Can distributors learn something valuable from Facebook?

At its parent company’s second-quarter 2022 earnings call, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said:

“There are two major technological waves we’re riding in our business. The first wave driving our business today is AI. The second longer-term wave is the emergence of the metaverse.”

No, you’re not looking to create an avatar in the metaverse. But you can ride the AI wave.

Facebook, now Meta, started using AI in 2013. Since then, Meta’s become a leader in AI development. They built AI solutions for disaster relief, faster MRI scans and identifying harmful content on Facebook and Instagram. With the help of AI, Meta reaches 3.6 billion people across its services.

And they give them a personalized experience.

AI Makes Personalized Experiences Possible

Without AI, Meta wouldn’t be able to give users a personalized experience. It sorts through 4 petabytes of data daily to glean what content and ads should show on each user’s feed.

Serve Recommended Content to Users

Meta’s AI recommends about 15% of all content on Facebook and Instagram feeds. This content is from people, groups and accounts that users don’t follow – but are likely to appreciate. Meta expects these numbers to more than double by the end of next year. AI is also responsible for boosting Instagram Reels engagement. Reels – entertaining, immersive and educational videos – now account for roughly 20% of the time spent on Instagram.

Deliver Personalized Ads

Advantage+, Meta’s advanced AI and automation suite for advertisers, helps businesses optimize, personalize, and save time and money on ad campaigns. Meta is also using AI to prevent discrimination in ad delivery based on race, gender, zip code and other characteristics.

Provide Age-Appropriate Experiences to Users

Knowing a user’s age is essential to providing the best possible user experience on Facebook and Instagram. Meta identifies a user’s age by using AI. It can block features to increase safety for non-adult users.

Detect Hate Speech and Manipulated Images

In 2020, 97% of hate speech taken down on Facebook was detected by AI, up from just 24% in 2017. In 2021, Meta invited participants from around the world to join the Image Similarity Challenge. The challenge’s goal was to train models to predict similarities between two pieces of visual content. This collaboration created a solution to detect manipulated images.

Increase Charitable Giving

Meta uses AI to detect when content on its platform asks for a charitable donation. It assigns a button to the post, allowing users to donate to the cause. Since introducing the feature, Meta has helped people raise over $1 billion in donations.

What Distributors Can Do Today

You can also use this same kind of AI personalization to tailor each customer’s buying experience.

Personalization at scale

Distributors can adopt AI solutions for product recommendations and notify customers it’s time to reorder. AI also helps provide an omnichannel shopping experience. The more you tailor your shopping experience to your customers’ needs, the longer they spend shopping on your website. Consider adding an AI-powered recommendation engine to your eCommerce website to personalize your buyers’ shopping experience.

Add a high-profit channel to their business model

Using AI, personalized ads on your website would appeal to manufacturers just as Meta’s advertising helps other businesses get in front of a relevant audience. Even better: Selling ad space to manufacturers has high profit margins.

Optimize product data

The AI model Meta uses to detect modified images and hate speech could benefit distributors, who are regularly managing a lot of data. With AI’s help, distributors can make navigating their product catalogs and websites easier for reps and customers.

Although distributors have different use cases for AI, the AI model training is the same. For example, when establishing age, Meta uses an evaluation dataset they test. That data then becomes more accurate over time. The same AI models can help distributors generate better product recommendations over time.

Digital leaders use AI to drive their businesses forward. Join them today.