Leveraging AI to Enhance Digital Ad Efforts
It goes without saying that today’s digital landscape is competitive, making it harder for small and mid-sized businesses to keep up. This is especially true when it comes to producing high-quality visuals and video assets that drive high-performing ad campaigns. The digital world moves at a fast pace, and while that certainly makes things tough, it also has its advantages. AI can be a strategic tool that helps SMBs maintain pace with the competition. Chances are you have been encountering some form of AI in your everyday life. Here is how we are utilizing this toolset to enhance paid search and social performance for our clients without adding to their workload.
AI-Generated Image + Video Assets
Many of our clients come to us with strong products or services, but they lack the creative resources to produce polished media for Google Ads or Meta campaigns. Instead of allowing that to limit their performance, we integrate AI-driven image and video generation tools utilizing the assets that they do have into our strategies.
Using these tools, we can:
Generate branded product images from a standard photo
Create lifestyle image shots from product shots
Create short-form video ads optimized for mobile (which is ideal for YouTube, Meta, and the Display Network)
Elevate or repurpose existing assets to meet platform ad specs
While we have probably all seen badly generated AI photos, AI is continuing to evolve, and we always ensure quality before utilizing an asset. This approach enables us to launch a campaign sooner if a photoshoot is not possible in the short-term. We always encourage our clients to produce or source original assets, but sometimes that isn’t possible.
Campaign Optimization with Built-In Tools
As with almost all areas of our online lives, platforms like Google + Meta have implemented AI tools to enhance the user-experience for both businesses and consumers. With any new technology, it is not perfect, but there are some key areas that these platforms have improved the ad buying experience that we have adopted.
Smarter Bidding Strategies
AI-driven bid strategies (i.e., Lowest Cost, Target CPA, Maximize Conversions, etc.) adjust in real-time based on conversion likelihood and context (time of day, location, device, etc.) This allows the campaign to go through countless bid adjustments that would not be sustainable without the assistance of AI.
*A note on Google’s Performance Max Campaigns. PMax campaigns are another huge leap in how AI is improving paid ads, automatically optimizing across all of Google’s channels (Search, Display, YouTube, Gmail, and Maps). This campaign type can be very beneficial, but your ad spend budget needs to be larger to help unlock the full potential of this campaign type. It takes longer to gather enough conversion signals to work like a well-oiled machine and the CTRs are generally lower on these campaigns because of the enormous reach, which can be discouraging in the short-term. We do utilize and recommend these campaigns, but they need to be assessed differently than traditional search campaigns.
Better Audience Targeting
On both platforms, AI is enhancing audience targeting in multiple ways. AI can analyze user-behavior to determine which users are more likely to convert and finds other users like them (Lookalike Audiences). These platforms can also update targeting in real-time as users’ interests shift. All of these updates minimize the need to manually provide retargeting lists.
Creative Optimization
With Google Ads, multiple headlines and description combinations are tested to determine the best performer, and AI can easily generate a list of keyword-driven headlines and descriptions for you. We use this as a starting point but always recommend reviewing to ensure the message makes sense and is true to your business. On the display side, assets are automatically updated to adjust format, size, and messaging to fit placements. This eliminates the need for multiple files.
Meta’s system will also automatically test different ad formats, visuals, and copy to determine which combination will perform best for your campaign. In the campaign build process, Meta features Advantage+ creative text generation to help come up with different copy variations to test out, reducing the need to drain creative juices.
Automated Recommendations + Insights
Both platforms have a degree of recommendations that can be automatically or manually applied. We typically review these manually, but if you choose to go the automatic route, we highly recommend frequently checking in on the campaign to ensure it is still aligned with your business (sometimes the recommendations are a little “off”). Separate from recommendations are automated insights. Some of the most helpful insights include flagging shifts in performance (positive or negative), creative fatigue, and audience saturation. This analysis comes quicker via machine-learning and can save your budget.
More Time for Analysis + Strategy
As alluded to above, in the old days of paid digital ads, we would spend hours tweaking bids, managing keyword lists, and segmenting audiences. Now we can focus more on big-picture strategy, messaging, offers, positioning, and campaign structure. It needs to be said that AI suggestions still need a level of oversight, but a lot of the tedious work that is necessary for these campaigns can be offloaded to these tools. With this extra time, we can shift quicker, and test out different aspects of the campaign that still require the human-touch:
CTAs
Hook lines
Visual Assets (supported by AI or not!)
Offers
Landing Page Improvements
We can also spend more time analyzing performance of each variable and tying this into the greater marketing strategy.
TL;DR
Paid advertising has come a long way, and there are a multitude of resources available that help improve the strength of your ad campaigns. These resources free up time to look at the bigger picture, but it is still important to have human oversight on these campaigns and not blindly accept everything that is suggested. We believe in allowing AI to handle the grunt work so that we can focus on the strategy. If you would like help getting your paid ads off the ground, feel free to reach out!
