Google and Meta will run your ads for free. What that solves — and what it doesn't

Both major advertising platforms now include AI campaign tools in the account at no extra charge. Meta's assistant sits inside Ads Manager. Google has put its AI across the campaign-building flow. Give either one a website address and a budget, and it will generate ads, choose audiences and set bids. The tools are free; the ad spend is still ad spend.

This is not marketing language. The tools work, they are better than they were two years ago, and our own system uses them every day.

It also puts a fair question to every company that charges money for advertising work: what is left to pay for?

Here is the honest answer.

What it solves: the first campaign

For most small businesses the hardest part of advertising was never optimisation. It was getting started at all — how to structure the account, which keywords to choose, what the first ads should say, whether sales are even being recorded on the website. Plenty of businesses never ran a campaign because that first hour was too confusing to get through.

The platforms have removed that hour. That is a real improvement and it deserves to be said plainly: businesses that could not start before can start now.

We think this is good for us rather than bad. Every improvement the platforms make to execution lowers what it costs us to serve one customer. Our engine rides on top of their automation — the stronger it gets, the less of the work is ours.

But execution was never the whole job.

What it doesn't solve: which side the advice is on

A platform's tools are built to run that platform's advertising well. That is what they are for, and they do it. What follows is structural rather than a criticism: those tools will not suggest spending less this month, and they will not suggest moving part of the budget somewhere else.

This is not about anyone being dishonest. A system works toward the goal it was given, and the goal these systems were given is good performance inside one platform. That goal is entirely legitimate. It is also not the question a business owner is asking, which is where the next dollar does the most good — anywhere.

The platform's AI optimises for the platform. Our AI optimises for the advertiser. Both of those can be true at the same time.

What it doesn't solve: how to split a budget

Ask Google's tools how to spend three thousand dollars and the answer will be about Google. Ask Meta's, and the answer will be about Meta. Neither answer is wrong. There is simply no neutral answer available from inside either one.

Splitting a budget across platforms — and shifting it as results come in — is a decision that has to be made from outside them. It also happens to be the decision that matters most in the first year, when nobody yet knows which channel a particular business belongs in.

What it doesn't solve: someone watching

Automation makes actions faster. It does not supply judgement about whether the actions are working.

The platforms serve millions of advertisers. A named person who reads one account every week and says in plain language what happened does not add up at that scale — not a flaw, just arithmetic. So the account runs, the numbers accumulate, and whether anyone reads them is left to the business.

What it doesn't solve: the context that is not in the account

The platforms can see clicks, costs and sales. They cannot see margin by product, which jobs are worth taking, when the busy season starts, how many customers can actually be served this month, or what the owner is trying to build this year.

That information changes what a sensible campaign looks like. A cleaning company already booked out should not be paying more for enquiries it cannot service. No amount of in-platform optimisation reaches that conclusion, because the fact it depends on was never in the account.

Where that leaves us

We do not sell button-pushing inside an ad platform. That work is free now, it will keep getting better, and building a business on top of it would be a mistake.

What we sell is the part the platforms are not structured to provide: a budget decision made across platforms rather than inside one; reports in plain language with every number traceable back to the platform's own figures; a record of what changed and why; and a subscription price that does not move when the ad spend moves, so that "spend more" and "spend less" carry exactly the same weight when we say them.

The free tools made the first campaign easy. They did not make the judgement calls go away.