So long, Mad Men: Google and Meta are replacing ad agencies

Why this commentary matters

Don Draper would not win a single pitch today. The hero of Mad Men stood for the golden years of advertising in the 1960s: grand presentations, grand ideas, grand budgets. The stage for charismatic visionaries has almost entirely disappeared. Google and Meta have turned artificial intelligence into marketing machines – and they are offering agencies a faster, more precise, cheaper pitch. Most agencies have no answer. They missed the trend.

What the disruption looks like

Google and Meta do not need storyboards or cocktail receptions. Their AI has access to the data both companies collect daily from billions of users – and the systems that turn it into precisely targeted advertising. The products have cryptic names: AI Max and Performance Max at Google, Advantage+ at Meta. They do not produce five images per campaign – they produce hundreds or thousands of variants, each tailored to a micro-audience.

The double advantage

Google knows the target audience better than any focus group. Meta does too. Both companies not only dominate the digital advertising business – they also control the platforms through which that audience is reached. Whoever controls access to the audience will soon also determine the creative execution. And nobody has deeper insight into what users respond to.

What agencies can still do

Retreating to premium creativity will not be enough for the industry. WPP, Publicis and Omnicom have recognised this and are acquiring AI capabilities. Smaller agencies will either become consultants who operate the tech giants’ AI systems – or niche providers for brand strategy, positioning and storytelling. The middle ground is disappearing. And that is a bitter outcome for an industry that has always liked to define itself by its creative class. The reality: at the intermediate level, AI does the job faster, cheaper and often better.

I wrote the full piece for Handelsblatt.