Digital Lab

All anyone is talking about in business is AI… but most people are talking about Large Language Models (LLMs) like ChatGPT, Claude, and DeepSeek.

Yet some of the most impactful changes that have come from AI are in the tools we already use daily.

Let’s talk about how AI is specifically impacting your opportunity to advertise.

Meta Advertising

In 2022 Meta introduced its automated AI optimization tool suite Advantage+. This was met with mixed reception as the tools weren’t incredibly effective initially.

However, as of Q1 2025, over 4 million advertisers are using Advantage+ in their campaigns.

This AI-driven system analyzes millions of data points to improve ad performance.

It will automatically refine and optimize key ad settings like:

• Targeting
• Bidding
• Visuals
• Copy
• Audio
• Placements

The best part is that these will continually adjust on the fly.

What works in January might not work in March, which may change again by June.

With Advantage+, Meta intelligently adjusts your campaigns to maintain the best performance.

While we are nowhere near the point where advertising can be entirely automated, these additional tools give advertisers access to Meta’s growing library of data.

As a result, Meta saw revenue spike 21% in Q4 of 2024 as businesses continue to contribute more of their ad dollars to Meta every year.

While the average price-per-ad is steadily increasing for advertisers (up 14%), these AI advancements have conversion rates increasing too.

Meta anticipates a significant spike in AI innovation in 2025 which will continue to benefit the advertisers on the platform.

Google Advertising

Google is one of the leading companies in the war over AI.

We’ve previously covered Search Generative Experience (SGE) and how it’s shaken up organic search. But it’s also affecting advertisers as well.

Google’s revenue is mostly from advertising. They are directly incentivized to keep providing great opportunities to advertisers.

Here’s what you need to know:

Similar to Meta, Google is using AI to optimize targeting & budgeting to create ideal outcomes for advertisers.

This means you can test hundreds of ad variations intelligently without manually monitoring and reviewing every data point. Google can and will automatically push the winners and cut the losers.

This feature was initially terrifying for advertisers.

There was a lot of worry that this would generate a significant amount of zero-click searches which would hurt advertisers’ results.

However it’s turned out to be the opposite, these placements are currently some of the best-performing placements.

CTV Advertising

Connected TV (CTV) advertising represents advertising through smart TVs.

Most TVs that the average consumer sees or purchases are now smart TVs.

These TVs are riddled with apps, internet connections, and an independence from traditional cable.

These devices track actions across all of these applications as well as your off-device activity.

If a user is logged into Hulu on their browser, phone, and TV then their behavior across all those networks is shared with the advertising platforms.

This expands also when you recognize that this applies to ALL of the applications the consumer uses (especially those with shared ownership).

For example, Hulu has shared ownership with Disney, Comcast, Fox, and 21st Century.

They also have pre-existing relationships with Fubo, AT&T, NBC, ESPN, and many more.

These relationships create a massive web of user data.

This might be a shock or even scary to some but this is the reality of the big picture advertising industry.

User data is shared across thousands of platforms with billions of data points.

CTV advertising spending is growing by 10-20% every year.

While no specific ad platform owns the majority of the share of that.

While Google dominates search advertising and Meta dominates social advertising, CTV is fragmented. This leads to more competition between the ad platforms which is ultimately good for advertisers. As a result, they’re likely to provide additional incentives and lower costs for advertisers.

In a recent survey, over 70% of marketers cited CTV as an essential part of their marketing strategy.

Are you taking advantage of AI in your advertising?

Millions of businesses across the US are taking advantage of these new tools and platforms to grow quickly.

This is a major opportunity for any business not leveraging AI.

Need help assessing how AI advertising fits into your business? Hit the button below.