Meta plans full AI automation for ads by 2026—here’s what agencies think

Meta plans to fully automate ad creation and targeting using AI by 2026, allowing brands to handle their advertising without human intervention. While creative agency executives aren’t surprised by the announcement, the move could intensify competition for client retention and new business acquisition as automation continues reshaping the advertising landscape.

What you should know: Meta’s AI automation strategy aligns with broader industry trends as major platforms race to integrate artificial intelligence into advertising tools.

• The social media giant joins Google, Snap, TikTok, and Pinterest in developing AI-driven ad products over the past two years.
• Last year, Meta introduced AI ad tools that generate variations of images, headlines, and other text content.
• The fully automated system is expected to launch by next year, giving marketers complete creative control through AI.

Why this matters: The automation threatens traditional agency revenue streams while potentially making advertising more accessible to smaller businesses that couldn’t previously afford professional services.

• AI promises to handle “grunt work” like copywriting, content creation, ad variations, and optimization—tasks that have historically served as training grounds for junior creatives.
• Economic pressures and tightening marketing budgets make AI’s efficiency particularly attractive to brands of all sizes.
• Agencies must now find new ways to demonstrate value beyond production tasks that AI can automate.

What creative executives are saying: Industry leaders acknowledge the shift while emphasizing AI’s current limitations and the continued need for human oversight.

• “It’s not new,” said Rachael Datz, executive director of social at VML, a creative agency.
• “If you look historically, with all the platforms, they’ve been chipping away at various direct brand marketers’ tools, services that have eroded a lot of creative and media agencies’ power,” explained Jeff Bowerman, executive creative director at DEPT, a creative agency.
• “It really just supercharges what we’re already making,” noted Nicole Stetter, head of creative at Saylor creative agency.

The agency response: Creative shops are repositioning themselves as strategic partners rather than production houses, focusing on high-level storytelling and brand strategy.

• Agencies are developing their own AI-powered tools to compete directly with platform offerings.
• Many position themselves as gatekeepers between AI tools and brand marketers, emphasizing strategic oversight that automation cannot replicate.
• The industry views AI as the latest in a series of challenges they’ve adapted to, including brands in-housing creative work and the shift to short-form video content.

Key concerns: Marketers remain cautious about fully embracing AI automation due to quality control and intellectual property risks.

• The risk of “AI slop”—low-quality content generated without human oversight—could reduce brand differentiation.
• Clients worry about putting intellectual property and advertising budgets into AI systems they don’t fully understand or control.
• “That is what you get when you have a machine generalizing and outputting stuff from a machine. It becomes ad slop,” said Matt Powell, CEO of Moroch, a full-service independent agency.

The bigger picture: Meta’s announcement represents another step in the ongoing transformation of creative work, forcing agencies to evolve their value propositions as AI handles increasingly sophisticated tasks.

• While AI may not immediately replace human creativity, it’s reshaping job roles and industry expectations.
• Agencies are betting that strategic thinking and storytelling will remain uniquely human capabilities that AI cannot replicate effectively.
• “We are always advising our clients and should be positioning ourselves as the first person to turn to when these things happen,” Datz emphasized.