AI for ROI: Taking the first steps into a new era of digital experience

AI. AI. AI—it’s the primary focus of businesses across the UK and beyond, and for good reason. Across all sectors – from commerce to manufacturing—AI and generative AI (genAI) are the new epicentres of value creation, fueling opportunities and competitive advantage.

At last week's Meta Marketing Summit in London, we spoke to over 150 businesses and advertisers about how AI can unlock human potential in ways we could never have imagined—from transforming education and healthcare, to increasing business growth and performance. AI will fundamentally change the future and have an impact on our everyday lives, the economy and the world at large.

Looking to the future, I imagine every person who uses our services will have a world-class AI assistant to help them get things done; every creator will have an AI that their community can engage with; every business will have an AI that their customers can interact with to buy goods and get support; and every developer will have a state-of-the-art open source model to build with.

However, the marketing and sales industry is especially well positioned to reap the value and benefits of AI right now, and the figures bear this out. McKinsey expects that the productivity of marketing alone due to genAI could increase between five and 15% of total marketing spend, worth about $463 billion annually.

At Meta, we’re seeing glimmers of this more effective, efficient and productive future already, including, where AI is powering advertiser performance on our platforms, supercharging the entire journey, and leading to real results for our clients.

AI tools are already delivering impressive results for companies such as Camden Town Brewery, a craft beer brewery based in the heart of London. Testing showed that ASC consistently outperformed their business-as-usual strategy, delivering two times lower cost per incremental lift and double return on adspend, and we’re seeing ROI gains like this across the board.

Advertisers who utilise ASC see an average of 17% lower cost per acquisition and a 32% increase in return on adspend, and what's to come with genAI will enable even more value for businesses and advertisers.

Meta recently launched its first generative AI-powered creative ad features, which can generate new backgrounds in an advertiser’s product images, create multiple versions of ad text, or even automatically expand images to fit different aspect ratios across multiple surfaces.

These features have been optimised to generate creatives that perform better on our platform, and while we’re still in the early days, we’re already seeing how they’re helping advertisers ideate on creative and free up more of their time.

Gen AI is also the foundational technology for AIs for Businesses, which will provide better customer experiences and offer the building blocks of new functionality that adds value for both businesses and people.

With research published in January by the UK Customer Satisfaction Index (UKCSI) finding that 45% of customers have avoided an organisation because of its poor use of technology, it’s never been more important for businesses to harness the power to connect their customers with help instantly, rather than putting them on hold.

Soon you’ll start seeing AIs for Business Messaging pop up across our platforms, which will field and respond to easily-answered customer questions, allowing human agents to prioritise and focus on more complex customer issues.

Eventually, you can imagine a future where our AIs for Business Messaging will become more personalised, more engaging; like chatting with a friend, but with your own brand voice and style.

This journey is just getting started; the industry of tomorrow will be led by the pioneering advertisers and marketers who champion next-gen technology today, and embrace AI to create some of the most innovative campaigns in the industry—with the ROI to match.

I promise you, being a leader in this space today will set you up for success tomorrow. The future is now. Don’t get left behind.

Derya Matras is vice president, UK, Northern Europe, Middle East & Africa at Meta.