#9: AI-Driven Ads: When Everything Is Perfect, Who Cares?

 

This week, Meta announced its plan to roll out 100% AI-Driven Advertising by 2026. This entails everything from AI-generated images, video content, and ad copy, to AI-powered audience personalization, to automated bid strategy. Peter and Grace discuss potential issues with an all-AI approach to digital ads, including the paradox that in a landscape of “perfected” (aka fully AI-optimized) content, brands will need to strive for original advertising and marketing strategies. Listen to the full episode for a deep dive into the benefits and challenges of these upcoming changes, and opportunities you can take advantage of today to enhance your ad performance. 

Chapters: 

00:00 – Intro & welcome

01:36 – Meta’s AI-Generated Ad Campaigns (2026 Preview)

02:43 – The Problem with “Perfect” Content

05:11 – AI Can’t Iterate from Nothing

06:06 – Will This Actually Help SMBs?

08:06 – Accessible Ways to Enhance Campaigns Right Now

09:56 – Human Creativity Still Wins

11:46 – Update: OpenA’s AI Device Plans

12:12 – Wrapping Up: What to Watch, What to Do

Sources: 

“Facebook and Instagram owner Meta to enable AI ad creation by end of next year” by Mark Sweney for The Guardian

“OpenAI Aims to Offer AI Access Through ‘Ambient Computer Layer,’ Without Screens” by PYMNTS

 

 

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Peter (00:06)music playing

(00:01):
Grace (00:11)Welcome to Accelerated Velocity, the podcast that helps you move faster, smarter, and more strategically in the rapidly evolving world of AI. We'll break down the latest AI news and innovations and explore how they impact your marketing, sales, and business growth. We'll dive into practical use cases, unpack new tools, and cut through the noise so you and your team can adapt with confidence. I'm Grace Mathews Director of Content at Inbound AV.
a business development agency and HubSpot Solutions partner dedicated to driving sustainable business growth. Each week, I'll be here with Peter Malek, our CEO and founder. Join us as we make sense of what's changing and what to do about it. Hello and welcome to Accelerated Velocity. This is Grace. I'm here with Peter. And today we're going to be covering Meta's upcoming plans with AI-driven ad content.
Peter (01:08)So ⁓ Grace, would say that the subtitle of this is, When Everything is Perfect, Who Cares?
Grace (01:15)I think that's
a great way of putting it, let's dig into that a little bit. And I'll backtrack for just a second to give an overview of what kind of sparked this discussion, which is Meta's recent announcement to launch AI-driven ad campaigns by 2026. Now, obviously there's already a degree of automation involved in Meta ads and pretty much any digital ads that you're going to be running, but this would be a more extensive approach.
to AI ad content from a company or a brand putting in a concept and Meta basically creating the assets, the images, the videos, the personalization to various audiences, all the way down to breaking down budget. And so Peter, you kind of mentioned this idea of how that could potentially cause some problems. Do you want to expand on that a little bit?
Peter (02:10)Sure. you know, the premise is that Metta is going to create all of this content, even do the video and so forth through AI and essentially saying, everybody is going to be able to have a perfect ad campaign. so, you know, extrapolating that to that actually happening when everything's perfect, who's going to pay attention to it? There's going to be a new perfect. And can that AI adapt in what would basically have to be real time to that new perfect?
And I would be very doubtful of that, at least in the short term. And so, you know, an analogy to me is that you'll have like a subject line that today is getting 25 % more open rate than another subject line. Somebody came up with something clever, it's been shared, people are using it, and that lasts about six minutes. I mean, essentially after a few days or a week, week and a half, that subject line
Everybody knows that everybody's sick of it and it's going to do the exact opposite that it was doing like 10 days before. And I think that's, that's the same thing with different approaches within an email. know that like, you know, I've gotten the outreach. It's like, Hey, Peter, my CEO, John suggested I reached out to you because, because whatever. And, ⁓ the first time I got that was like, ⁓ that's interesting. And then the second time I got it.
That's so interesting. And the 15th time I got it, man, a lot of people have CEOs named John who want to reach out to me. This is really amazing. And so I think it's the same sort of dynamic is whatever is going to be clever is going to be clever for a limited amount of time in this ADD world we live in. And so I would be skeptical if this is all they say it's going to be.
Grace (04:03)I agree with you and I would add to that, that when it comes to content ideation with AI, most LLMs that people are engaging with today are very good at identifying trends in content marketing and advertising and helping marketers and advertisers decide how to kind of gain a competitive edge within whatever sphere they're working in. But AI is not very good at identifying what hasn't.
been done before, which is what really makes you come out ahead of the competition.
Peter (04:39)No, I double down on that and it's not only is it not very good, it just doesn't do it because it hasn't been done before and AI has to learn from somewhere and if it hasn't been done, they're not gonna learn it.
Grace (04:53)From Meta's perspective, Meta's COO says that this move will hopefully level the playing field for small businesses and medium sized businesses who right now might be struggling to compete a little bit more with advertising space on a smaller budget. I have some doubts about that based on this discussion that we've been having as well as common obstacles that SMBs are already facing on the Meta platform that I don't...
personally see being solved with AI enhancements. Do you have any thoughts on that, Peter? Yeah.
Peter (05:29)⁓ I think it's possible that it could be helpful to some subset of small businesses. Again, I just am skeptical of even if it is how long it's going to last. That's not to say you shouldn't try it. If you have a small ad budget and you want to try it when it comes out, who knows, you might get lucky. But I think in general, I think that, well, I was going to say they're not looking at the big picture. They absolutely are looking at the big picture, but I think they're looking at the big picture more from how much revenue.
is this really exciting, exciting new platform that we've developed. And there could be a lot of revenue before people really figure out that it may, but it may not be all that good. I think, unfortunately, or fortunately, depending upon how you look at it, a lot of new features that a huge multinational, one of the largest companies in the world, like Metta, are offering are not
driven ⁓ by results for the customer as they are for results for Metta.
Grace (06:34)It's
a bit of a double edged sword because on one hand, especially for SMBs, this level of automation can cut down on a lot of logistics and tedious steps of ad creation for Facebook and Instagram. But at the same time, as you mentioned before, there are issues with the quality and competitiveness of those ads potentially, but also Meta's control over making data-driven decisions about ad campaigns, as you say.
Metta is going to be doing what's in their personal interest to continue to generate ad revenue. So I would probably hypothesize that while some level of AI-driven intelligence for your ads is going to be helpful, it might be a little bit different relying on that within Metta versus relying on some third-party analytics platform.

(00:22):
Peter (07:26)Yeah, I mean, I think that brings up a really interesting point. And that is you can use different LLMs. And for instance, Notebook LM, the Google product, is a perfect example. You upload a bunch of documents, and then it's going to draw information from those documents. It's not going to go out and use an algorithm outside. It's going to, as far as gaining information, it's using the information that you feed it. So I would.
guess that to find a video creation platform, and there are more and more really good ones, and training it on your business and the particular quirks of not only the general vertical you're in, but also your business is going to be much more effective than any sort of generic AI ad creation platform. And that's totally accessible to the smallest business.
Grace (08:20)Absolutely. And I'm just going to butt in there and give a little bit of a lo-fi marketing or advertising tip via Notebook LM. There's a great feature where you can put in a bunch of different URLs into one chat. I think it's like 10 URLs. So you could take the URLs of your top competitors, social media pages or home pages of their website and have Notebook LM.
analyze common connections there. And while it might not be able to tell you this is what these brands aren't doing that you should be doing, having that all laid out in front of you can be a helpful way of kind of making those decisions for your own brand.
Peter (08:59)Yeah, I think that's a great example.
Grace (09:01)So
to build on that, I would just say that those who stand out with creative, human centered ads will still have an edge, especially as audiences start to tire of, you know, some sort of AI blended sameness in ad content. And that's something we'll probably see becoming more of an issue to tackle come 2026 when Meta unveils these features. But at the same time, it's something to start.
thinking about and implementing now. How can you leverage the AI tools that are accessible and affordable to us today to enhance your ad campaigns, to enhance your inbound content marketing campaigns? It's not something we have to wait for for another year.
Peter (09:44)Now
I totally hear you. And I have to say, I mean, what was it maybe three months ago that we were talking about news that came out about, you know, AI is getting dumber because it's training on AI. And that was the big headline and it makes sense. But at the same time, we haven't been hearing that lately. And is that really a thing right now? It may be. It may be. I mean, we've talked about AI hallucinations on this show a couple of weeks ago. And, but at the same time, ⁓
There are just uncharted waters. It's uncharted waters and we have no idea of all the repercussions of different things that we're trying that the AIs are building, companies are building. you know, we can take our best guess and we might be right, but I think nobody really knows where this is going. And that's, well, I was going to say it's a good thing and a bad thing. And I guess I will say, yeah, that's a good thing. And it's also a bad thing.
Grace (10:40)That is a perfect segue to quickly revisit some information that we brought up last week for background. Johnny Ive, the original designer of the iPhone and of the Apple Watch, has a startup that works on AI devices, which has recently been acquired by OpenAI. Last week, there were whispers of what sort of project might be in the works between the two companies. This week, we got a little bit more of a sneak peek.
We're hearing that OpenAI's goal is to kind of work on an AI that is quote, human-centric and also not based on screen time or not centralized around a screen. So what that means is still a little bit up in the air. It's not a ton to go off of, but I felt that was an interesting update in the development of devices and how they might impact us in the future.
Peter (11:33)Yeah, I'm excited to see whatever it is.
Grace (11:36)Yeah. And I think if, things do develop as they're claiming they will develop, it will be pretty unprecedented, which is something that will also impact the world of marketing for sure. So something to, like I said, keep tabs on, but also remain skeptical.
Peter (11:52)And I can say, as I think about this, I am sick of this thing. I just am, you know, and like, if it were replaced with something else that is very useful and maybe it's not quite as addictive. think that'd be an amazing thing.
Grace (12:08)When you say this thing, do you mean your smartphone?
Peter (12:11)I mean my smartphone, yeah.
Grace (12:12)Well, ⁓ I think we've covered a lot of really major developments in marketing and in advertising. Even though a lot of those concepts are continuing to develop, we can kind of take action on them right now. We are coming up on time for this episode.
Peter (12:35)I think we've covered some interesting stuff. We always welcome your comments. We obviously would appreciate a good review if this wasn't the worst podcast you ever have heard. To quote my podcast idol, Jay Schwedelson, and we'll see you
Grace (12:51)time. Yeah, and don't forget to check out the show notes for links to our newsletter subscription and our website. Thanks for listening. See you next week.