American technology giant Meta, known for the platforms Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, plans to completely hand over by the end of 2026 artificial intelligence creating and placing advertisements. Future advertisers will insert only basic data - product photo, target group and desired budget - while the rest of the work will be done by VI: from designing visuals and making videos, to writing advertising texts and proposing optimal spending. In this way, as reported by the "Wall Street Journal", Meta intends to make advertising faster, simpler and - fully automated.
According to available information, experimental versions of this system are already being tested with selected advertisers, and Meta is investing significant resources in the development of internal VI models capable of real-time analysis of market trends, user behavior and campaign performance. The company believes that this approach will not only increase the effectiveness of advertising, but also give smaller businesses access to sophisticated tools that were previously reserved only for big brands.
In addition, Mark Zuckerberg's company is heavily developing the next level of advertising - hyperpersonalization. In practice, this means that each user will see a different version of the same ad – tailored to their location, interests and online behaviour. With as many as 3,43 billion monthly unique users on its platforms, Meta has an almost inexhaustible source of data to "feed" its VI models. Those models are already generating variations of ads on the fly - adjusting colors, changing backgrounds, assembling personalized video clips, and all this in order to make the ad seem like it was made just for the specific user.
Considering that advertising accounted for more than 97 percent of Meta's total revenue in 2024, it's clear that automating that segment is a key strategic goal. The announced innovations based on artificial intelligence could further increase the revenues of this giant, which already exceed 160 billion dollars annually. In the first quarter of this year alone, Meta generated revenue of $42,32 billion, exceeding Wall Street's expectations. "We've had a strong start to this important year, and our community continues to grow," Zuckerberg said. "We are making good progress in the development of AI glasses and Meta AI, which now has almost a billion active users per month," boasted the CEO of this giant, predicting that this year will be a "breakthrough" for the industry.
However, the future of advertising automation is not just a technological breakthrough – but a watershed moment that could reshape the very essence of the marketing industry. The creative process of designing a campaign, as we know it today, includes several stages that combine theoretical knowledge and practical guidelines of modern marketing. From briefings, brainstorming, market research and seeking insight, through strategy development and formulation of the so-called big ideas, all the way to mentoring, concept development, division of roles in the creative team, testing and final production - every step today depends on human expertise, experience and creative intuition.
Artificial intelligence already takes many of those steps, and in Meta's new worldview, brands will be offered the opportunity to get a ready-made, personalized advertising campaign with a few clicks – quickly, scalable and without the involvement of a creative team. But this efficiency comes at a serious price: the boundaries of authenticity will be erased, brand consistency will be undermined, and content will lose its originality and become generic, uniform and stylistically predictable.
In such a scenario, people will move from the role of creators to the position of supervisors and users of ready-made VI solutions, while the traditional concepts of creative teams and marketing agencies will lose their purpose. The demand for copywriters, designers, analysts and strategists will decrease, especially in small and medium-sized companies, which will prefer to use cheaper and faster automated alternatives. And brands themselves will lose some control over their communication tone and identity, as YOU will generate content that will not always align with the company's long-term strategy or values.
If this trend continues to develop without proper ethical and strategic regulation, marketing could lose everything that makes it the art of communication, and the entire industry could be reduced to an algorithmic machine in which there will no longer be room for intuition, vision and human creativity - the fundamental values that have always distinguished between advertisements that are remembered and those that pass unnoticed through media or digital feed.
After information about the planned introduction of Meta's artificial intelligence into the advertising ecosystem appeared, the stock markets reacted immediately, and investors quickly began to sell off the shares of some of the world's largest marketing companies: the value of the shares of the British multinational WPP, whose portfolio includes Ogilvy, AKQA, Gray and other agencies, fell by three percent, while the French companies Publicis Group and Havas recorded a drop of 3,9 and three percent, respectively.
Despite the dark clouds hanging over the "classic" advertising industry, Meta officials believe otherwise: "We believe in the future of agencies," said Alex Schultz, director of marketing and vice president of analytics in a recent post on LinkedIn. "We believe that artificial intelligence will allow agencies and advertisers to focus valuable time and resources on what is really important - creativity. Although in the future marketing will be increasingly automated, the role of agencies will become more significant thanks to the ability to plan, execute and measure campaigns on different platforms," said Schultz.
And his boss, Mark Zuckerberg, pointed out that Meta aims to build a unique VI platform - one of a kind one-stop shop for advertisers - where companies will be able to set goals, set budgets and let the platform itself manage logistics.
That artificial intelligence is the key technology of our time is also confirmed by the report of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), which predicts the growth of the global AI market from 189 billion dollars in 2023 to 4,8 trillion by 2033 - which represents a growth of 25 times in just one decade. AI is already significantly changing industries, and could threaten 40 percent of existing jobs, while at the same time it could improve 27 percent of all jobs, increasing productivity and complementing people's skills.
The rapid progress of artificial intelligence further deepens global divisions as it is concentrated in the hands of only a few large economies and companies. Governance of this technology remains fragmented, with only the G7 members actively involved in all key global initiatives to regulate and oversee the development of VI, according to the UN report.
The widespread use of artificial intelligence also brings numerous environmental challenges. Most VI servers are located in data centers that use large amounts of electricity and water, generate electronic waste, and contain toxic substances such as mercury and lead. A report by the International Energy Agency (IEA) warns that electricity consumption by data centers around the world will more than double by 2030, reaching around 945 terawatt-hours – surpassing Japan's current consumption. Also, building and cooling data centers requires large amounts of water, and estimates show that global water consumption for artificial intelligence will reach between 2027 and 4,2 billion cubic meters by 6,6, which exceeds the total annual water consumption of Denmark.
But Meta wasted no time here either: it signed a 20-year nuclear power purchase agreement to power its AI ambitions.
