As of January 2026, all six of the largest social media firms now offer advertisers some form of automated campaign solution within their ad platforms. These tools, which can handle everything from creative asset generation to optimization to budgeting to targeting, are a crucial step toward what some tech leaders are hoping is a fully automated era of digital advertising. They are also a source of intense anxiety for ad agencies, which see the tools disrupting their approach to one of media’s most crucial spending areas and, in an extreme scenario, disintermediating them entirely from their clients.

Key Question: How are advertisers changing the way they use automated campaign tools on social platforms?

Key Stat: More than three-quarters of US marketers plan to focus more time or resources on genAI’s use in their media campaigns this year, per the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB).