'Meta's AI advertising platform': Personalisation and targeting takes centre stage

Meta owner, Mark Zuckerberg (owner of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp), is focusing on AI advertising. The company is reportedly working on an artificial intelligence-based advertising platform that will allow advertisers to more easily personalise adverts and target them to a specific audience. The Wall Street Journal first reported this.

According to sources within the company, Meta wants advertisers to soon work exclusively through AI-driven advertising. The AI tool can independently create adverts – including image, video and text – and display these to specific target groups, for example, users in a particular region (this is called geotracking in computer science). Through these tools, Meta users would see different versions of the same advert, fully adapted to their personal online behaviour. To further develop the technology, the company is investing between 64 and 72 billion dollars in AI infrastructure, according to The Guardian, based on a financial forecast.

Meta wants 'level playing field' for businesses

Well-known fashion companies are increasingly using AI for their campaigns. Brands such as H&M, Desigual and Mango are actively experimenting with AI advertising. Stradivarius even launched a collection that was entirely designed and presented using AI, including virtual models.

Meta’s chief marketing officer, Alex Schultz, emphasised in a LinkedIn post that Meta's AI tools offer opportunities for smaller companies that cannot engage marketing agencies for financial reasons: “We believe in the future of (traditional) agencies, but AI creates a level playing field.”

Ai advertising and societal impact: Do algorithms reinforce inequalities?

While tech and fashion companies are enthusiastic about the possibilities of AI in advertising, the use of automation raises questions in the academic world. Several scholars in digitalisation (Mariëtte van Huijstee, Ilyaz Nasrullah, Wouter Nieuwenhuizen) emphasise that algorithms – such as Meta's – are not neutral. It is also often unclear how these systems make decisions, for example, who makes these decisions and whether their biases influence what content is shown to whom. There is a “black box” effect, where users and companies do not know exactly how the content is created or distributed.

American researcher, Ruha Benjamin, a professor at Princeton University, argues in her book Race After Technology that algorithms – consciously or unconsciously – can reinforce existing inequalities. For example, people in deprived neighbourhoods are more often shown adverts for cheap products or fewer career opportunities, while people in affluent neighbourhoods receive adverts for luxury goods or education. In this way, existing social and economic differences can be unintentionally reinforced.