Meta’s sprucing up its ads with new generative AI tools

Whether you are browsing the web or scrolling through social media, product ads typically take away from the experience. Usually you are shown a series of different products overlayed on a white background that all look pretty much the same. 

Lucky for you, Meta will be using AI to help advertisers make ads more interesting.

On Thursday, Meta introduced an AI Sandbox for advertisers which will act as a testing playground for new generative AI tools, including generative AI-powered ad tools such as text variation, background generation and image outcropping. 

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These tools will allow developers to get more creative with their ads without having to do much more work, which would ideally result in more visually appealing ads for users and more revenue for advertisers. 

Text variation will allow advertisers to generate multiple versions of text so that different messages can reach different audiences. 

In the demo, an advertiser includes a description of the product they are creating the ad for and Meta generates four different potential ad texts for the post. 

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The other two tools focus on optimizing visual aspects of the post. 

With background generation, advertisers can replace the standard white background with more imaginative ones. Image outcropping allows the same post to be adapted to fit different platforms, such as Stories or Reels.

These features are currently available to a small group of advertisers but will begin to roll out gradually to others in July.