they’ll walk you over to the customer service desk to handle those more complicated requests. That’s the same approach that we are taking with our [digital CRM] partners to make that handoff seamless,” Shih explained.
In addition to being available for Facebook and Instagram ads, Business AI also will be available in Meta’s messaging apps, WhatsApp and Messenger, which Shih said is “a very natural place for us to provide business AIS [artificial intelligence systems], because this is where hundreds of millions of conversations are already happening every day between businesses and their customers.” Companies will have the choice to turn on Business AI in the messaging apps for specific topics they want to delegate to AI.
Luxury organic beauty brand Ogee has been a long-time Meta customer and was an early tester of the new Business AI experience. “If it wasn’t for Meta, we would not be where we are today,” said Alex Stark, Co-founder and Chief Marketing Officer of Ogee at the press briefing. “Meta has been incredible at driving the right people to our website or driving the brand awareness, but once they get to our website, it’s on us. Creating this cohesive experience between the agent on the ad side and on our website is incredibly exciting, because when you go to a physical store, there are sales agents that help you with a question, and now we have that on our site. So much shopping still takes place in physical retail, and I think that’s one of the big reasons, that hand-holding. Now we can do that on a personalized level [online] with the Business AI agent.”
Plus: Increased Ad Personalization, More Ways for Creators to Monetize
Other new capabilities Meta is rolling out to improve shopper confidence and ad performance on its platform include:
- AI Try-On Me — an expansion of previous tools that allowed shoppers to see clothes on a range of virtual models, the newest iteration will let shoppers upload a picture of themselves to visualize how apparel will look on them;
- Personalized brand landing pages — Meta is testing a new experience that uses generative AI to show a personalized landing page based on a user’s buying journey, after customers click on an ad. For example, a new customer might see a broader view of the business, whereas an existing customer might see things like more detailed product specs, ratings or the latest promotions;
- Persona-based ad image generation as part of the Advantage+ image generation tool. This allows advertisers to further personalize creative to their customers by generating several different versions of an ad, each designed to appeal to a specific type of customer or what’s performed well in the past. For example, if you’re selling headphones, the tool might create one image that focuses on style for fashion lovers, another that highlights sound quality for music fans and a third that shows comfort for people who travel frequently;
- New ways for creators to monetize their collaborations with brands by making their content more easily shoppable. Meta is currently testing a new way for creators to access a brand’s affiliate program on Facebook and opening up the ability for creators and brands to add product links to Instagram Reels; and
- More AI-powered tools to help brands find and connect with the right creators, including the new Facebook creator discovery API, which simplifies the process for businesses and their agencies to find and connect with Facebook creators, and expanded access to the Instagram Creator Marketplace API to all agencies, advertisers and third-party developers in countries where the product is currently available.
“We know that authentic creator partnerships drive trust and engagement; in fact, three out of four people say they prefer creator content over traditional ads,” shared Helen Ma, VP of Product at Meta during the press briefing. “We also know that creator partnerships drive real business outcomes. We see, on average, 19% lower cost per action and 13% higher click-through rates when brands add partnership ads to their business-as-usual campaigns. So we’re making it easier than ever for brands and agencies to discover, connect and collaborate with creators on both Facebook and Instagram.
“[Additionally], we’re exploring new ways for creators to monetize their collaborations with brands, testing affiliate marketing on Facebook and the ability to link to products on Instagram Reels,” Ma added. “On the Facebook side, eligible creators can now discover affiliate partner programs through a new affiliate tool, making it easier to feature shoppable links on their content and allowing people to directly shop from affiliate posts. On the Instagram side, we’re testing whether showcasing links to products in a more visually prominent way improves the experience without needing to see the ‘Link in Bio,’ which I know a lot of creators will be excited to hear.”
