The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that Meta will “enable brands to fully create and target ads using artificial intelligence by the end of next year.” Machine learning to the rescue in service to dynamic creative optimization. Again. How much of this is new or just a natural evolution?

This latest news dovetails with the ongoing evolution of Meta’s Advantage+ and Google’s Performance Max where big-budget marketers hand over budgets and machines do the rest. In the Advantage+ context, this Meta AI ads update appears to be the SMB offering.

Analyst Eric Seufert commented on the news on X yesterday:

“The fundamental misapprehension that most of the media coverage of these tools reveals is that the principal customer base of the largest and most successful digital advertising platforms is the SMB segment, not large brands. I’ve called this the Big Economy of Small Advertisers. The real opportunity with AI enablement isn’t to catalyze share shift of existing budget (although that is likely to happen) but to grow overall ad spend by extending the long tail of advertisers.”

The WSJ says that the work of creative agencies, or creatives (or the SMB sole proprietor), appears to be getting a new tool or pushed into obsolescence – depending on how you look at it – as Meta “aims to help brands create advertising concepts from scratch.”

Addressability is a feature of Meta’s new enhanced AI tech according to the WSJ. A “person seeing an advertisement for a car in a snowy place, for example, might see the car driving up a mountain, whereas a person seeing an ad for that same car in an urban area would see it driving on a city street.” “Geolocation” is the key targeting parameter mentioned.

There’s no mention of cookies by the WSJ and Meta’s huge, overall first-party data advantage.

Read “Meta Aims to Fully Automate Ad Creation Using AI.”

Former Meta executive Chamatha Palihapitiya commented on X about the article, “… if I were Zuck, I’d be annoyed having this pedestrian set of features be presented as his competing vision for the world vs other tech luminaries’.”

video AI ads

Yesterday, Fast Company covered Jeffrey Katzenberg and his investment firm WndrCo which co-led a $15.5 million Series A investment in Creatify AI. The ad tech company is described as “an AI video ad platform that has quietly reached $9 million in annual recurring revenue just 18 months after launch.”

Former Meta and Snap CEO Steven Na is one of Creatify AI’s co-founders and former Basis (was Centro) corp dev and BD leader Ben Pashman is the company’s head of BD.

According to the article, Creatify AI “helps businesses rapidly produce high-performing, AI-powered video ads for social media-without relying on traditional production or content creators.” More for the SMB!

See the Creatify AI website. Read more in Fast Company.

now consulting

Just in time for the ad industry’s annual visit to Cannes, France, in two weeks, “AI for marketing” is at the center of new report from Boston Consulting Group.

“Our latest CMO survey shows content creation has moved beyond pilots. Text and image generation are now scaled across most organizations, but here’s the Cannes-worthy trend: video generation is the next creative frontier. 30% of CMOs identify immersive formats as their priority investment area – the leading edge of what’s coming,” says Lauren Wiener, Managing Director, Boston Consulting Group on LinkedIn. Ms. Wiener was former CEO of Tremor Video among other past roles.

Read: “How CMOs Are Scaling GenAI in Turbulent Times” (June 2) from BCG.

on the other hand:

• “We don’t need more AI-generated content faster and cheaper. We need more courage.” – JoRoan Lazaro, Executive Creative Director at Monks. Read more on LinkedIn.

was SEO, now GEO

In a blog post last Wednesday, venture firm a16z made the case (and talks their book) that Google Search dominance is over and how search engine optimization and the management of a publisher’s content in tech company’s SERPs is about to change.

Titled “How Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) Rewrites the Rules of Search,” a16z partners Zach Cohen and Seema Amble write:

“Search is just beginning to shift, but ad dollars move fast, especially when there’s arbitrage. In the 2000s, that was Google’s Adwords. In the 2010s, it was Facebook’s targeting engine. Now, in 2025, it’s LLMs and the platforms that help brands navigate how their content is ingested and referenced by those models. Put another way, GEO is the competition to get into the model’s mind.” Read it.

the publisher next door

Influencers bigger than Netflix negotiating their own sports rights deal? Marketers newest publishing partners keep getting bigger.

“MrBeast just crossed 400 million global subscribers – Netflix has around 380 million. Yes, I know it’s not apples to apples, but in a week when a rugby YouTuber picked up French live D2 rights for UK broadcast to his audience then creators as distributors begin to look interesting for some sports rights owners” – Joe Redfern, consultant, on LinkedIn Sunday.

must-read Meeker

Released last week, get a job in AI says a new Mary Meeker “AI Trends report” (340-page PDF – get it) especially if you’re in IT…. or how about get any job with “AI” in the title?

Steven Wolfe Pereira, CEO of Alpha, says on LinkedIn, “The BOND report on Trends in AI by Mary Meeker and team underscores that AI is now a geopolitical race, an infrastructure battle, and a platform shift all at once.”

more stuff

• “Obviously, OpenAi will monetize with ads” (May 16) – Eric Seufert

• “EXCLUSIVE: Omnicom To Ditch Individual Agency Email Domains” – Adweek.. agencies transforming or dissolving

• Marketecture founder Ari Paparo’s new book coming in August: “Yield: How Google Bought, Built, and Bullied its Way to Advertising Dominance.” Mr. Paparo intros the book on LinkedIn here.

• Opinion: Marketing To Machines: A New Performance Strategy In The Age Of AI Agents – Michael Lehman, CEO, Nativo on AdExchanger… “native” ad tech on native AI