Meta has announced new tools that can help drive growth and incremental performance gains for e-commerce and retail businesses. As growth for e-commerce as an industry gets fueled in India on the back of Quick Commerce and the rise of online shopping in tier-2 and tier-3 towns, these new ad tools and features could further turbocharge growth for businesses in the sector.
Among the tools being launched is omnichannel ads, which allow advertisers to show ads that highlight nearby locations to people most likely to shop in-store. Meta is expanding access to omnichannel ads to more advertisers, adding the ability to guide people to the nearest store with products in stock, and surfacing discounts that can make it even more enticing for shoppers to visit a store. Initial testing showed that advertisers that used omnichannel ads had a 15% lower media omnichannel CPA and a 12% higher media ROAS when compared to their business as usual campaigns.
Meta recently held Meta Marketing Summit E-Commerce Edition to throw light on the emerging trends in the e-commerce space in India. The summit was attended by leading marketers across Mumbai and Bangalore.
Said Meghna Apparao, Director of Ecommerce and Retail vertical for Meta in India, “E-commerce and retail is witnessing a material shift in India driven by more offline retail brands reaching customers online, quick commerce continuing to grow rapidly, and online shopping in tier-2 and tier-3 markets continuing to accelerate. While AI-powered personalization and discovery, Reels and creators, and messaging have already unlocked immense value for the e-commerce and retail brands, Meta’s continued thrust on innovative ad tools for the sector is going to prove pivotal for its growth, enabling brands to create impactful shopping experiences and deliver on business outcomes that matter most to them.”
Retail brands with offline store presence that deploy omnichannel strategies are likely to gain most from omnichannel ads. For instance, apparel brand Taneira has leveraged Omnichannel Optimization ads and seen strong business outcomes.
Said Aishwarya Omprakash, Head of Marketing, Taneira, "In our pilot campaign utilizing Meta’s omnichannel ads, we observed a significant boost in performance, achieving 3.5x higher purchase conversions and 4.3x higher Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) compared to campaigns optimized solely for purchases. This encouraging outcome reinforces the value of a multi-touchpoint strategy, and we’re excited to take this experiment further in the coming year."
Harnessing the power of AI, in the coming months, Meta will also allow advertisers to use Partnership ads and AI-powered Advantage+ catalog ads together.
Partnership ads harness the power of creators by allowing advertisers to run ads with creators, brands and other businesses. India is home to the largest community of Instagram creators in the world and more than 4,000 advertisers in India already use Partnership Ads.
Ecommerce brands across categories have already unlocked growth for themselves on the back of Partnership Ads.
Said Pawrush Elavia, Head of Growth at Zepto, “We used the authentic voice of creators to highlight our 10-minute delivery USP for which we leveraged Partnership Ads. The experiment resulted in an 18% lower CAC and a 33% higher CTR when combining Partnership Ads with BAU strategies compared to BAU alone.”
Meta is also introducing a new optimization that allows its ads system to show additional products from the catalog when promoting a preferred product set with the AI-powered Advantage+ catalog ads. With this feature a fashion brand, for instance, could choose to highlight jackets from their spring collection and give the system the option to serve a dress that a shopper might also be interested in. In initial tests, advertisers saw a 14% increase in ROAS when using this optimization on average.
Continuing the momentum on AI, Meta is also introducing new Generative AI powered features for ecommerce brands effectively. This half Meta will continue to explore new features including using Gen AI to place clothing on virtual models. By giving customers a better sense of how an item might look and fit, it could help shoppers confidently make a purchase and advertisers create more compelling experiences. Today advertisers can use background generation in Catalog ads and the company is experimenting with more personalized outputs for text generation. This will help advertisers better merchandise their products on Meta platforms and create ad copy that resonates with customers.
Generative AI is already being used by ecommerce companies in India. Quick Commerce giant Big Basket is an early adopter of Meta’s Generative AI ad features.
Said Anand Bhaskaran, Head of Digital Marketing and Marketing Communications at Big Basket, "We are committed to staying ahead of the curve when it comes to testing new marketing approaches. That's why we were eager to test GenAI-powered catalog ads. The results were great and we are confident this technology will continue to drive efficiency for our business.”
Big Basket leveraged a three-cell test for catalog ads, measuring Background Generation, Image Expansion versus BAU cells. They saw a 2.7% better click-through-rate (CTR) than BAU cell and 3.4% lower cost per install (CPI) than BAU cell.
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