There are three parts that go into every successful ad campaign: The content, the media buying, and the conversion. A lot of agencies have built their businesses on the middle part (their ability to intelligently target audiences in order to get better results), which for a long time was a legitimate advantage.


Meta, Google, TikTok, and Pinterest, among others, saw how much work was going into media buying and said: We can do it better.


You’ve probably seen their “performance” tools (Meta’s Advantage+ and Google’s Performance Max) popping up over the years. They’ve now taken it to another level.


AI Advertising Assistants

With Meta’s newly announced Manus assistant, they are taking over the whole media buying game.

We’re now looking at a world where the platforms don’t just run the ads we tell them to, they’re also coming up with the targeting strategy, optimizing, and increasingly deciding what works best. Google is embedding Gemini across its marketing stack, Pinterest is pushing Performance+ campaigns, and Meta’s new Manus tool is an AI that acts like a full-service agency inside your ad account.

Of course, they’re not doing this out of the goodness of their hearts. These platforms have always found every penny they can extract from the ad industry and built ways to keep it for themselves. The better their AI gets, the more control they gain, and the more efficiently they can convince us to spend every marketing dollar with them.


The uncomfortable truth: It works.


The quality of these systems has reached a point where they can handle the majority of what agencies and media buyers used to do. Campaign setup, optimization, testing, and even reporting can all be done at an expert level for any size of budget. Perfectly optimized, automated campaigns are increasingly becoming table stakes.

So, if everyone has access to an “expert” media buyer, then media buying is no longer a differentiator. So what is?

  1. Content: The story you tell — the quality of your creative, positioning, and your ability to connect with a real human
  2. Conversion: The post-click user experience — your landing pages, funnel, offer, and clarity


In other words: the machines have taken over distribution, so the winners will be the ones who do what humans do best, which comes from understanding how other humans want to be treated.

You may not love the platforms, and you certainly shouldn’t trust them, but ignoring tools like Manus would be like choosing to ignore Microsoft Excel because you think humans should be recording our spreadsheets by hand.