Cannes Lions 2024
Meta has grown its use of AI in its advertising suite and reported that return of advertising investment (ROAS) for marketers has increased by 12% in two years.
In a press event on the first day of the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, Nicola Mendelsohn, head of Global Business Group at Meta, shared that new research found ROAS in the US reached $3.71 in 2024, up from $3.31 in 2022 in an equivalent study.
This means brands generate an average $180bn in revenue from advertising on Meta in the US.
Furthermore, when using Meta’s AI and automation suite, Advantage+, ROAS increased to $4.52.
In Europe, ROAS also rose 12%, to €3.79, although no ROAS figure was shared for those using Advantage+. Advertisers in Europe earn around €107bn in revenue from Meta advertising annually.
More AI tools
AI remains a core focus as it is being rolled out to more marketing products.
Nikila Srinivasan, vice-president, product management, business messaging, announced that AI functionalities will be introduced to Messenger, where marketers will be able to create, organise and send paid marketing messages on the platform through Ads Manager. It is currently being tested in the US and Asia-Pacific.
A second development, as presented by Matt Steiner, VP monetisation infrastructure, ranking and AI foundations, is the integration of Meta’s Llama 3 AI technology into the chat function that can respond to customer queries. It is currently testing in Asia-Pacific.
Medical wear company White Coat Manila saved 20% on customer support costs using this feature, Steiner said.
Finally, Steiner also highlighted results from brands using Meta’s AI image and text generation functions that were rolled out last month. Using these features, Unilever shampoo brand Living Proof saw a 15% improvement in cost per purchase, 18% uplift in total purchase volume and 13% growth in clickthrough rate in the US.
In the UK, Press Healthfoods experienced a 33% lower cost per action using these tools.
While some agencies also offer similar tools to Meta, Mendelsohn insisted that both can co-exist, pointing out that “the whole long tail” of advertisers, specifically small and medium advertisers, “can have options”.
Elsewhere, Threads, which now has 150m active users, according to Mendelsohn, has launched its API, making it “easier to gather insight at scale”.
But there are not yet plans to monetise on the platform, with Mendelsohn noting: “We focus on consumer usage and then we start to think about how advertisers might like to place ads in those areas.”
