Meta to Let AI Create Ads by 2026: Report
Meta is doubling down on artificial intelligence to revolutionise digital advertising, with plans to enable brands to develop entire advertising campaigns from scratch using AI by the end of next year, according to a report by The Wall Street Journal (WSJ). Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, is reportedly developing tools that would allow brands to input a product image and a budget goal. After that, AI would generate everything from visuals and videos to ad copy. The AI would also decide which users to target and suggest budget allocations, the WSJ reported, citing people familiar with the matter. This is a step beyond Meta’s existing AI-powered ad tools, which can currently generate minor variations of pre-existing ads. Now, the company aims to automate the creative process entirely, tailoring content to user-specific factors like geolocation. For instance, a user in a snowy region may see a car ad set in mountainous terrain, while someone in a city might see the same car navigating urban streets. CEO Mark Zuckerberg emphasised this vision during the company’s annual shareholder meeting, describing it as “a redefinition of the category of advertising”. On a podcast appearance, he said Meta ultimately aims to let businesses simply specify their marketing goal, budget per result and bank account, leaving the rest to AI. Advertising accounts for over 97% of Meta’s revenue, and the company is channelling those profits into AI infrastructure, including chips, data centres and advanced model training. The initiative is expected to be especially benefit small and medium-sized businesses, which form the bulk of Meta’s advertisers and often lack the resources for full-scale ad production. Nevertheless, some concerns include Meta’s increasing control over campaign strategy and creative direction and whether AI-generated ads can match the polish of those made by human teams. Many AI tools across the industry still struggle with distorted or low-quality visuals, requiring manual refinement. The broader industry is also moving in this direction. Google recently launched an upgraded version of its video-generation tool, Veo, which is capable of producing short films from text prompts. Meanwhile, third-party platforms like Midjourney and OpenAI’s DALL·E are already being used by brands to create visuals across digital platforms, including Meta’s own. Meta is also exploring ways to integrate such third-party tools into its ad ecosystem, further consolidating its role in the future of AI-powered advertising.
The AI would also decide which users to target and suggest budget allocations, the WSJ reported.
The AI would also decide which users to target and suggest budget allocations, the WSJ reported.
["Ads", "Meta"]
["Go", "Meta", "artificial intelligence", "OpenAI", "AI", "programming_languages:R", "programming_languages:Go", "Git", "Aim", "R", "Ads"]
["AI", "artificial intelligence", "OpenAI", "Aim", "R", "Go", "Git", "programming_languages:R", "programming_languages:Go"]
Merin Susan John is a journalist at Analytics India Magazine, reporting on the intersection of AI and human capital. She can be reached  at merin.john@aimmediahouse.com