Is AI-Powered Performance Marketing Effective?

To begin, let’s ensure we’re on the same page. Major advertising platforms, such as Meta’s Advantage+ and Google’s PMax, offer AI-powered tools, with other platforms also providing similar capabilities. Additionally, various agencies and brands claim to offer cross-platform solutions for optimizing investment decisions. Functionally, these tools allow you to set up a campaign, define an audience, and allocate a budget, much like a traditional ad campaign.

Once these parameters are set, the platforms take over, distributing the budget across the platform’s full inventory, creatives, and audience segments to optimise performance toward your specified goal. These tools are typically designed for campaigns with a clear, simple objective—such as driving eCommerce sales. By doing so, they hand control over to the platform, which determines all aspects of placement and targeting.

AI: Driving Incrementality or Just Taking Credit?

Here’s where it gets critical: based on our experience with partners, we often observe that these AI-powered platforms report more efficient Last Click CPA (Cost Per Acquisition) or ROI (Return on Investment) compared to similar ad buys, such as Google Shopping or generic search campaigns. However, this is not necessarily an indicator of true incrementality. These AI-driven campaigns tend to target users closer to the point of purchase, which raises a key question: Is the platform driving incremental sales, or is it merely taking credit for conversions that would have happened regardless of the ad?

When measuring true incrementality, we’ve seen mixed results in campaign performance. Below is an overview of the scenarios where we’ve observed AI campaigns delivering strong or weaker results:

When AI-Powered Campaigns Perform Well:

• Campaigns with simple, clear sales goals
• Early-stage media investment aiming to capture all demand on platforms
• Simple product offerings (e.g. a single product)

When AI-Powered Campaigns Struggle:

• Complex, multi-product brands
• Brands or products with longer purchase cycles
• Campaigns where the path to purchase cannot be clearly tracked

As always, results vary depending on the brand and campaign specifics. If you’d like to discuss case studies relevant to your brand then reach out.

Changing the Role of Media Buying

Beyond campaign performance, there are additional advantages to using AI-driven media buying. One key benefit is the reduction in the manual effort required to manage campaigns. For brands with significant media spend, these AI tools streamline the process, requiring much less time for monitoring and optimisation.

This shift is also changing the role of the media buyer. Instead of focusing on the tactical aspects of campaign management, media buyers are now shifting their attention to broader campaign goals and overall effectiveness.

While innovative tools like AI-powered media buys solve many challenges, they also introduce a risk: the possibility of marketing efforts becoming less focused on driving true effectiveness. That’s why our mission is to help brands measure the true impact of their marketing efforts—ensuring that every investment contributes to real business growth.