Meta made big headlines last week by revealing some of its road map around AI ads. An extension of what it’s already doing throughout the ad campaign lifecycle, there are even greater levels of automation on the horizon – everything from ad creative to budgeting to campaign management.
This is all logical and could be predicted by triangulating Meta’s AI moves to date. There’s also alignment between ad campaign workflows and the things that AI is good at. For example, generative AI continues to improve its capacity for on-demand imagery, while ad targeting/placement is more science than art.
“Meta’s move toward fully automated campaigns is a logical evolution of AI-driven marketing,” said Evocalize CEO Matthew Marx, whom we recently tapped for his social media marketing expertise.” For those who didn’t see it coming, I’m not sure where they’ve been.”
So the question isn’t if, but what. What will this move – and the broader directions it signals in the advertising world – mean? The answer depends on where you sit. It has different implications for the buy side (advertisers), sell side (publishers), and those in between (agencies, networks & adtech).
Doomsday Event
Starting with advertisers – and sticking with our bread & butter SMB segment – Meta’s moves towards automation have clear upside. Marx points out, for example, that it will help resource-constrained teams – a defining factor for SMBs – lower barriers to entry and do more with less time and resources.
But there are also limitations. Whatever Meta does to automate workflows will only apply to Meta. So SMBs that have a broader marketing mix – which is most – will still require a unification layer of some sort. And that brings us to the value often provided by agencies, ad tech players, and SMB Saas.
“I’m not sure a single channel alone can fully optimize business outcomes,” said Marx. “Customers interact across many different platforms. If you lose visibility once they leave your channel, you miss critical signals, and that’s before even broaching the subject of regulatory compliance.”
That last part is an issue in several high-value verticals like healthcare, finance, and real estate. This is one place where vertically-adept agencies and adtech players can add value that offsets any potential disintermediation that Meta – or any one platform/network – can inflict through automated campaigns.
“The fear that this shift represents a ‘doomsday event’ for agencies and adtech is overstated,” said Marx. “It’s actually a reshuffling. Agencies and platforms embracing AI as a new superpower – to codify expertise and deploy it more intelligently – will thrive. Those resisting it will fall behind or die altogether.”
Elevate or Eviscerate
That last part is a version of the sometimes controversial but often true idiom these days: “AI won’t steal your job/revenue/clients… but someone adept at using AI will.” We’ll see this play out in the advertising and marketing world, where the game will be at least partially won or lost on AI-savvy and execution.
“It’s not AI versus marketers; it’s marketers empowered by AI-driven, multi-channel visibility and collaboration,” Marx added. “The winners will be those who blend human judgment, regulatory guardrails, and real-time AI, enabling smarter collaboration tailored to specific business goals.”
That brings us back to the regulatory point. It’s one place Evocalize is using AI as a tool. AI often works best where it can elevate rather than eviscerate your value proposition. It can also elevate the “unification layer” noted earlier in software players that work with various combinations of ad platforms.
“At Evocalize, we see this clearly in industries like mortgage and real estate,” said Marx. “Leveraging signals across multiple platforms – Meta, Google, TikTok, Amazon, websites, CRM, POS systems, inventory data, and beyond – is essential. AI shines brightest when synthesizing cross-channel insights to streamline customization, ensure compliance, and optimize performance at scale.”
All the above is one answer to the dilemma faced by many players in terms of leaning into AI to get elevated rather than eviscerated. The coming months and years will see companies fall on either side of that sharp divide. So we’ll keep gathering executional insights from the players navigating those waters.
Header image credit: Bagzhan Sadvakassov on Unsplash
