Wait a minute… That’s not what I’m Selling | Meta AI Generated Ads
Meta has recently launched a new tool for its Advantage+ Creative (aka AI) feature. A feature, by the way, that is automatically turned *on* by default on Meta ads accounts and campaigns. That’s right, Meta decided it would be a good idea to automatically start using its AI features on your ads without you opting-in.
To opt-out, well, you’d have to know it was turned on in the first place. Many advertisers were (understandably) confused when they saw ads for their business or product with wildly off-brand copy + even false information. Who wrote this horrible text? Who added this picture of a completely different product? Yep, Meta AI did.
Now, this isn’t even touching on the AI generated probe scam ads being used to target seniors on Facebook. Off of which, Meta is making tons of money from. While those are being created with malicious intent, the ads we’re talking about today are meant to be real ads for real products + services.
Meta recently started using information it found at the ad’s website url to “automatically enhance your ads.” As we know from one of our previous blogs on AI, it hallucinates at an alarmingly high frequency. The results here are no different. Marketers are getting emails and calls from distressed clients noticing incorrect copy, links, and images for what’s *supposed to be* being promoted. I’m sure this does sometimes (rarely) turn out okay, but more often than not, it just leads to false information + AI slop.
This is beyond frustrating, not only for marketing agencies who were left looking incompetent to their clients when the ads were shown before they turned the feature off, but also for the client businesses + Meta users.
Imagine you see an ad for a product + you’re interested enough to click the link, but you end up on a page totally unrelated to the product the ad was for. Yeah, that’s annoying + now you don’t even care about the product + are never going to click on another ad for it if it comes up again. Your consumer trust is broken.
That trust isn’t an easy thing to win back + the tall order of earning it back falls on the marketing companies + advertisers who were screwed over by the feature in the first place. We’re working to make the relationship between marketer + customer less predatory, more mutually beneficial, but features like these aren’t helping our cause. Why would you want to pay for an ad that would actually harm your brand’s reputation + lose you potential business? Talk about a lose-lose situation.
This feature is exactly the opposite of what good marketing should be + a huge reminder to advertisers that they need to keep an eye on their campaigns. In a world increasingly filled with AI slop, we remain dedicated to keeping creativity + marketing real + human.
We like knowing that we can be confident in our advertising because we wrote the words, took + choose the pictures, and added the links ourselves. Suddenly taking that certainty away is a crazy decision on Meta’s part. Mark lost our trust a while ago, but this is certainly another nail in the coffin.
If you’re like us + oppose the AI takeover occurring on Meta, Google, and the whole digital world in general, drop us a line. We’d love to grab a coffee + chat with you about how this is the end of the world as we know it + other joyful, lighthearted topics. If you’re interested in learning more about our services or specific ethical marketing program, recreative good, you can find more information on our website.
