Meta’s One-Stop AI Ad Shop: Reality or Hype?

Meta's plug-and-play AI-powered ad engine could roll out as soon as 2026. We probed the plan for gaps. Spoiler alert: we found some.

AuthorAuthor

Dan Moran & Sam Makalou
June 13, 2025

Welcome back to Funnel Vision, the weekly newsletter that puts performance creative & growth marketing in focus. Brought to you by the crew at Ready Set.

Pop quiz: Is Andromeda a gigantic spiral galaxy, a mythological Greek princess chained to a rock, or a core pillar of Meta’s ad engine? If you answered all three, you are correct!

Here’s what’s inside today’s edition:

  • Meta’s vision for the future of advertising

  • What it really means for performance marketers

  • Lessons from a high-performing ad that keeps it simple

Reading time: 6 minutes

Meta’s One-Stop AI Ad Shop: Reality or Hype?

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has once again sent the performance marketing world into a tailspin.

In a recent Stratechery interview, Zuckerberg laid out his bold vision for the future of advertising, revealing Meta is building a fully automated, AI-run ad engine that could roll out as early as 2026.

According to Zuckerberg, this engine reduces human involvement to two things: 

  1. Tell Meta your objective

  2. Plug in your credit card

Everything else—targeting, creative, measurement, optimization—Meta will handle autonomously.

Here’s the quote from the interview that’s raised eyebrows:

Mark Zuckerberg: But there’s still the creative piece, which is basically businesses come to us and they have a sense of what their message is or what their video is or their image, and that’s pretty hard to produce and I think we’re pretty close.

And the more they produce, the better. Because then, you can test it, see what works. Well, what if you could just produce an infinite number?

Zuckerberg: Yeah, or we just make it for them. I mean, obviously, it’ll always be the case that they can come with a suggestion or here’s the creative that they want, especially if they really want to dial it in. But in general, we’re going to get to a point where you’re a business, you come to us, you tell us what your objective is, you connect to your bank account, you don’t need any creative, you don’t need any targeting demographic, you don’t need any measurement, except to be able to read the results that we spit out. I think that’s going to be huge, I think it is a redefinition of the category of advertising.

Source: Stratechery

Media coverage spans the spectrum from alarmist to pragmatic:

  • According to The Verge, Zuckerberg has “declared war on the entire advertising industry” and plans to “eliminate the entire advertising ecosystem”.

Yet skepticism swirls, especially among big-brand advertisers, around control, compliance, and trust.

To help find the signal in the noise, we caught up with two performance marketing veterans—Ready Set’s own CEO, Sam Makalou, and director of media buying, Nacho Manchi—to ask them…

What does this really mean for performance marketers?

This is Mark Zuckerberg acting as a visionary. He’s talking about the very long term—a destination that may never be attained, but still represents the direction he wants to take Meta.

I love the ambition. But there are three massive unresolved challenges preventing large advertisers adopting a 100% AI solution.

  1. Risk. Relinquishing control to the algorithm opens the door to costly brand and compliance missteps. One off-brand ad might ding a ten-person candle shop, but it can be catastrophic for giants like DoorDash. The risk of mistakes with AI-made ads will never be non-zero. Even even as the tech improves, it could just be a simple matter of taste—someone might just not like the output.

  1. Volume. A small advertiser can scan a handful of AI ads before shipping. But a major brand may need to vet hundreds a week. You’d need to hire people (or agencies) to triage output and fix mistakes. The promised efficiency disappears.

  1. Perception. Authenticity is everything. AI-generated ads will be the next late-night informercials—they’ll make you look cheap. Audiences read production quality as a signal of stability; running a Super Bowl ad isn’t just about reach, it’s a financial flex that signals “we’re secure enough to afford this”.

For all those reasons, I just don't see it happening. What AI will change is the agency landscape. There will be fewer shops.

AI will be an exceptional fast follower—it will spot and replicate trends and what’s working at a superhuman pace. If the value you bring as an agency is centered on execution over creation, AI will wipe you out.

Agencies that invent new concepts and trends, the source code AI learns from, have a bright future.

Bottom line: It’s a bold vision, and a boon to smaller advertisers who can’t afford a creative shop. But humans will stay in the loop—just fewer of us, doing the creative work AI can’t imagine yet.

Here’s Nacho

Ready Set’s Director of Media Buying & Creative Insights:

Zuck’s vision brilliantly positions Meta as an AI company. But it’s more PR than reality. I don’t see it happening. Not even long-term. Here’s why…

First, while there’s been great improvements in automation and machine learning for targeting and campaign optimization, that’s on the back end of the engine. You still need people reading results. Allocating budget across campaigns (and all other marketing channels) is a strategic human decision.

Frankly, the “just plug in your credit card and and we’ll do the rest” feels like a slap in the face to all the great advertisers who have spent millions developing multi-touch attribution and media-mix models. All of us know that no platform, Meta included, has attribution and measurement in place to show realistic results in terms of return on spend.

Then there’s the creative testing portion. I’m bullish on this. But even though AI and automation will definitely accelerate creative volume and diversity, automation ≠ strategy. There’s still strategic decisions tied to specific business objectives and narratives that go beyond tactical decisions on a single channel like Meta.

Don’t get me wrong. Meta is one of the greatest advertising channels we’ve ever seen. These innovations will be truly game-changing for SMB advertisers with limited resources. But I don’t see any major advertisers handing their entire strategy to Meta’s AI systems.

Eric Suefert gave the keynote at last week’s Meta Performance Marketing Summit. This quote stood out to me:

“Focus on AI improving process efficiency and quality rather than replacing authentic creative output. AI should enhance agility in content creation while preserving genuine brand voice and creator authenticity.”

If every advertiser relies on AI, every ad will look the same. Not a single brand would stand out.

I’m definitely not against it. There have been a ton of improvements in machine learning and AI automation. It will help processes, but I don’t think it will overtake the entire thing.

What do you think?

Is this an opportunity or existential threat—for creative strategists, media buyers, and agencies alike?

Vote below! Results will be revealed in the next Funnel Vision.

Zuckerberg's vision of a one-stop AI ad shop is

Login or Subscribe to participate in polls.

FROM OUR SPONSOR

📉 Ad forecaster WPP cut ad revenue growth expectations to 6%, down from it’s previous 7.7% prediction in December, citing trade disruptions and economic uncertainty.

🏀 This “unhinged” fully AI-generated cost $2,000 to make—and it aired during the NBA finals.

🤔 Will AI be the “death of creativity” in the ad industry? This deep dive from The Guardian investigates.

🍎 Live translation, liquid glass, AI-powered call screening—here are all the top product announcements from Apple’s WWDC.

🔎 TikTok announced a suite of new ad tools at its recent World event including a nifty funnel-level segmentation analytic tool, Market Scope.

💰️ Meta reportedly in talks to invest up to $10B in AI startup, Scale AI, further expanding their artifical intelligence infrastructure.

😂 Pepsi trolls Coke (again) with a parody of their biggest rival’s iconic “Share a Coke” campaign.

This ad from Spongellé, a beauty & luxury DTC brand and makers of the first ever shower buffers infused with body wash.

Brand: Spongellé
Platform: Facebook & Instagram

WHY IT WORKS 🧠

🛁 It’s a mini-spa in minutes. A quick shower becomes self-care, giving stressed viewers an effortless daily escape.

🙋‍♀️ It feels like real life. A 4-way split screen of diverse, everyday people lets the audience easily picture themselves enjoying the product.

🗣️ It speaks plainly. Clear, hype-free copy and a warm voice-over build trust while explaining exactly what the buffer does.

The lesson? Don’t be afraid to keep it simple.

Thanks for reading!

That’s all for this week. Seeya next time 🫶 

What do you think of Funnel Vision?

Login or Subscribe to participate in polls.

Dan Moran & Sam Makalou

Psst... wanna earn $1k?

Know someone looking for efficiency, flexibility, and scale with performance creative and media buying? Refer brands in your network and earn $1,000.