Mark Zuckerberg’s last protrusion on the future of advertising has not failed to make react.
Media agencies, professional federations, figures in the sector, everyone went there from their comments to defend their values and its territory. While some invoke the strategy, creativity or plurality of the media, Meta is advancing – like an F40 doubling a horse -drawn carriage – with a radical promise, entrusting the entire advertising process to AI.
Formulate an intention (“I want to sell X”, “I want to recruit Y”), define a budget, and let the algorithm deliver results. Without brief, without creative, without manual targeting. A model that shakes up the codes … but that perhaps does not target those that we believe (well for the moment).
Meta’s target is not the business of the media agency, but the market that starts where agencies stop.
Contrary to what some wanted to believe or denounce, Meta does not seek to disqualify the media agencies. The latter have all their legitimacy, independent advice, multi-levier arbitration, strategic reading of the market, understanding of image mechanics. This perimeter, Meta does not master it and it will be difficult for him to replace it.
But where the agencies trace their front line, Meta sees a deposit he wants to address. As a target, the thousands of companies that are not supported, which have neither marketing team nor media partner: self-employed, e-merchants, SMEs, franchisees. A diffuse, fragmented market, poorly served, and above all not very structured. Clearly, all that the traditional advertising ecosystem has always looked from by far, finding no sufficient margin.
The objective is to automate what no one takes the time to serve
Mark Zuckerberg does not promise a tool but an autonomous mechanics to align with a goal, budget, result. The rest is entrusted to AI, the algorithm will manage targeting, will generate the creations, will pilot the auctions, will attribute the performance.
“It will be possible in the future that… You won’t even have to start off with a creative,” he explains.
“Just Come with a goal and How Much That’s Worth to You, and We’ll Deliver Results across our platform.”
For structures without marketing expert, this simplification is a revolution. For Meta, it is an industrial opportunity that could allow him to capture the volume where he remained unexploited.
A transformation that begins without agencies
If it is not a question of replacing the agencies, it is a question of bypassing an entire ecosystem which never wanted or could send this atomized base of advertisers. Meta automated advertising is not a threat to the strategic plans of a large group. It stands out as a default response for those who can only count on themselves.
Far from large campaigns, 360 plans or cross-media activations, Meta aims to deploy a solution to those who, even today, do hand marketing.
A border that agencies must face in front
So what Meta reveals is not an obsolescence of the media council, but the void left by years of concentration on large accounts. Two options are now available to agencies:
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- Assume not to serve this market.
- Or invent a lighter, more packaged, more accessible offer.
