Meta AI advertising bombshell puts agencies on alert

Meta is on a collision course with the agency sector following reports that the company has hatched a plan to enable brands to fully create and target their own advertising using AI by the end of next year.

While Meta’s ad platform already offers some tools that can generate variations of existing ads and other minor amends, it cannot currently create new advertising concepts from scratch.

In 2024, Meta and its platforms – including Facebook and Instagram – generated over $165bn in advertising revenue, representing 99% of the tech giant’s annual turnover; the remaining 1% came from its augmented reality division, Reality Labs.

Naturally, if it could deal with brands directly, Meta could turn this huge revenue stream into much sought-after advertising profit, too.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg reportedly flagged up the scheme during the company’s annual shareholder meeting last week.

He said: “In the not-too-distant future, we want to get to a world where any business will be able to just tell us what objective they’re trying to achieve, like selling something or getting a new customer, how much they’re willing to pay for each result, and connect their bank account and then we just do the rest for them.”

And, according to insiders who have spoken to The Wall Street Journal, “the not-too-distant future” could be as early as 2026.

In a recent podcast Zuckerberg called the coming tools a “redefinition of the category of advertising”.