
Werbewoche.ch: Mr. Wiedmeier, Meta is investing heavily in artificial intelligence. Where is AI in Meta's products?
Paul Wiedmeier: Artificial intelligence has been the backbone of our platforms for years and is a central focus of our research. We have developed a powerful infrastructure for AI-powered personalized recommendations, content, and rankings that drives all of our products. This extends from feeds to reels to our ads and integrity system. Already, AI recommended and viewed content on Instagram is 40 percent. These recommendations have led to a 24 percent increase in time spent on the Instagram platform since the introduction of Reels. This illustrates how AI is playing a major role in personalization and user experience on our platforms.
Could you please give us specific examples of how AI is already delivering results for advertisers today?
Of course. Nearly all of our advertisers around the world are already using at least one of our AI-driven products. A good example is Meta Advantage, our automated advertising product. For example, Advantage+ Shopping campaigns aim to increase the efficiency of advertising campaigns. Compared to manually controlled ads, these require significantly less time to create and manage campaigns. With the help of machine learning, the most valuable new and existing customers can be identified across all meta-apps and reached with personalized products. This leads to improved results, in part because budget is optimally deployed in an automated way. In Switzerland, Migros Online, among others, has deployed this AI-powered solution and seen a 62 percent increase in return on ad spend (ROAS).
Are there other areas where AI plays a role?
AI is also playing an increasingly important role in creation. A current example is our AI Sandboxbased on generative AI. This enables advertisers to diversify existing creative content to drive performance. It helps counter creative fatigue and enables automated personalization of creative assets. Features currently being tested include background and text variation generation and automatic image adjustment of assets. We plan to further enhance these solutions in the near future and make them available to a larger number of advertisers.
These innovations appear to be changing the advertising landscape. What does the future of AI technology look like at Meta?
We are constantly developing our AI solutions and working on new innovations. We see promising application areas, such as the use of AI for chat experiences, for example in WhatsApp, and the further development of visual creation tools for video content on Facebook and Instagram.
That sounds exciting. Could you elaborate on the role of AI agents in this development?
AI agents could play an important role in the future. We are exploring chat experiences in messaging platforms like WhatsApp and Messenger. These AI agents could act as assistants, coaches or for companies in customer interactions. We believe that such tools would bring great benefits, especially in the area of customer communication and support. AI agents could not only answer customer queries efficiently, but also enable personalized interactions. This could help companies automate parts of customer support while increasing their efficiency. Furthermore, AI agents could enable natural interaction with customers and respond quickly to their needs. A crucial technological basis for this is Llama 2, our open source language model. We believe that open source innovation drives the entire industry forward.
How do you see the integration of AI agents in the metaverse?
The integration of AI agents will play a significant role in the metaverse. In the metaverse, humans will be able to create avatars, objects, and even worlds much more easily to link all these elements together. AI agents could serve as a link to help humans create content and interactions in an immersive virtual environment.
Thank you very much for these exciting insights, Mr. Wiedmeier.
Thank you, it was a pleasure.
Paul Wiedmeier is responsible for Meta's customer partnerships with fashion ecommerce partners in German-speaking countries. Previously, he held various senior marketing positions at Procter & Gamble and Swarovski, among others, and built up the Swiss business for Meta. He is a jury member of the CMO of the Year Switzerland.
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