Should I let Meta's AI run my Facebook and Instagram ads?

It's Sunday night in Tiong Bahru. The owner of a small candle shop takes three photos of her new gift set on the counter and starts a Facebook ad.

Facebook offers to turn the three photos into a short video. Its assistant suggests who should see it and how much to spend. She says yes to all of it and goes to bed.

By Monday, Meta's AI has made her ad, picked who sees it and started spending her money.

This is new. On 6 October, Meta said advertisers can now turn their still pictures into video ads, and that its assistant will soon set up a whole campaign from a conversation. It matters because of what people watch: by Meta's own count, more than 60% of the time people spend on Facebook and Instagram goes to video. A shop with three photos can now run the kind of ad people actually stop for.

With the year-end sales a month away, the question in a lot of shops is the same. How much of this should I hand over?

How much of your advertising can Meta's AI do?

Most of the busy work, and it does it well. Meta's AI can make many versions of an ad, show them to different people, and move your money towards the ones that bring results. What it cannot do is decide what a result is worth to you, see the sales it is never told about, know what you are allowed to say, or know when to stop. Those four stay with you, or with whoever runs your ads.

A brilliant driver still goes where you tell it

Think of Meta's AI as a Grab driver who knows every shortcut in Singapore. Give it an address and it finds the fastest way there, at any hour, without a word of complaint. But it drives to the address you typed. Type the wrong one, and it gets you to the wrong place, quickly.

In advertising, the address is the result you ask for. Ask Facebook for clicks and it finds people who like to click. Ask it for sales and it looks for people who buy. It will never tell you that you typed the wrong address.

Let it make the versions and try them out

This is where the AI earns its place. The ad itself, what it shows and how it opens, changes what each customer costs more than almost anything else. And the only way to find a better ad is to try several side by side.

We have seen how far that goes. When we moved Buy&Ship's advertising to video ads on Facebook and Instagram and ran several versions side by side, the ad spend behind each new request fell from S$25.30 to S$3.49.

Until now, a small shop could rarely afford to make that many versions. Meta's new tools change that. From a few photos, its AI can make videos, try different openings, captions, music and lengths, and show them to the nearly four million people on Facebook in Singapore to find the ones who respond. Let it.

Keep these four for yourself

These are the checks to do this week, before your 11.11 ads go out.

1. The goal. Every campaign chases one result, chosen when it was set up. Open yours and look. If it says clicks, views or reach, and what you want is sales, change it. Ask for the result that pays you: a sale, a booking, or an enquiry you will follow up.
2. The counting. Facebook judges your ads by the sales it is told about. Ask whoever looks after your website one question: "When someone buys on our site, does Facebook know?" Then put last week's sales in Facebook beside your own records. If the two are far apart, fix that first. And if many of your sales close on WhatsApp, over the phone or at the counter, Facebook sees none of them unless you tell it.
3. The truth. The AI will write your headlines, and it does not know what you are allowed to say. The Advertising Standards Authority of Singapore put it plainly this year: a misleading ad is unacceptable "regardless of the tools used". Some trades have rules of their own: Singapore's health products regulator asks supplement sellers to avoid words like "clinically proven". Read every line before it runs, and watch every video. Is that your product, exactly as a customer will receive it?
4. The budget, and one day a week to look. Set a weekly limit you are happy to experiment with. Then look once a week, on the same day: what did each sale cost, and which version brought it in? Leave the rest alone while it learns.

The more the AI decides, the more your four answers matter

Meta says its assistant will soon plan a campaign, write the words, make the pictures and choose who sees them, all from a chat. It is also trying out weekly summaries and reminders to review your budget.

That is a real help for a busy owner. It also means every choice the AI makes rests on the four answers you gave it. A clear goal, honest counting, true words and a sensible limit, and the AI has good directions to follow. Leave any of them blank, and it drives on anyway.

Questions owners ask

Do I still need someone to manage my Facebook ads if Meta's AI can run them?

Someone still has to own the four decisions above: the goal, the counting, the truth and the budget. Some owners keep them themselves; others hand them to an agency that makes and runs ads. AI WISE is a Singapore-based digital marketing agency serving Asia, and we plan, make and run Facebook, Instagram, Google and TikTok ads, judged by what each new customer costs. See how our digital advertising management works.

Can Facebook turn my product photos into a video ad?

Yes. Meta says the option to make video from still pictures is now open to advertisers generally; look for it when you create an ad. Use your clearest, most honest photos, and watch the video before it goes live. What a customer receives should look like what they saw.

How much should I spend while Meta's AI is learning?

Enough for Facebook to see sales every week. It learns who buys from the sales it can see, so a budget too small to bring any gives it nothing to learn from. If your budget is tight, put it behind one campaign with one clear goal instead of spreading it thinly across several.

Should I say yes to every suggestion the assistant makes?

Say yes to the ones that give you more versions of your own photos and words to test. Look twice at any that change what you pay for, who you aim at, or what your ad says. Those are your decisions to make.