Meta’s AI ad tools are here, but do you really want to hand over the keys to your brand?

Marketers are pacing. Creatives are bombastically side-eyeing.

And Meta is promising that you can hand over your entire paid media workflow to AI: targeting, copywriting, design, testing. All neatly wrapped in a nice little bow for you. Easy, right?

Hmmm… not quite.

Yes, Meta’s AI-powered Advantage+ tools offer a glimpse of what automated advertising could look like. But right now, these tools are less “fully-formed saviour” and more “overly confident intern.”

Helpful in the right context, yes. But you wouldn’t put them in charge of your most important client pitch. So why hand them your brand?

What Meta’s actually offering:

Meta has been rolling out a suite of AI-powered ad tools under its Advantage+ umbrella, aimed at taking the guesswork out of performance marketing. Here’s what’s on the menu:

• Advantage+ shopping campaigns: Feed Meta your catalogue, a few creative assets, and it automatically tests combinations across audiences and placements to find what performs.

• AI text suggestions: Meta writes your ad copy, headlines, and CTAs based on your product info and past performance.

• Image & video variations: Upload a few creative assets, and the system crops, resizes, or embellishes them to fit different placements.

• Automated targeting: Audience targeting is handled through lookalikes and interest modelling. Just set your goals, and Meta handles the rest.

• Budget optimisation & reporting: AI distributes your spend toward what’s working and generates performance breakdowns.

On paper, this sounds freaking great. Less time fiddling with ad sets. More time scaling what works. But this “hands-off” approach comes with a cost.

Automation is not strategy.

Meta’s pitch is seductive: more efficiency, less grunt work, better ROI. But here’s the catch--they’re selling you a black box. You plug in a few assets, let it rip, and pray for good results.

But what happens when:

• The AI generates copy that sounds like it was written by a bored chatbot in 2018 (or worse, says something…untoward)?

• The image variations turn your polished campaign into an uncanny valley mess?

• You have no idea why something worked (or didn’t), because the system made 300 micro-decisions you can’t see?

You didn’t save time. You lost insight. This isn’t automation. It’s abdication.

Let the bots do the grunt work, not the brand work.

AI can absolutely make marketers’ lives easier. Use it to:

• Refine targeting

• Optimise budgets

• Test variations at scale

• Flag underperforming creative faster than you could manually

But the creative? The storytelling? The insight that makes a person stop scrolling and feel something? That’s still human territory.

AI can remix what’s already been done. It can’t create what’s next. It doesn’t understand cultural nuance, subtext, or humour that isn’t painfully on-the-nose. It doesn’t know when a joke’s going to backfire or a word choice is going to feel tone-deaf. And it definitely doesn’t understand your brand voice.

So, while Meta may offer AI-generated headlines like “Get it before it’s gone!” or “This deal won’t last!”—you already know they’re indistinguishable from spam. Your audience does too.

You’re a marketer, not a guinea pig.

This tech is still in its training phase. That means when you hand over your brand assets, audience data, and ad dollars, you’re not simply running a campaign. You’re helping Meta improve its system. And you’re paying them to do it.

Meanwhile, your ads go live with AI-generated creative you didn’t write, aimed at an audience you didn’t choose, attached to results you can’t explain.

Sound like a smart investment?

Creativity is still your competitive edge.

There IS good news. As everyone else leans harder into automation, creativity becomes a bigger differentiator. Because when all ads start to feel the same--same layout, same tone, same AI-generated stock images--the ones with a clear point of view will pop.

Now is the time to double down on what makes your brand human:

• Voice

• Relevance

• Cultural fluency

• Emotional intelligence

• Actual insight

Use Meta’s tools, but don’t let them use you. Treat AI as a sidekick… not the creative director.

AI might be able to run your ads, but it can’t build your brand.

Not yet. Maybe not ever. So, test the tools, sure. Take what’s useful. But don’t hand over the strategy, the story, or the soul of your marketing.

Let the bots do the math. Let the humans make the meaning.

-Sophie Randell, Writer