Meta used Advertising Week New York on October 6 to announce a new set of AI tools for advertisers, from a smarter business assistant to video made from still images. Some are live today. Many are still in testing. For brand and growth teams, the job is knowing which is which.
What happened
In a post on its Meta for Business site, Meta set out updates across creative, targeting and checkout. MediaPost reported on the presentation the next day.
Live now, according to Meta:
- Generative AI video from static images in Advantage+ creative is "now generally available".
- Customer Lifecycle Strategy, which recommends excluding existing customers from acquisition campaigns, is available to all advertisers.
- Catalog advertisers can turn product images into product videos, in beta.
- Ads Creative Studio, which analyses creative performance and audience data, is rolling out to more advertisers after tests over the summer. MediaPost reports it also lets teams build versions of a video by changing hooks, audio, clip length, text overlays, captions or end scenes.
In testing or coming soon:
- Meta's AI business assistant in Ads Manager gains creative insights and deeper memory of an account's history. Meta is testing agentic features that let advertisers plan and create campaigns, and change targeting or budgets, by conversation. Scheduled tasks and alerts, such as weekly summaries, are also in testing.
- AI-enabled audience discovery, where advertisers describe their ideal customer and Ads Manager suggests audiences, is due by the end of the year.
- Direct checkout is in testing in the Meta Business Agent on Messenger with Shopify. Tests of checkout inside Meta AI, with Adyen, PayPal, Shopify and Stripe, begin this fall.
Meta also said its Ads MCP server now supports more workflows, with ten partners named, including Databricks, Perplexity and Snowflake.
Why it matters
Meta is moving more of the campaign job, from creative to targeting, into its own AI. The pitch is performance. Meta says advertisers who adopt the assistant's recommendations "are typically seeing 5% more conversions at the same cost per conversion." As the agency Relevant Audience pointed out in its review, Meta did not publish the method behind that figure.
The creative tools may matter most. Meta says more than 60% of the time people spend on Facebook and Instagram is with video. If static images can become video ads at scale, the brands that win will be the ones whose source assets are strong, on-brand and ready to be remixed.
What this means for brand and growth leaders
Treat this as a planning moment, not a switch to flip.
Start with what is live. Test Advantage+ video made from your best static images against your current video ads. Turn on Customer Lifecycle Strategy for acquisition campaigns, so you stop paying to reach people who already buy from you.
Feed the system good inputs. AI variations are only as good as the assets and brand rules behind them. Clear brand guidelines, strong hero visuals and well-briefed hooks matter more now, not less. This is where AI-first production fits, such as ADFLU's AI social media marketing and virtual ad shoots: more on-brand creative, made faster, for the platforms to test.
Keep humans on the budget. Agentic budget and targeting changes are still in testing. Before they arrive, decide your approval rules and spending limits.
Measure for yourself. Run controlled tests and judge the 5% claim against your own numbers, not the headline.
"More than 60% of the time people spend on Facebook and Instagram is with video." Meta for Business
The bottom line
Meta's AI is moving from helper to operator. The live tools are worth testing this quarter. The agentic ones are worth preparing for, with clear guardrails, before they leave testing.
