By: Jason Alfred, Digital Performance Lead
Artificial Intelligence isn’t new to digital advertising. AI has long been part of the back end of ad platforms, quietly helping media buyers target audiences, optimize campaigns, and improve performance.
Most of us still have limited visibility into how those systems make decisions, which is part of why platform automation can sometimes feel opaque. What’s changed over the last few years is that AI has become much more visible, evolving from behind-the-scenes machine learning to predictive and generative tools, automation, and even more advanced agentic capabilities.
As AI continues to play a larger role in campaign planning and execution, not every AI-enabled tool works the same way. Some are designed to assist the media buyer, while others attempt to replace more of the decision-making process altogether. That shift raises a more useful question. It’s no longer whether to use AI, but where it adds value and where it doesn’t.
The best marketing doesn’t choose one over the other, it combines both. AI excels at speed and scale, while humans provide the strategic thinking that gives campaigns direction.
| AI Is Great At… | Humans Are Better At… |
| Processing enormous datasets | Strategy |
| Identifying patterns | Context |
| Automating repetitive tasks | Understanding business goals |
| Optimizing campaigns in real time | Brand nuance |
| Accelerating reporting | Asking better questions |
| Working at speed and scale | Judgement & challenging assumptions |
One of the clearest examples of this balance between AI and human expertise is Meta’s Advantage+, which promises faster setup, broader automation, and improved performance. Our recent testing offered an interesting reminder that automation doesn’t always outperform thoughtful strategy.
Why Advantage+ Became the Default Conversation
Meta’s Advantage+ is a useful example in this conversation because it reflects the industry’s broader move toward automation. The promise is straightforward: less manual work, more automation, and better performance. As an advertiser, that’s a compelling proposition. Who doesn’t want time back from campaign setup to focus more on strategy?
If the algorithm can find the right users at the right time, why spend extra time building detailed audience targeting by hand?
That efficiency is compelling, but it’s also where the conversation shifts from convenience to judgment.
Why Human Targeting Still Matters
Human-selected targeting brings context, nuance, experience, and strategy into campaign setup, especially when audience signals are specific or niche. Media buyers aren’t simply choosing interests or behaviors at random. They’re applying first-hand knowledge of the brand, the audience, the category, and the business objective.
When audience signals are clear and business goals call for greater precision, standard targeting can still be the better choice. It gives media buyers more control and allows them to evaluate a specific audience hypothesis rather than handing that decision over to a black box.
What Our Testing Showed
To ground this in context, we compared Meta Advantage+ against human-selected interest targeting across separate 30-day campaigns focused on driving online sales.
In our testing, human-selected audiences outperformed Advantage+ by nearly 2:1, while delivering a 42.7% lower cost per result.
Of course, a handful of tests don’t tell the whole story, and broader testing across additional campaign types is still needed. But the early signals are difficult to ignore. They reinforce an important point: Advantage+ shouldn’t be assumed to be the better choice simply because it’s newer, more automated, or more closely aligned with Meta’s product direction.
When Advantage+ Makes Sense
That doesn’t mean Advantage+ should be dismissed entirely. For larger campaigns with broader audience goals, or when speed and efficiency are the priority, it may still be a valuable tool worth testing.
The point isn’t that Advantage+ never works. It’s that it should be evaluated in context rather than assumed to be superior. Like any AI-powered solution, its value depends on the objective. The strongest use of AI is supporting strategic thinking, not replacing it.
In Summary
National AI Day is a good reminder that AI isn’t something to fear or blindly embrace. It’s another tool in the marketer’s toolbox.
The future of media won’t belong to marketers who ignore AI, nor to those who surrender every decision to it. It will belong to those who know how to combine the speed and scale of AI with the judgment, creativity, and strategic thinking that only humans can provide.
