Today, at Meta’s Performance Marketing Summit in Toronto, we brought the marketing community together to help them take advantage of our growing suite of business tools and find new opportunities to drive effective campaigns using artificial intelligence (AI). 

AI has been a foundational part of all our apps and services since 2006, and it currently powers our discovery engine, ads business, content moderation and more. The advancements we have made have driven world-leading innovations, and these new tools for creativity and connection have already proven their value to the marketers on our platforms. Now, we’re applying AI even more broadly and deeply to improve performance and measurement, and make campaigns easier to set up. 

Enabling AI and automation across the ads creation process  

Meta Advantage, our portfolio of AI-powered automated business tools, will help marketers maximize the value of each ad impression and deliver superior results. Products like Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns, also known as ASC, is one of the fastest growing ad products in the history of the company – and AI is central to its success. Using ASC, marketers can automate their entire setup of their campaign, creative and placement of their ad, saving them valuable time to focus on other parts of their business. 

Take design-forward, luggage brand Monos as an example. Founded in Vancouver, the company tested a Meta Advantage+ shopping campaign against its more complex usual ad campaign set up and saw a 58% decrease in incremental cost per purchase using the Advantage+  shopping campaign. Monos also saw a 35% increase in incremental return on ad spend with their Advantage+ shopping campaign, compared to a usual campaign setup. 

Women’s jewelry brand Jenny Bird saw equally strong results. When running a Meta Advantage+ shopping campaign together with its usual ad campaigns, the company saw a 14% lower cost per purchase compared to its usual campaigns alone, and 17% higher conversions.

While not yet broadly available, we’re researching and testing early versions of new generative AI features with advertisers to ensure we deliver the best value for businesses and for people. One outcome of that research is the AI Sandbox – a testing playground for early versions of new tools and features, including generative AI-powered ad tools. To start, we’re building tools like text variation, background generation and image outcropping to do things like make an ad’s text more engaging or improve parts of its creative. 

And this week at Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, we talked to advertisers about AI agents for business messaging and customer support that will create future connections for businesses to help them grow. As Mark Zuckerberg shared, we expect these tools will be valuable for everyone from regular people to creators and businesses.

Powering our world-class discovery engine 

We’re combining our AI-powered discovery engine with the social connection that has always been the core of our platforms for a more relevant, entertaining, and social experience. Short-form video continues to become more social with people re-sharing Reels more than 2 billion times every day, making it the most effective way for brands to make connections with their customers. 

Since we launched Reels, we have seen more than a 24% increase in time spent on Instagram, and over 40% of advertisers are already using Reels ads. This growth can be attributed to our discovery engine, which is powered by AI, ensuring people are seeing content that aligns with their interests and that provide an engaging experience. We continue to make improvements on how to make ads look and perform better with Reels, and we’re excited to see where these improvements take us. 

With new tools capable of big impact, it’s no surprise that marketers are already starting to lean into AI to increase campaign performance, giving teams more time to focus on higher-impact work. As we continue to innovate and develop advanced AI features, marketers can expect even greater performance improvements and accelerated growth. Embracing AI is now more crucial than ever for businesses aiming to thrive in the ever-evolving digital landscape of Canada.