Shortly after ChatGPT hit the market last year and its ability to answer users’ questions in a humane manner immediately grabbed headlines, a digital marketing veteran said: Shane Rasnak started experimenting.
As someone who has made a career out of creating online advertising campaigns for clients, Rasnak saw how generative artificial intelligence could transform his industry.whether he came up with the headline for Facebook Rasnak said a short blurb in an ad or ad copy has turned a job that previously took 30 minutes to an hour into a 15-minute project.
And that’s just the beginning.
Rasnak also plays with generative AI tools such as: The middle of a journeyHe transforms text-based prompts into images while trying to come up with compelling visuals to accompany Facebook ads. According to Rasnak, the software is especially useful for those new to graphic design, and works well in conjunction with Canva and Canva’s popular graphic editing tools. Adobe’s Photoshop.
All things still new, Rasnak said generative AI “is akin to the advent of social media” in terms of its impact on the digital advertising industry. Facebook and Twitter enable advertisers to target consumers based on their preferences, friends and interests, while generative AI can tailor messaging and visuals to build and refine campaigns. Now
“It completely changes everything in terms of our work, our deliverables, the quality and quantity, and how much more personalized we can get as a result,” Rasnak said.
Rasnak isn’t the only one on the hype train.
meta, alphabet and AmazonAll the online advertising leaders are betting that generative AI will eventually become the core of their business.They each recently debuted or announced a product schedule It develops various tools that make it easier for companies to create messages, images and even videos for their respective platforms.
While most of the company’s products are still in the pilot stage and have been criticized for being rushed to market in some cases, advertising experts told CNBC that, overall, generative AI is highly targeted. said it was the logical next step in online advertising.
“This is going to have a big impact on digital advertising,” said Christina Lawrence, executive vice president of consumer and content experience at digital marketing agency Razorfish, a division of ad giant Razorfish. Publicis Groupe.
In May, Meta announced an AI sandbox test suite to help companies more easily use generative AI software to create background images and experiment with different ad copy. The company also introduced an update to its Meta Advantage service that uses machine learning to improve the efficiency of ads running on various social apps.
Meta touts the Advantage suite as a way for businesses to improve campaign performance. apple The 2021 iOS Privacy Update limited the ability to track you across the internet.
“Personalization at scale”
As these new services improve over time, a bike company, for example, could theoretically target Facebook users in Utah by showing AI-generated graphics of people biking through a desert canyon, while A user in San Francisco could see a cyclist cruising the Golden Gate Bridge. predicts advertising experts. Ad text can be adjusted based on the user’s age and interests.
“It can be used at scale for this kind of personalization,” says Lawrence.
Meta’s Advantage service is gaining traction with retailers for automated shopping ads, according to data shared by the online marketing firm with CNBC. Baros.
According to Varos data, as of May 2023, about 2,100 companies have spent $47 million on Advantage+, equivalent to about 27.5% of their total monthly meta advertising budget. A month ago, these companies devoted 26.6% of their budget, or $44.9 million, to Advantage+.
Last August, when Meta was officially announced debuted With Advantage+ automated shopping ads, businesses spend less than 1% of their meta ad spend on this ad.
Meta Platform CEO Mark Zuckerberg speaks at Georgetown University in Washington, Oct. 17, 2019.
Andrew Caballero-Reynolds | AFP | Getty Images
Varos CEO Yarden Shaked said the increase shows Facebook is having some success in persuading advertisers to rely on its automated advertising technology. But Sheikhed said that Meta is “still not convinced on the creative side” of Meta’s early foray into providing generative AI tools for advertisers.
Similarly, Rasnak said that Midjourney’s tools are “not perfect yet” in creating realistic images that can be incorporated into online ads, but that they are “cartoon-like” that will resonate with some smaller customers. It is said that it is effective in generating “design”.
Jay PatissarAnalysts at Forrester said generative AI cannot make an immediate and significant impact on the online advertising industry because of some major obstacles.
One is brand safety. Companies are reluctant to outsource campaigns to generative AI. Generative AI can generate visuals and phrases that reflect certain biases, or can be offensive and inaccurate.
Earlier this year, Bloomberg News found AI-generated images from the popular Stable Diffusion tool generate visuals that reflect many stereotypes, and prompts such as “fast food employee” or “social worker” can be used to identify dark-skinned people. produces images of and are associated with light skin tones. high-income jobs.
There are also potential legal issues around the use of generative AI, which leverages models trained on data “collected from the internet,” Pattisall said. Reddit, Twitter and Stack Overflow have announced that they will charge AI companies for using large amounts of data on their platforms.
Scott McElvey, a longtime marketing writer and consultant, mentioned other limitations on the quality of deliverables. Based on limited experience with ChatGPT, an AI chatbot created by OpenAI, McElvey said the technology would not be able to generate long-form content that would serve as advertising copy for companies.
“We can provide fairly generic content based on what’s already out there,” McElvey said. “But it doesn’t have a unique opinion or perspective. Some tools claim to be able to learn a brand’s opinion based on prompts or inputs, but I haven’t seen that yet.”
An OpenAI spokeswoman declined to comment.
A Meta spokesperson said in an email that the company has conducted extensive research to mitigate bias in its AI systems. Additionally, the company said it is introducing brand safety tools aimed at giving advertisers more control over where their ads appear online, and will remove any AI-generated content that violates its rules.
“We are actively monitoring emerging trends in AI-generated content,” the email said. “We will remove content if its content violates our community or advertising standards, regardless of the creation mechanism. To ensure this standard is clear, we We are reviewing our public policy.”
A Meta spokesperson said that as new chatbots and other automation tools hit the market, “the industry needs to find ways to meet the new challenges of bringing AI into production responsibly. “Meta intends to remain at the forefront of that effort,” he added.
Online and Facebook advertising consultant Stacy Reed is now incorporating generative AI into her daily work. She uses the software to come up with headlines and short copy variations for her Facebook ads, which she said has helped in a world where it’s getting harder to track people online.
Reid said generative AI is a good “starting point,” but businesses and marketers still need to hone their own brand messaging strategies and not rely on one-size-fits-all content. Generative AI does not “think” like a human strategist when creating content, and often relies on a series of prompts to refine the text, she explained.
Therefore, companies should not simply rely on technology to think of the big picture of knowing which themes resonate with different audiences, or how to run large-scale campaigns across multiple platforms. is not.
“The big brands I work with are in trouble because they’re so disconnected from the average customer that they don’t speak their language,” Reed said.
Industry experts say that for now, big advertising agencies and large corporations are mainly using generative AI for pilot projects while waiting for the technology to develop.
Earlier this year, Mint Mobile aired an ad It featured actor and co-founder Ryan Reynolds reading a script said to have been generated from ChatGPT. He asked the show to write ads in his own voice, use jokes and curse words, and let viewers know the promotion was still going on.
After reading the AI-generated text, Reynolds said it was “a little scary, but compelling.”
clock: Social Media Showdown: Instagram Launches Direct Competitor of Twitter