Meta has announced new tools that can help drive growth and incremental performance gains for e-commerce and retail businesses.
Among the tools being launched are omnichannel ads, which allow advertisers to show ads that highlight nearby locations to people most likely to shop in-store. Meta is expanding access to omnichannel ads to more advertisers, adding the ability to guide people to the nearest store with products in stock, and surfacing discounts that can make it even more enticing for shoppers to visit a store.
Retail brands with offline store presence that deploy omnichannel strategies are likely to gain the most from omnichannel ads.
In the coming months, Meta will also allow advertisers to use partnership ads and AI-powered Advantage+ catalog ads together.
Partnership ads harness the power of creators by allowing advertisers to run ads with creators, brands and other businesses. India is home to the largest community of Instagram creators in the world and more than 4,000 advertisers in India already use Partnership Ads.
Meta is also introducing a new optimisation that allows its ads system to show additional products from the catalog when promoting a preferred product set with the AI-powered Advantage+ catalog ads. With this feature a fashion brand, for instance, could choose to highlight jackets from their spring collection and give the system the option to serve a dress that a shopper might also be interested in. In initial tests, advertisers saw a 14% increase in ROAS when using this optimisation on average.
Continuing the momentum on AI, Meta is also introducing new Generative AI-powered features for e-commerce brands effectively. This half Meta will continue to explore new features including using Gen AI to place clothing on virtual models. By giving customers a better sense of how an item might look and fit, it could help shoppers confidently make a purchase and advertisers create more compelling experiences. Today advertisers can use background generation in Catalog ads and the company is experimenting with more personalised outputs for text generation. This will help advertisers better merchandise their products on Meta platforms and create ad copy that resonates with customers.
Meghna Apparao, Director of Ecommerce and Retail vertical for Meta in India, said, “E-commerce and retail is witnessing a material shift in India driven by more offline retail brands reaching customers online, quick commerce continuing to grow rapidly, and online shopping in tier-2 and tier-3 markets continuing to accelerate. While AI-powered personalization and discovery, Reels and creators, and messaging have already unlocked immense value for the e-commerce and retail brands, Meta’s continued thrust on innovative ad tools for the sector is going to prove pivotal for its growth, enabling brands to create impactful shopping experiences and deliver on business outcomes that matter most to them.”
