Meta announced a broad suite of AI-powered advertising tools at Advertising Week 2026 in New York on October 6. The updates span creative generation, campaign management, and direct commerce across its platforms.
The company expanded its AI business assistant with enhanced memory and context capabilities. The tool now accesses historical campaign data, including past performance, seasonality patterns, and previously stated goals. Advertisers can also import brand voice guidelines and strategy documents directly into the assistant. Additionally, Meta is testing scheduled tasks that allow the assistant to deliver recurring performance reports and alerts automatically.
On the creative side, Meta made its Advantage+ Creative video generation tool generally available. The feature converts static image assets into video ads. Meanwhile, the Ads Creative Studio now offers broader access after an initial rollout to select partners earlier in 2026. The studio lets advertisers generate video concepts with editing controls for hooks, audio, length, text overlays, captions, and end scenes. Advertisers can also generate video directly from product catalog listings.
Meta also introduced a customer lifecycle strategy tool, now available to all advertisers. The feature enables targeted audience selection per campaign with AI-aligned recommendations for reaching users at different stages.
In commerce, Meta revealed direct checkout capabilities through its Business Agent on Messenger. The company partnered with Shopify to enable in-stream purchasing without leaving the conversation. Meta is also testing direct checkout for Meta AI with payment partners Adyen, PayPal, Shopify, and Stripe. This allows users to complete purchases within the chat interface itself.
For developers and agencies, Meta expanded its Ads MCP server. The server now supports third-party AI tool integration for campaign management, which means external platforms can connect directly to Meta’s advertising infrastructure.
These announcements build on Meta’s broader AI advertising push throughout 2026. The company launched its Ads Creative Studio earlier this year and introduced a Business AI agent for small and medium businesses that learns from existing social posts and ad campaigns. Video now accounts for 60% of user time on both Facebook and Instagram, according to Meta’s own data, which explains the heavy focus on AI video generation tools.
