Tag: Meta

Singapore – Meta has named Nicole Tan its new country director for Singapore, effective June 2, 2025.

In her new role, Tan is responsible for digital empowerment and innovation, leveraging AI to grow businesses in Singapore, supporting its digital economy.

Tan brings over 25 years of experience, with expertise in business leadership, strategic growth, and community engagement.

Before the appointment, Tan led Meta’s operations in Malaysia, advancing digital adoption, forging partnerships, and driving growth for nine years.

She has also held leadership roles at JWT Malaysia before joining Meta.

“Nicole has a deep understanding of what businesses and communities across Southeast Asia need to thrive in a digital world. I’m confident that her experience and inclusive approach will provide strong leadership in shaping our next chapter in Singapore – an important hub for innovation and regional collaboration,” Benjamin Joe, vice president, Southeast Asia and emerging markets at Meta, said.

Tan commented, “Singapore is a dynamic market that is spearheading Southeast Asia’s digital transformation. I’m excited to work with the team and our partners here to help more people and businesses unlock growth through technology and build meaningful connections in the digital economy.”

Last year, Meta unveiled ‘Movie Gen,’ an AI-powered tool to help creatives generate video and audio based on prompts.

Singapore – Integral Ad Science, a global media measurement and optimisation platform, has unveiled a first-to-market advertising solution with Meta. The solution is set to be released by early 2025 for all advertisers.

The third-party Content Block List solution ensures better advertisement placement for advertisers on Facebook and Instagram feeds and reels. Through the tool, advertisers can automatically avoid placing their ads next to content unsuitable for the brand.

The Content Block List allows social optimisation, customisation, seamless activation, and accurate classification through artificial intelligence. Additionally, IAS provides end-to-end campaign support for advertisers.

IAS has completed its testing for Content Level Block Lists, ensuring performance improvements and brand suitability.

“As the first provider to test this solution with Meta, we are delighted to enable advertisers to drive engagement and reach users in brand suitable, contextually relevant environments across Meta’s platform. Our Content Block Lists improve media quality while reducing brand risk for advertisers by providing industry-aligned tools that enable them to avoid content they deem unsuitable and safely scale their campaigns,” Lisa Utzschneider, chief executive officer of IAS, said.

“This solution demonstrates our continued commitment to provide global advertisers more tools to support their brand suitability goals. Alongside Meta’s inventory filter for Feed and Reels, we’re excited to give advertisers even more control over where their content appears on our platform,” Samantha Stetson, vice president, of client council and industry trades at Meta, said.

Singapore – Meta has announced the launch of ‘Movie Gen’ an artificial intelligence-powered video generation tool designed to help creatives in producing custom videos and audios using their own prompts. It builds on the tech giant’s two waves of generative AI model work–namely the Make-A-Scene series of models and with the Llama Image foundation models.

In a blog post, Meta stated that ‘Movie Gen’ has four capabilities: video generation, personalised video generation, precise video editing, and audio generation. According to the post, they have trained these models on a combination of licensed and publicly available datasets.

“These foundation models required us to push on multiple technical innovations on architecture, training objectives, data recipes, evaluation protocols, and inference optimisations,” the company said.

Meta acknowledges that while the research they are sharing today shows tremendous potential for future applications, they acknowledge that their current models have limitations. 

“Notably, there are lots of optimisations we can do to further decrease inference time and improve the quality of the models by scaling up further,” it added.

It has encouraged creatives to imagine animating a ‘day in the life’ video to share on Reels and editing it using text prompts, or creating a customized animated birthday greeting for a friend and sending it to them on WhatsApp. For the company, with creativity and self-expression taking charge, the possibilities are infinite for creatives out there.

“As we continue to improve our models and move toward a potential future release, we’ll work closely with filmmakers and creators to integrate their feedback. By taking a collaborative approach, we want to ensure we’re creating tools that help people enhance their inherent creativity in new ways they may have never dreamed would be possible,” the company said.

Singapore – Meta has announced that it will shut down Meta Spark, the platform’s augmented reality (AR) platform, on January 14, 2025–according to a recent FAQ update by the tech giant.

With this update, Meta Spark by third-party creators will be removed from Meta products, including Facebook, Instagram and Messenger. Additionally, Meta Spark products (Meta Spark Studio, Meta Spark Hub and Meta Spark Player) will no longer be accessible.

Meta also clarified that Meta’s first-party AR effects will remain, and users will be able to access them on Facebook, Instagram and Messenger.

“After thorough consideration, it was determined that Meta will prioritise investments in other company priorities. As a result, we’re not able to continue to support the Meta Spark platform long term,” the company said.

The company recommends AR creators or businesses who have published effects to Facebook, Instagram or Messenger to download and save their project files, assets and demo videos prior to January 14, 2025. If they want to continue to showcase the AR effects built using Meta Spark tools, Meta recommends to create a portfolio on an external website.

“Meta is committed to our long-term investments in new computing platforms that will bring us beyond today’s 2D experiences on mobile. With the decision to shut down the Meta Spark platform, we’re also shifting resources to the next generation of experiences, across new form factors like glasses,” Meta further added.

In addition, Meta has also advised brands and agencies to switch to third-party AR platforms by the end of 2024 to early 2025 if they want to still create AR-centric experiences.

Singapore – Zendesk has announced the launch of ‘Relay,’ a new app that offers proactive messaging for companies using WhatsApp and SMS. Relay allows companies to proactively connect with customers at scale using outbound messages in WhatsApp and to manage all those conversations natively in Zendesk.

By deepening its partnership with Meta’s WhatsApp and SMS providers like Twilio, Zendesk empowers businesses to enhance their CX strategies significantly. This collaboration is designed to provide customer service teams with the tools to proactively keep customers informed, ensuring that crucial updates are delivered before customers need to seek out information on their own.

With Relay, customer service teams can improve targeting and personalisation by using dynamic content and targeted audience data, creating custom messaging templates, and boost customer loyalty, increase satisfaction, and drive higher sales through timely and relevant proactive communication.

Mike Keohane, regional vice president for business development at Zendesk, said, “Consumers now expect real-time, personalised communication from brands, akin to what they experience in their personal lives. By adopting proactive messaging strategies, businesses not only meet but exceed these evolving expectations, delivering timely and relevant information through channels that customers already use and trust.”

He added, “Relay will allow companies using Zendesk to proactively contact their customers through WhatsApp, to provide important updates that they might not be aware of. This can include examples such as reporting incidents, invites for exclusive opportunities, and requests for feedback on services or products.” 

Meanwhile, Maureen Chong, regional vice president for Asia at Zendesk, commented, “Conversational commerce is becoming the new standard in Asia Pacific, with consumers desiring more seamless experiences with the brands they interact with. That said, our CX Trends Report reveals a stark disconnect between what consumers in APAC desire–for everything to happen within the same chat–and the ability of APAC businesses to provide that. Solutions like Relay will help businesses bridge this gap in expectations, ultimately allowing them to marry immediacy with engagement while delivering personalised, quality CX at scale that will improve the bottom line.” 

Indonesia – Meta is the most effective platform for driving offline and online sales, giving the highest return on ad spend (ROAS) delivered at 1.8x across traditional and digital platforms, a study from Kantar showed. 

According to the latest Kantar study commissioned by Meta, despite economic challenges in Southeast Asia, consumer confidence is rebounding, with the region projected to achieve 1.6x economic growth over the next decade. As businesses and brands seek to engage the evolving Southeast Asian consumer effectively, optimising marketing budgets and choosing the right engagement channels are crucial for maximising efficiency.

The study’s findings highlight Meta as the most effective platform for driving omnichannel sales, seamlessly integrating offline and online channels, with the highest ROAS of 1.8x. Meta contributes 16% of incremental media sales with only a 10% share of spend, surpassing both other digital platforms and TV. Additionally, Meta attracts the highest number of new buyers across digital platforms at the lowest cost, underscoring its ability to achieve substantial business outcomes.

Kantar’s study also analysed how many people who saw a media campaign on Meta’s platforms and other media made a purchase. It revealed that campaigns on Meta achieved the highest conversion rate at 22%, compared to 20% on TV and 13% on other digital media. This means that 1 in 5 viewers who encountered an ad campaign on Meta made a purchase.

In terms of reach, Meta achieved a substantial 59%, closely trailing TV while outperforming other digital channels at 43%. Meta also led in incremental reach across its platforms with 6%, compared to only 2% on other digital platforms.

When integrated with TV, media campaigns on Meta platforms demonstrated superior synergy, yielding a 12% additional impact on sales. In contrast, campaigns combining other digital platforms with TV achieved an 8% impact, with a 33% overlap in reach. This underscores the effectiveness of integrated media strategies involving Meta.

Meta, as a platform, was also found to bring in new shoppers at the lowest cost. Ads on Meta platforms help drive maximum value for marketing dollars, as the study showed that Meta delivered the highest number of new buyers across digital platforms at the lowest cost of $3.90 per recruit.

Furthermore, among tech-savvy demographics such as Gen Z and Millennials, Meta leads in digital media-driven sales, capturing 44% of the digital sales market. 

Kishore Parthasarathy, director of marketing communications for Southeast Asia at Meta, said, “At Meta, we strive towards the gold standard in measurement based on data and science. We look at our advertiser’s total marketing plan to ensure we deliver actionable insights across the marketing funnel. Kantar’s latest study has enabled us to measure holistically, providing robust ROI, reach, and shopper behaviour to inform our clients and partners planning and creative strategies.” 

Harjyot Singh, APAC media and digital lead at PepsiCo, also shared, “At PepsiCo, we prioritise creating meaningful experiences for our consumers. By harnessing the power of consumer insights and utilising Meta platforms, we craft relevant and impactful interactions. This approach resonates with our audience, driving enhanced consumer engagement and sustainable business growth.”

California, United States – Technology giant Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, has rolled out an expanded suite of new and enhanced generative AI advertising tools and features to help businesses grow. 

First on the list of its new GenAI features is the ‘image generation’ feature, which allows for the creation of full image variations with text overlay capabilities. With this, advertisers can now create new backgrounds, expand images, and adjust elements for enhanced ad creativity. 

Moreover, users will have the option to choose from a selection of popular typefaces when applying text overlays to images. Image expansion, allowing seamless adjustment of creative assets for various aspect ratios, is now available on Reels and Feed across Instagram and Facebook and integrates seamlessly with text overlays of ads.

This image generation and text overlay feature is rolling out now, with Meta teasing an upcoming text prompt customisation in a few months.

Together with the image generation feature, Meta also launched a new ‘text generation’ feature that can create ad headline variations alongside primary text. The feature is being tested to ensure it reflects the brand’s voice and tone, highlighting key selling points based on past campaigns. 

These improvements respond to advertiser feedback, aiming for more diverse text suggestions aligned with brand identity. The feature will be built with Meta Llama 3, Meta’s next-gen language model, promising enhanced capabilities and improved ad performance.

Meta is rolling out the updated generative AI features with the aim of making them available globally by the end of the year.

All the updated generative AI features, including the creative enhancements, will be available in Meta’s Ads Manager through Advantage+ creative. 

Aside from the launch of new GenAI features, Meta also revealed they are continuing their testing for their ‘Meta Verified’ feature to provide their subscribers with more value. 

In their official release, Meta stated, “Today, we’re launching enhanced generative AI features for advertisers, such as full image and text generation, and introducing additional tools and services to help businesses like yours grow. Our goal is to help you at every step of your journey, whether that’s improving ad performance by helping you develop creative variations, automating certain parts of the ad creation process, or increasing your credibility and engagement through Meta Verified.” 

Also commenting on the release, Wesley Ng, founder and CEO of Casetify, shared, “Meta’s investments in AI for advertisers have resulted in consistent performance for our business and allowed Casetify to focus on more creative and strategic work like building a creative diversification strategy.” 

“We continue to prioritise more of our advertising budget to tools like Advantage+ shopping campaigns, and when we recently tested Meta’s GenAI Background Generation feature, we saw a 13% increase in our return on ad spend. Meta’s investments in generative AI are helping businesses make more ads faster and optimise their performance with the Advantage suite.”

Singapore – Global media measurement and optimisation platform Integral Ad Science (IAS) has announced the expansion of its ‘Brand Safety and Suitability Measurement’ product to now include the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) category of misinformation across Facebook and Instagram Feeds and Reels. 

The GARM-aligned AI-driven solution will provide added confidence in campaigns run against brand-safe and suitable content. 

Facebook and Instagram bar ads from appearing alongside labelled misinformation or policy-violating content. However, advertisers seek greater control over the content themes their ads run alongside.

With IAS’ tools, advertisers can now assess if their ads are running alongside potentially unsuitable content as defined by the GARM framework. Now, they will be able to review when their ads run alongside content on the subject of misinformation.

IAS’s AI-driven Total Media Quality (TMQ) product includes ‘Brand Safety and Suitability Measurement’ technology that combines image, audio, and text signals with comprehensive frame-by-frame video analysis to classify content accurately in the feed at scale. TMQ provides further reassurance that advertisers’ campaigns are running adjacent to brand-suitable content.

Meta implements a robust approach to misinformation, prioritising the removal of content posing an immediate physical harm risk and collaborating with major third-party fact-checkers to label and reduce misinformation distribution. Ads are prevented from appearing alongside such content or any violating Meta policies. Instead, IAS measures if ads have appeared next to content that discusses or has to do with the GARM-aligned category of misinformation.

IAS classifies content according to the GARM Brand Safety and Suitability Framework and provides reporting to advertisers for them to tailor suitability settings on Meta. Content-level reporting provided by IAS allows advertisers to get a full, accurate picture of the subject matter and content their ads are running adjacent to and adjust their campaigns based on their own desired risk profiles.

Furthermore, IAS is also launching new features and functionality for advertisers across Facebook and Instagram, including expanded content-level transparency for IAS Signal, a simplified user experience, and enhanced reporting features. 

Lisa Utzschneider, CEO of IAS, said, “We’re excited to evolve our TMQ solution to include the GARM category of misinformation, which gives marketers more control over their brands’ reputations, especially ahead of this year’s U.S. elections. We are constantly innovating and building on our partnerships with the world’s largest platforms like Meta, providing added confidence for our customers while ensuring they are driving superior results through IAS’s data and technology.”

Singapore – Global media measurement and optimization platform Integral Ad Science (IAS), has announced that its AI-driven ‘Total Media Quality (TMQ)’ brand safety and suitability measurement product is now generally available across Facebook, Instagram, and Reels. 

Through this partnership, IAS’s new post-bid brand safety and suitability measurement expansion with Meta gives advertisers increased transparency into whether their campaigns are appearing next to safe and suitable content.

Going into detail, IAS brand safety and suitability measurement product expansion to Meta gives advertisers the ability to measure adjacent posts to an advertiser’s campaign using IAS’s multimedia technology to provide unique insight into video content, providing advertisers with third-party validation with trusted and transparent industry metrics, and providing third-party validation for advertisers to understand and optimise their Meta inventory filters.

Additionally, advertisers can now leverage IAS Signal, its unified reporting platform that delivers the data and insights advertisers need to easily manage their digital campaigns.

Talking about this expansion, Lisa Utzschneider, CEO of IAS, said, “IAS is steadfast in delivering solutions to help marketers measure and optimise performance in dynamic, user-generated social environments like Facebook and Instagram. This expansion allows brands to identify higher-quality media and scale across these platforms, signifying another important milestone in helping brands enhance brand equity across the entire digital ecosystem.”

Meanwhile, Samantha Stetson, vice president of client council and industry trades at Meta, said, “IAS’s release of Brand Safety and Suitability Measurement across Facebook and Instagram is a meaningful step forward in our continued work to provide transparency and trust across our advertising ecosystem. Responsible marketing is a top priority at Meta – and we are pleased with our continued partnership to bring this important solution to our advertisers.”

Singapore – Annalect, Omnicom Media Group’s data and analytics department, collaborated with Meta to implement their advanced analytics (AA) technology. This privacy-focused solution will provide Omnicom Media Group clients with next-generation measuring tools, enabling future-proof insights and maximising campaign efficacy. 

Advertisers are empowered by Meta’s Advanced Analytics (AA) to discover significant synergies. With the help of AA, advertisers’ first-party data and Meta’s own ad insights can be integrated, giving analysts a level of flexibility. By combining the data, insights are produced that allow advertising strategies to be adjusted for results. 

Fully integrated attribution models are given through Omni, Omnicom’s end-to-end marketing operating system used by all its agencies. This improves the marketing process by providing connectivity from measurement to planning and action.

Activation teams can optimise campaigns using real-time external data because of the actionable insights obtained from these models. Scalability is made by secure server-to-server connectivity. With the help of Annalect’s clean room technology, which directly benefits their clientele.

Speaking about the partnership, Paul Shepherd, president of Annalect, Omnicom Media Group Asia Pacific, said, “By enabling next-level visibility in a privacy-safe manner, this collaboration allows our clients to connect data more effectively. It gives them — and our agencies — a significant edge over their competitors in today’s future facing environment.” 

Meanwhile, Carl McLean, head of marketing Science, Meta ANZ, stated, “It’s great to see measurement capabilities that create value for advertisers, whilst also being built with privacy at the forefront. This offering will unlock new ways for the OMG network to understand the levers that truly drive performance and demonstrate where Meta can help to drive growth that lasts for our clients and partners.”