How Marketers are Using AI to Create and Manage Facebook Ads that Convert
By: Trapica Content Team
Tags: SEO, Facebook, Marketing, Optimization, Advertising

Many years ago, the term ‘artificial intelligence’ came with concerns that robots would one day take over the world. Of course, we now know that this sort of technology is implemented alongside businesses rather than taking jobs away. In particular, there’s been an emphasis on the world of marketing and paid ads. But how exactly are marketers taking advantage of AI technology for their Facebook Ads? How are they using the technology to produce greater converting ads?

To answer this question, we need to break the implementation of AI down into two different sides. On the one hand, we have Facebook and the artificial intelligence and machine learning tools it uses on the ad platform. On the other, we have external tools that businesses are utilizing. Together, AI is removing the inefficiencies that once plagued advertising and is helping marketers to create and manage Facebook ads more effectively.

1. Facebook AI

To start, let’s look at AI available on Facebook since this is something from which we all benefit when using the advertising platform. We know that Facebook delivers tailored ads to perfect audiences, but how does it achieve this?

You didn’t think that Facebook had a team of people manually overlooking the ad auctions and deciding which to deliver, did you? There are two aspects that decide which ads appear at a given moment:

Ad auction

Audience targeting

As advertisers, we choose our target audience and we narrow down the options to reduce the likelihood of ineffectual placements. For example, we don’t want to sell lawnmowers to people with no interest in gardening. Likewise, why waste time advertising children’s services to non-parents? We can narrow down our audience by age, location, gender, interests, behaviors, and other categories. One of the advantages of paying for ads on Facebook is that we can take an email list and build a Lookalike or Custom Audience.

However, this is only half of the equation. Just because you want to serve ads to young females, located in Texas, and with an interest in basketball, this doesn’t mean you will win every single opportunity. Instead, Facebook decides which ads to show based on an auction…and it’s exactly as it sounds. All the ads with the targeting settings suggesting that this would be a good fit go up against each other to win the position.

Normally, Facebook will decide which ads to show to particular people based on their total value score. What does this mean? Well, it’s a formula created by adding together ad quality and advertiser value. Advertiser value is a separate calculation where the estimated action rate is multiplied by the bidding amount. In other words, your ad will appear after a strong bid, a high estimated action rate, and high ad quality. If one of these areas is lacking, you’re likely to lose most bids to the competition.

The Importance of Machine Learning

The reason machine learning is so important is that it informs the equation that decides whether or not your ad will win in the auctions. For example, it’s the perfect way to predict the actions of the recipient. If machine learning suggests that the individual will pay no attention to the ad, it doesn’t make sense to place it and it will receive a low estimated action rate.

At this point, we should note that your campaign objective will play an important role here. If you want to generate website visits, Facebook will decide the likelihood of this occurring for each potential ad position. To estimate an action rate, the model will consider behavior both on Facebook and away from the platform.

Meanwhile, another machine learning model generates a quality score for your ad. If users are hiding your ad, it doesn’t provide much value to your audience and this will affect your chances of appearing in the future. On the other hand, ads generating lots of engagement will have a high ad quality score.

With machine learning, predictions grow stronger over time, and this is why it’s important to the Facebook advertising platform. When business leaders hear the phrase ‘auction’, they think that the highest bid will always win. In reality, we’ve seen that it’s just a small part of the overall formula. You could have the lowest bid and it could still win if the machine learning model predicts lots of engagement and positive responses.

Although we don’t have control over this machine learning model, the actions we take when preparing ad campaigns is pivotal. Therefore, this marks the first way that marketers use AI to create and manage Facebook ads that convert. Deliver a poor ad and it won’t enjoy much success; use the analytics to continually improve your ad and the Facebook machine learning models will work in your favor.

2. External AI

While Facebook AI is implemented by the technology giant, the other side of the coin is AI that we identify and implement ourselves.

AI tools are appearing across the whole paid ads journey:

Ad Creation

The creation of ads has been a complex skill for many years, combining a talented team with extensive market-knowledge, along with solid brand recognition within your target audience and a commensurate budget to fund it all. Now, we have the possibility to outsource a majority of this task to an AI tool. Initially, artificial intelligence was implemented to help track and drive conversions and open rates in early email marketing campaigns. Soon, open rates were soaring thanks to subject lines generated by this technology. The industry knew they had struck gold and grew excited for the potential of AI.

We’re now in a position where several AI tools promise to help businesses with their ad copy; the goal is not only to produce ad copy, but to select content that actually converts. Using previous campaigns, the machine learning model learns what works and what doesn’t. Over time, it gauges performance, makes adjustments, and improves wherever and whenever possible.

Landing Page Content

It’s not just the ad copy receiving AI assistance; we’ve also seen efforts towards content personalization. If artificial intelligence and machine learning can create engaging articles, there’s also the potential for it to create a tailored landing page for individual ad campaigns. Imagine the savings if you didn’t have to spend hours and hours creating a separate landing page for each ad group. Although still in the early stages of development, AI shows great potential for saving time and money while delivering effective and engaging landing page content.

Campaign Management

After the ad is created, it seems a shame to waste time manually reviewing the analytics and making small adjustments. Don’t worry, AI is evolving this area of Facebook ads too. With any one of the third-party AI solution providers linked to your ad account, these services can automate the optimization of targeting, bidding, and even A/B testing. All of a sudden, your ad is always reaching the right people for the right price.

Some of these same third-party AI providers use machine learning and artificial intelligence models to update audience targeting in real-time. Years ago, the problem with evolving markets was the extraordinarily long delay between when a change occurred and when that change was acted upon. Now, AI tools take this pressure from our shoulders. If the AI sees a shift in the market, it reacts and adjusts to keep a consistent conversion rate.

Meanwhile, users can also set bidding parameters and AI will work within these to find optimum performance. If you bid too low, a core area of the aforementioned formula is off, and competitors are in a better position to win auctions. If you bid too high, you might get placements but spend too much on achieving them. As long as you define these parameters and when to scale, the AI service provider has models that will ensure optimal bidding at all times (and with no manual/human intervention).

Additionally, AI will manage your budget on a broader level. Let’s say that one ad is performing incredibly well and the other not so much, the technology will adjust the budget sent to each. Within minutes, more of your budget goes to the performing ads and you utilize your marketing budget better than ever before.

And finally, do you advertise on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Quora, Reddit, and Snapchat? If so, the same effective AI models will manage your campaigns across all these different platforms (just be sure to check with your AI solution provider first).

Conclusion

How do marketers use AI to create and manage Facebook ads that convert? They optimize ads for the AI used by Facebook, and then introduce third-party AI tools to help with the creation and management stages. We said that people were once worried that AI would cause people to lose jobs, but if we’ve learned anything recently it’s that AI is much more likely to make life easier for marketers and businesses alike. If you can use AI in the ways mentioned today, you may just generate ads that engage and convert for years to come.

Thinking about using a third-party AI solution to optimize your ad campaigns? Check out How to Manage Facebook Ads Using AI to get tips and to find an AI solution right for you.

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