Right now, businesses of all sizes are looking to get the most out of their ad spend with economic headwinds and an ever-changing advertising landscape. It's why we at Meta have been focused on improving advertiser performance for the over 10 million businesses that use personalized ads on our platforms by growing new experiences and building AI-powered tools.

In image above: Fares Akkad, Regional Director for Middle East and Africa at Meta

We now have more people than ever using our platforms, more than 3.8 billion people use at least one of our family of apps on a monthly basis. And for the first time, more than 3 billion people use at least one of our apps each day. Engagement remains strong, and Facebook has reached a new milestone with 2 billion daily active users. And we’re continuing to invest in newer surfaces like Reels and messaging to provide even more opportunities for businesses to connect with customers. In April 2023, we reported that Reels continues to become more social with people resharing Reels more than 2 billion times every day, doubling over the last six months. All of this demonstrates that Meta's family of apps continues to be the best place for businesses of all sizes to find the right customers and grow.

AI is not a new focus for Meta. We’ve applied AI and machine learning to our ads ranking system to show ads to the right people for many years now. However, over the last couple of years, we've been investing heavily in industry-leading AI to evolve our business tools to help advertisers respond to a digital ads ecosystem with more limited access to data.

We are already seeing our investments pay off with stronger campaign performance, better measurement, and improved reporting for advertisers. In the fourth quarter of 2022, advertisers saw over 20% more conversions than in the year before. Combined with a declining cost per acquisition, this has resulted in higher returns on ad spend.

Another area where AI is having an impact is with the Meta Advantage suite of automated business tools, which is helping advertisers get smarter about every minute and dollar they spend with Meta. We’re particularly excited by Advantage+ shopping campaigns, which launched in August. Advantage+ allows advertisers to optimize their shopping campaigns: once the parameters like business objective, target country, advertising creative, and budget are set, the AI systems will work to find the right person, with the right message, at the right time. Recent tests have found that advertisers who use Advantage+ shopping campaigns are seeing a 32% increase in return on ad spend.

For example, the Middle East lifestyle retailer, Azadea reduced its cost per conversion by 52% after combining Meta Advantage+ shopping campaigns with its usual ads on Facebook.

Another AI-driven feature we recently launched is Advantage+ creative standard enhancements. It uses AI to help advertisers automatically apply small enhancements – like adjusting brightness, aspect ratios, and text placement – to improve the performance of creative. In a recent test, we found ads that used standard enhancements delivered 14% more incremental purchases per dollar spent.

Our AI investments are helping businesses adapt to the evolving advertising landscape and improve their campaign performance. We serve over 200 million businesses large and small that rely on us to help them connect with their customers and grow. It's why we'll continue to invest in AI and automation so that businesses of all sizes can continue to get the best return on their investment with Meta.