.jpg)
Meta wants your next ad campaign to build itself. By the end of 2026, the tech behemoth plans to automate everything from creative generation to targeting to budget allocation across Facebook and Instagram. Just feed the machine a product and a goal, and it promises to handle the rest. No ad agency required. No creative briefs necessary. Maybe not even a marketer, if you squint hard enough.
With over 3.2 billion daily users and nearly $134 billion in ad revenue last year, Meta has the muscle to bend the rules of digital advertising. Its Q1 2025 ad earnings alone topped $35 billion, and it is spending over $65 billion this year on AI infrastructure to make the automation dream real. While the roadmap is clear, the reactions from India’s marketing leaders range from intrigued to wary, with a healthy mix of “this could be magic” and “this better not kill my brand voice.
Lloyd Mathias, business strategist and Independent Director, notes that this shift is already underway, driven by
digitization and AI, which are transforming how brands communicate. “The impact of digitization and AI has
already started to reshape advertising over the last two years," he says.
Mathias points to the growing influence of major tech platforms, especially Meta and Google, in the advertising ecosystem. “Globally, they control about 70 percent of the market; in India, it’s upwards of 65 percent,” he observes.
Efficiency at scale, but with direction
Sini Magon, COO and Global Partner at Grapes Worldwide, sees real upside in what Meta is building. “Meta’s push is very likely to give the desired impetus to AI-driven performance marketing,” she says. “It will help industry players table faster execution with automated ad setup and smarter placements.” She points to real-time budget allocation and audience prediction as key levers that could boost ROI, but also warns that AI alone isn’t the whole answer.
“This is not about replacing humans,” Magon adds. “Rather, both AI and humans should work in collaboration. Let AI relieve the repetitive, so humans can focus on storytelling, concept, and emotion.”
That balance, of strategy steering automation instead of being steamrolled by it, is a theme echoed across the board. As Siddharth Devnani, Co-Founder and COO of SoCheers, puts it, “Having a full suite of automation by Meta will actually help us bring down the time spent on tasks that can be automated, allowing professionals to focus on what they do best, bringing taste and instinct to the table.”
India remains Meta’s largest user base, with over 500 million WhatsApp users and nearly 450 million Facebook users, making it a key testbed for global ad automation. Despite regulatory tensions, Meta's ad revenues from India are estimated to cross ?22,000 crore in 2025, driven largely by small and mid-sized businesses using performance marketing.
According to Gopa Menon, Chief Growth Officer at Successive Digital, Meta's AI will likely excel at rapid A/B testing across countless variables simultaneously, something humanly impossible at scale. “However, this creates a new challenge: the black box problem, which always have been a problem with walled gardens. When AI makes targeting and creative decisions autonomously, marketers lose granular understanding of why certain approaches work, potentially making strategic pivots more difficult.”
But even Devnani admits he’s watching the control levers closely. “Can I add an extra nuance or modify specific targeting on the fly? I really hope they allow us to. It would be essential for the success of the Meta AI program.” Rahul Vengalil, CEO and Co-founder at tgthr, says we should understand how Meta works. "Meta as a platform, as per a 2020 report I believe has over 6 million advertisers, ie, large brands, mid sized brands, small brands and loads of mom and pop stores and content creators.. At the moment AI can be used a brilliant tool by small brands, mom and pop stores and content creators, whose communication or core messaging doesnt have so much scrutiny, and whose media planning doesnt have too much rigour going into it.. It’s like going from no option to advertise to a great option to advertise," he says, adding that for this category of advertisers, who never had a creative agency, creative team or media team, Meta is giving solace with all the changes and updated they are creating.
Creative compression, strategic expansion
Not everyone is convinced the shift will be smooth. Bala Kumaran, Founder of BrandStory, offers a sharp take. “The full AI automation offered by Meta is a double-edged sword. It democratises efficiency for SMEs but potentially homogenises creativity.” He points to tools like Advantage+, which can cut setup times dramatically, but often result in generic ad slop without benefit of brand or soul.
It’s a familiar pain point for anyone who has spent more time revising AI-generated outputs than it would’ve taken to just make the ad manually. Kumaran says the smart teams will know how to use AI as a copilot, not the captain.
That sentiment lands with Russhabh R Thakkar, Founder and CEO of Frodoh. “We are looking at unprecedented efficiency and hyper-personalization at scale,” he says. “But the shift is in control. Advertising professionals won’t be hands-on in the traditional sense. Instead, they’ll move into more strategic roles, feeding the right signals and refining outputs.”
In Thakkar’s view, the job isn’t dying, it’s evolving. “The core task is no longer just producing assets or booking placements. It’s about training the AI with the right context, nuance, and cultural insight. Machines optimise, humans interpret.”
The Rise of Prompt-Thinkers and Taste-Makers
Meta's India arm has more active advertisers than any other market outside the US, underscoring why its AIpowered ad stack is being heavily localized. With its in-country offices now housing AI-specialized teams, Meta India is quietly becoming a nerve center for testing scalable automation features.
No wonder there’s a growing consensus that knowing how to work with AI is becoming a foundational skill. Nikhil Khatri, VP of Biddable Performance at LS Digital, lays it out plainly. “One of the emerging skill sets is the ability to guide AI effectively, what we now call prompt engineering.”
He also flags the changing role landscape. “Media buyers, copywriters, and junior designers are becoming increasingly vulnerable,” he says. “As automation scales, these roles may see sharp declines, especially for smaller campaigns that are cost-sensitive.”
Khatri isn’t forecasting doom, though. He believes senior talent will only grow more critical, especially when it comes to directing AI to guarantee brand integrity and originality. “The professionals who adapt and work across disciplines will thrive.”
In terms of which parts of the process are most vulnerable to automation, Mathias is also clear. “Targeting is where digital tools really excel,” he says. “You’re no longer just targeting a 35-year-old male—you’re targeting someone based on their passions, habits, and interests, like being into soccer or adventure sports. Digital platforms can map out a person’s likes, dislikes, affinities, and even their social circles.”
“Personalization will reach unprecedented levels, with AI creating micro-variations of ads for different audience segments in real-time. But this hyper-personalization raises questions about brand consistency and whether ultra-targeted messaging might fragment brand identity across different customer touch points,” adds Menon.
Ajinkya Pradhan, CTO of TheSmallBigIdea, agrees, and also warns of a blind spot. “Meta isn’t just layering AI onto existing tools, it’s rebuilding its infrastructure around full automation,” he says. “That brings power, yes, but also responsibility. Feeding sensitive prompts without understanding how they might be used is risky. Digital hygiene is non-negotiable now.”
So, while everyone is focused on what Meta’s tools can do, Pradhan is urging the industry to consider how those tools are learning from us, and whether we’re paying attention to the fine print.
Compressing the Middle, Elevating the Edge
For some, the Meta moment is a call to arms. “AI is essentially a pattern-recognition engine,” says Asparsh Sinha, Managing Partner at OPEN Strategy & Design. “But our job in branding and creativity is often to break patterns.”
He sees the coming shift as a creative filter rather than a creative threat. “It will compress the middle. But for those who can direct, not just do, this is a moment of empowerment. AI strips out the average, accelerates the good, and puts the spotlight on the extraordinary.”
A large chunk of India's festive ad spend in 2024 flowed to Meta platforms, with Diwali and ICC World Cup promotions showing record RoAS on Instagram-first campaigns. Over 70% of Indian brands using Meta’s platforms in 2024 ran some form of automated campaign, from dynamic product ads to creative versioning for vernacular audiences.
Sinha’s prescription is simple: have taste. He points out, “AI doesn’t have taste, it has training. So, for the best human talent, this is the most exciting time to be in the game.”
Shivangi Kothari, Head of Paid Media at AGENCY09, lands on a similar note. “AI won’t replace human talent, it will enhance it,” she says. “Automation will handle repetitive tasks, giving professionals more time to focus on strategy and creativity. But the heart of impactful advertising, human insight and emotion, can’t be automated.”
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
