Meta plans to roll out full AI-powered ad creation tools by the end of 2025, allowing businesses to generate complete ads using just product images and budgets. The move could disrupt traditional ad agencies while empowering small businesses with limited resources. In a move that shocked the conventional marketing sector, the owner of Facebook and Instagram has agreed to assist advertisers in completely developing and targeting campaigns with artificial intelligence capabilities by the end of next year. The advertising and media companies that manage client campaigns and budgets face competition from Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta, which also owns WhatsApp, which seeks to directly target clients’ marketing spending. Brands using Meta’s advertising platform will be able to make ads using a product image and a budgeted marketing spend, thanks to the AI techniques that are currently being developed, as first reported by the Wall Street Journal. Some AI technologies are currently available on Meta’s platform, enabling advertisers to modify current ads before they show up on Facebook and Instagram. The new technologies, however, have the potential to disintermediate the conventional functions of agencies in creating, planning, and purchasing advertising. They may also make it possible for a large number of advertisers with modest budgets who are unable to pay marketing services firms. Following a client’s budget, the AI tools would produce the full advertisement, including the text, images, and video, and target users with it. An advertisement for a vacation firm, for instance, might be customised to provide bargains that are directly connected to users’ likely destinations of interest by using targeting techniques like geolocation. As word broke on Monday about Meta’s planned AI rollout, which may greatly increase the $160 billion (£118 billion) the firm already makes from advertising each year, investors swiftly sold up some of the biggest marketing services in the world. WPP’s stock fell 3% in early trading, while Publicis Groupe and Havas, both French companies, had declines of 3.9% and 3%, respectively. The creation of new tools has been described as “a redefinition of the category of advertising” by Zuckerberg, who is primarily focused on advancing AI-powered advertising. With plans to invest between $64 billion and $72 billion in capital expenditures, including the cost of establishing AI infrastructure, Meta revised its spending projection for the upcoming year in April 2025. Initially, the business stated that it anticipated spending up to $65 billion in 2025. According to Meta, increasing its AI capabilities for companies is not an attempt to displace established agencies. In a recent LinkedIn post, Alex Schultz, Meta’s chief marketing officer and vice-president of analytics, stated, “We believe in the future of agencies.” We think AI will free up valuable time and resources for advertising and agencies to concentrate on what matters—creativity. Although we believe that marketing will eventually become more automated, agencies will continue to play a crucial role because of their capacity to plan, carry out, and evaluate across channels. Schultz did, however, add that AI tools would help “level the playing field” for small and medium-sized enterprises that lack the resources or time to hire agencies. “Our platform is essential to the growth of millions of small businesses,” he stated. “AI can help level the playing field for these businesses that can’t work with an agency or don’t have time in their hectic days to think about their creative or targeting.”
