Marketers Want Consultants In The AI Trenches

LLMs & CHATBOTS

Meta’s AI ads improvement

As Meta’s Q2 2025 results showed last week, Meta is laser-focused on a performant ad system for marketers.

There will likely be more improvement to come as Meta researchers published a 41-page paper—also last week—titled, “Improving Generative Ad Text on Facebook using Reinforcement Learning.” The research team introduced their “AdLlama” model which creates text ads and also discussed the depths of how AdLlama improves advertising performance using “reinforcement learning” or RL.

The lead Meta researcher on the paper, Daniel Jiang, emphasized on LinkedIn: “The paper describes the first deployment of a RL-trained LLM for generative ads within Facebook’s advertising system.” He continued:

“We use historical ad click-through rates as a reward signal for RL to fine-tune an LLM that helps advertisers generate improved variations of their existing ad text.

In a 10-week A/B test with 35,000 advertisers and 640,000 ad variations, we found that advertisers using the RL-trained LLM created more performant ads compared to those who used an existing supervised model (trained to imitate curated examples).

We think this is exciting because it suggests that metric-driven post-training can work at scale, and could be applied more broadly beyond online ads, especially in other domains where generative AI is already proving useful.

LLMs & CHATBOTS

5 millon

“We have surpassed 5M paying business users on ChatGPT, up from 3M in June. Our Team and Enterprise offerings make it simple for you to securely deploy it in companies of all sizes.” (August 2) – Nick Turley, Head of ChatGPT, OpenAI on LinkedIn

BRANDS

Jobs

Ad Age reported after Friday’s monthly U.S. jobs report: “Employment in advertising, public relations and related services surged by 2,800 jobs in July, the biggest gain in more than a year, and figures for May and June were revised from losses to gains in a sign of unexpected new strength in the ad market.” Read more. (August 1)

From tipsheet: Is that good news? More jobs created by AI? Too early to say. In fact, The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics says the “ads” category was down 4,200 jobs in July compared to the beginning of the year when the industry was at 499,600 jobs.

BRANDS

AI is foundational —but it’s what you do with it

CMO reinvented: ‘You can’t build tomorrow’s brand with yesterday’s marketing’ (July 31) – The Drum

AGENCIES

Consultants want marketer budget

Global consultants continue to look at ways to push agencies aside in the AI age.

The Australian reported on consultant Ernst & Young’s previously-announced efforts yesterday: “EY has joined the chase for marketing budgets with a new division to help clients transform for the AI era, and with strong growth ambitions for the division it hasn’t ruled out acquiring agencies to supercharge the growth.” Read more. (August 3)

Related: EY Studio+ launches to bring a customer-first approach to growth and transformation in the AI era – press release (June 3)

AGENCIES

Pitching Amazon AI Ads

Performance agency 10XCREW in the Netherlands makes its pitch to clients using the AI ad tools of Amazon Advertising in a company blog post.

The agency readily admitted, though, that some features—such as an AI-powered video generator—are currently only available to U.S. advertisers.

Nevertheless, 10XCREW said it will use AI to optimize Amazon Ads performance through “automation for bidding, keyword optimization, and campaign structuring.”

AGENCIES

AI is coming for consultants

Just when you thought agencies were the low-hanging fruit for consolidation due to artificial intelligence, The Wall Street Journal wrote on Saturday that it’s consultants who are the tasty fruit.

Noting the new requirements put upon consultants, the WSJ reported:

“One immediate change is that fewer clients want to hire consulting firms for strategy advice alone. Instead, big companies are increasingly looking for a consultant to help them put new systems in place, manage change or learn new skills, industry veterans say.

‘The age of arrogance of the management consultant is over now,” said Nick Studer, CEO of consulting firm Oliver Wyman.

Companies, Studer added, ‘don’t want a suit with PowerPoint. They want someone who is willing to get in the trenches and help them align their team and cocreate with their team.’”

SELL-SIDE

Blocking and crawling —and suing

Publishers: How to Block AI Bots and Reclaim Control of Your Content (July 30) – Akamai
Who’s suing AI and who’s signing: Gannett signs up with Perplexity (July 31) – Press Gazette
Cloudflare vs. the AI Crawlers: A Last Stand for the Open Web (July 30) – AdTechExplained

TECH

Microsoft AI search ads

In a blog post titled, “Building AI-ready creative: How modular content drives search advertising results,” Microsoft “ads liaison” Navah Hopkins discussed how marketers can use a “modular content” search strategy alongside the company’s AI assistant for creative known as “Copilot.”

All of this is within Microsoft’s AI-enabled ad system known as Performance Max (—the same name as Google’s AI ad system.).

Ms. Hopkins explained:

“Modular content breaks campaigns into smaller, reusable blocks, such as headlines, benefits, images, proof points, and CTAs, each tagged with metadata for audience, intent, or format. These components can be mixed and matched across various touchpoints, including Copilot answers, paid search ads, social carousels, and beyond.

Make it modular. Read the Microsoft Advertising blog post. (July 30)

Related: “The new search advertising landscape: How to win when AI is changing everything” – Microsoft Advertising blog (June 5)

TECH

Use cases by vertical

Ad tech firm Mediaocean published a new report looking at second-half 2025 trends according to a panel of nearly 500 marketing professionals who were surveyed in May.

Perhaps to no one’s surprise, generative AI extended its lead over Connected TV as the top consumer trend among marketers since the last survey in November.

Also, the top AI use cases by vertical were surveyed with “data analysis” appearing to win out over “market research.”

In the prologue, researcher Karsten Weide said about the report’s insights on the advertising industry, “As 2026 nears, success hinges on agility, cross-functional alignment, and data-driven, measurable experiences. This industry isn’t just adapting—it’s shaping its future.”

Get the report (July 16). (sign up required)

PROMPT

How will job growth trends play out in the advertising industry over the next 5 years?

Response from OpenAI’s ChatGPT:

“While some traditional roles—especially in media sales and classic creative services—face pressure, the overall industry is expanding. From 2025 through around 2030, job growth is supported by increasing marketing reliance on digital media, automation, and analytics‑driven strategy. Career success will largely depend on how well talent adapts to AI‑augmented workflows, and how effectively professionals position themselves at the intersection of creativity and data.”

Marketers Want Consultants In The AI Trenches

LLMs & CHATBOTS

Meta’s AI ads improvement

LLMs & CHATBOTS

5 millon

BRANDS

Jobs

BRANDS

AI is foundational —but it’s what you do with it

AGENCIES

Consultants want marketer budget

AGENCIES

Pitching Amazon AI Ads

AGENCIES

AI is coming for consultants

SELL-SIDE

Blocking and crawling —and suing

TECH

Microsoft AI search ads

TECH

Use cases by vertical

PROMPT

How will job growth trends play out in the advertising industry over the next 5 years?

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