Meta is increasingly making their AI features (Advantage+ components) the default setting for new ad campaigns. Not an option you opt into anymore, the starting point you have to actively opt out of.
Google has been moving in the same direction, more quietly, since 2021: broad match keywords, once considered reckless, are now the default because Smart Bidding needs that extra volume of data to work well.
You don’t need to decide today whether to trust AI features with your entire ad account. You need to decide, campaign by campaign, which manual controls still change your results and which ones stopped mattering months ago, because Google and Meta are removing the manual features as the default whether you’ve noticed or not. Keep using the controls that still move outcomes: creative direction, the quality of your conversion data, and the goals you set for the algorithm to chase.
Which Campaign Settings Used to Be Controlled Manually
A few years ago, a competent account manager could point to a dozen settings and explain exactly what each one did to your results.
Keyword match types decided exactly who saw your ad
Exact and phrase match meant your ad for “waterproof hiking boots” showed for that phrase and close variants. You controlled the audience by controlling the words. These match types still exist, but Smart Bidding is built to perform best when it gets broad match’s extra volume to learn from. In that case Google’s algorithm decides what counts as a relevant variant. Your keyword list is now a suggestion, not a boundary.
Manual bid caps let you set your own tolerance for risk
You told the system the maximum you’d pay per click or per conversion, and it stayed inside that line no matter what. Automated strategies like Target ROAS replaced that hard ceiling with a target the algorithm chases using its own real-time judgment about what a click is worth. You still set the goal.
What Changed with AI Features for Meta and Google Campaigns
Meta quietly removed the audience segmentation cap inside Advantage+
Advantage+ Shopping campaigns used to let you cap the percentage of budget going toward existing customers, limiting how much could be spent on re-engagement, so the rest would go toward new customer acquisition. Meta removed that cap. Combined with Advantage+ becoming the default for new campaigns, the manual audience logic that used to define a campaign’s strategy is now something you have to fight to keep, not something you start with.
Google folds different campaign features even campaign formats into one automated system
Performance Max absorbed Smart Shopping campaigns and has largely displaced Dynamic Search Ads, which Google now actively recommends migrating into PMax. You still supply the product feed and the creative assets. What you no longer control is which surface, network, or placement your budget lands on, that decision has been handed to the machine. The direction is clear: one campaign format for everything, rather than one campaign type per placement or channel.
Where Meta and Google Are Heading with AI
This is the part worth paying attention to, because both companies have told us, where they’re going, and the timeline is shorter than most advertisers assume.
Meta wants a URL and a budget to be the entire brief
Mark Zuckerberg has described a near future where a business submits a website and a budget, and Meta’s system builds the creative, picks the audience, and manages spend from there, with no targeting input and no creative brief required.
Google is already inserting ads next to its own AI answers
Ads now appear alongside AI Overviews, the AI-generated summaries Google shows at the top of search results for many queries. That’s a new surface you don’t select, don’t design for specifically, and have far less control over than a traditional placement you could once simply exclude.
Should You Use AI Features for Your Campaign Strategy?
While smart features have shown impressive results – or at least improving capabilities – in the past, changes are now being made even faster, impacting control over placements, content and distribution. The lever you’re pulling is changing. Campaign structure, match type strategy, and manual bidding are becoming decisions the platform makes by default.
With that much changing, we need to start thinking about changing our strategies. The way we set up campaigns, and therefore how we plan targeting and placements, needs to be adapted for an AI-driven future. What’s still yours, and what will still be yours once automation goes further, is what you feed the model: clean conversion data, a clear definition of what a valuable customer looks like for your business, and creative that reflects your brand instead of a generic template. An algorithm trained on vague goals and messy data makes vague, messy decisions at scale, and it does so with your budget.
Businesses that spend the next year fighting to keep controls the platforms have already decided to remove will lose time they could have spent on the part that’s actually still negotiable. The question, therefore, should not be whether to use AI features, but rather which ones to use and when. Businesses that get their data and goals in order now will hand the algorithm a better starting point than most competitors ever will, and that gap compounds with every optimization cycle after it.
Your Next Steps for Navigating AI in Google and Meta Ads
Don’t try to predict which controls will still exist in two years. Figure out which controls, in your specific accounts, right now, are still earning their keep, and which ones you’re defending out of habit. Test removing the ones you suspect don’t matter before Google or Meta removes them for you. Spend the time that frees up on the two things that will still be yours to control later: the data you feed the algorithm and the creative you ask it to test.
If you want a clear-eyed read on which of your current controls are worth defending and which are already decided, our team can audit your Google Ads and Meta accounts and hand you a prioritized plan for adapting on your own terms, not the platforms’.
