AI and Digital Ad Buying: What Marketers Need to Know
Blog Response to: "AI Will Soon Dominate Ad Buying, Whether Marketers Like It or Not" (WSJ)
Read the original article on WSJ →
Let’s talk about control. Or more specifically, the illusion of it.
According to a recent Wall Street Journal article, “AI Will Soon Dominate Ad Buying, Whether Marketers Like It or Not,” tools like Meta’s Advantage+ and Google’s Performance Max are flipping the script on how digital ads are bought.
These tools aren’t just helping with ad placements—they’re basically doing the whole job. You plug in your creative, your goals, your budget... and the platform figures out the rest. Which ad goes where, who sees it, when it runs, how much it bids—all of it.
So yeah, that old-school media buying job—the one where you spent hours adjusting bids, segmenting audiences, testing 20 versions of one headline? That role’s being reimagined. Fast.
And honestly, it’s a lot to take in. Marketers like to have a dashboard. We like knowing we’re in control. But these platforms are saying, nah, we got it. And not always with a full explanation of how. That’s where the discomfort comes in. Not because AI is replacing us—but because it's replacing a certain kind of marketing muscle we've spent years building. The tactical, in-the-weeds stuff.
But here’s the truth: the real magic we bring to the table? It was never in the bid strategy or the segmentation spreadsheets. It’s in how we tell stories. How we understand people. How we spot shifts in culture before they hit the trend reports.
If AI is driving, our job is to design the route. That means staying curious about how these tools work—not scared of them. It means treating data models like part of the creative team.
We’re not being pushed out. We’re being pushed up.
So if you’re feeling behind, don’t panic—just start here:
• Learn the basics of AI in programmatic advertising
• Ask your media buyers how Performance Max has shifted their workflow
• Think inputs, not outputs. The machine can’t create magic from a bad brief or sloppy assets
This isn’t the end of the marketer. It’s just the end of doing things the old way.