Data and AI Performance Summit discusses privacy-first strategies to improve ad performance
With businesses of all sizes looking to get the most out of their ad dollars amidst economic headwinds and an ever-changing advertising landscape, Meta organised a Data and AI Performance Summit in Singapore on March 2 to share how businesses can unlock the power of AI for marketing. The event attracted almost 2,000 participants from around the APAC region.
Organised by Meta’s Regional Agency team with the goal of providing agencies and advertisers with deeper insights into marketing in a privacy-first world, the event also highlighted evolving data strategies and innovation related to measurement techniques.
For the over 10 million businesses that use personalised ads on Meta platforms, Meta has been focused on improving advertiser performance by growing new experiences and building AI-powered tools.
Meta is bullish on AI
Meta has also invested heavily in industry-leading AI to evolve its business tools to help advertisers respond to a digital ads ecosystem with limited access to data.
“Our AI investments are helping businesses adapt to the evolving advertising landscape and improve their campaign performance. In the fourth quarter of 2022, advertisers saw over 20% more conversions than in the year before. Combined with a declining cost per acquisition, this has resulted in higher returns on ad spend,” said Annette Male, Meta’s regional lead for agencies.
AI is also a feature of Meta’s Advantage+ creative standard enhancements, which helps advertisers automatically apply small enhancements – like adjusting brightness, aspect ratios and text placement – to improve the performance of creative. In a recent test, it was found that ads which used standard enhancements delivered 14 per cent more incremental purchases per dollar spent.
Male shared that Meta is committed to driving ‘performance on people’s terms.’ “We continue to invest in this at Meta by giving people more control and visibility on how their data is used to personalise ads and providing more choice on personalising their ads preferences,” she said.
Meta has previously announced ongoing investments in Privacy-enhancing Technologies (PETs) that will enable businesses to drive better performance while preserving people’s privacy.
The importance of building an efficient data strategy
Chaola Nachampassak, APAC Performance Lead, Global Agency, Meta shared the importance of building an efficient data strategy that can balance the need for personalisation while respecting people’s privacy choices. She explained that Meta Advantage Suite – a suite of automated solutions powered by new machine learning models can leverage first party data to help automate a campaign from end-to-end or an entire workflow from end-to-end.
At the event, Meta’s agency team also shared the ‘Unlock AI Roadmap’ – a tool to help a brand diagnose their utilisation of AI versus their vertical, define what optimal AI use may look like and then generate a series of steps to utilise AI to increase business outcomes.
Vikram Bansal, APAC Marketing Science Director at Meta, advised agencies and clients to stay informed on evolving techniques to build sustainable measurement ecosystems for a privacy-first world. As the most effective growth strategies are built on experimentation, he encourages brands to take advantage of Meta’s A/B testing and Lift tests to minimise the guesswork around campaign performance. He also shared the growing influence of open source techniques such as Marketing Mixed Models (MMM) to improve overall understanding of the combined impact of various marketing and advertising approaches.
The event also featured a panel with speakers from Sephora, Dentsu and Accenture Song who shared their views and advice on driving performance while responsibly implementing data strategies.
Boris Bataille, eCommerce Director APAC, Sephora, said that while there are many metrices to qualify customer purchase behaviour, brands should identify the most relevant data that can actually drive outcomes.
Praveen Kumar, Managing Director, Accenture Song, Customer and Marketing Intelligence Lead SEA, said it is important to integrate third party data with first party data and use that to boost personalisation and relevancy. In using data and AI, you also need to have a continuous measurement framework to measure performance. Sunil Naryani, Chief Product Officer, Media at Dentsu APAC, said with the need to protect consumer privacy, gathering insights at a granular level is more of a challenge. It is important for advertisers to work with domain experts and embrace AI/Machine Learning to drive better outcomes.
