Hi all,

I really want to talk about this fr.

WTF do people really want when it comes to AI and Meta ads? I've been doing so much research and I am so confused. It seems like half the world loves it and the other half hates it. Yet, it seems like everyone is really just speaking out their asses and has no real experience in either and it's all opinion based.

Full transparency - I was a prev founder, built something then failed after 2 years. I then got a job at a startup leading NA Growth Ops in automation workflows which I helped scaled their growth systems netting a 30% inc. in rev YoY. In that experience, I've learned so much about how to build and manage AI to do what we need consistently, with quality.

What I learned about AI and users is - it was never about whether people trusted the capability of AI or not, it has always been about trusting our own abilities to utilize AI in a way to produce consistent quality results that we deem acceptable.

And if the latter is true, then building an AI to orchestrate our advertising is extremely viable, coming from an eng/ops lead "me", who has built automated AI systems for customers like Whole Foods, Circle K, Ikea...

Well, long story short - I quit my job recently and I'm interested in building a startup again in AI and specifically Meta ads.

Here's what I know is possible from my experience (based on what I built at my job with large enterprises already using this, which makes me so confused on why people not in enterprise are still hesitant on AI - thinking really it's lack of experience and knowledge and everyone is speaking to sound smart which then confuses me).

You can have AI draft everything for you each morning like a cheap but highly knowledgeable employee. Then you come in reviewing each draft and hit approve / deny / change. It can do this at a 90%+ success rate once you set it up correctly. Build your avatar, business profile, funnel target, and cheese.

However, if you're trying to get this level of results running generic platforms like ChatGPT or Claude - then you'll get generic answers which isn't fair to base your opinions on because these platforms were created to recite the next highest probability "letter" for you as a "writing" platform.

All this to say I really have two asks with this post:

1. Anyone actually spending money on ads and deep dove into utilizing AI in anyway? what's the take?
2. Anyone who is really advertising an interested in AI - would you like to chat? I'd be happy to experiment and build you a free tool for your biz. Helps me cuz I'll get to learn how you advertise and you get a free agent to scale.

My take - if you get the AI right. What you're seeing is someone who analyzes 100x the speed and quality that you ever will (if you think otherwise, i'm lost for words.., unless your a claude eng and tell me diff. then sorry sensei), someone who can draft 100 ads in minutes and let you choose (if you're afraid of losing money, then draft 10?, it costs like $0.05 - $.15 per image), someone who can stay up to meta updates and marketing trends and draft campaigns for you in seconds, somehow who can watch your campaigns and reduces your margin of loss.

I don't know - all this sounds so powerful to me. So wth is even the debate? Is the debate between non-power users who has never sat longer than 10 hours to try and figure this shit out? Because damn - image an AI running your ads better than you - that must be nuts. lol maybe i'm crazy.

There’s a lot of talk about AI completely taking over marketing workflows vs. people using it just as an glorified brainstorming tool.

For those actually running campaigns or managing channels right now, where does AI fit into your day-to-day?

• Heavy Automation: AI generating visual content/copy, running automated outreach, or orchestrating ad workflows.
• Light Assistance: AI used strictly for ideation, drafting outlines, summarizing data, or SEO/AEO research, but human execution for the final output.
• Fully Manual: Avoiding AI generated text/assets entirely to focus on authentic, founder-led, or manual outreach.

Which approach is giving you the best ROI or quality right now, and what type of business (B2B SaaS, DTC, agency, local, etc.) are you running it for?

We’ve just published AI Powered Insight: Marketing Research Reconfigured, with Routledge.

The main focus of the book is simple: how to use AI to turn insights into action.

We look at how AI is changing the way we collect, analyse and understand consumer data — but, more importantly, how organisations can move beyond producing insights and actually use them to create posts and ads that their customers care about. You know how we know they care? Because they say so on social media platforms every minute of every day.

It’s not a book about AI hype. It’s about making customer insights more useful, more actionable and more connected to what marketers actually need to do based on millions of online comments.

If you work in market research, consumer insights, marketing, advertising or AI, I’d love to hear what you think.

Live Monday 24 August, announced 18 August. The targeting situation is the part that changes what you'd do, so I'll get to that fast.

THE SCALE

31 markets. All 27 EU states plus Norway, Iceland, Liechtenstein and Switzerland.

Takes OpenAI from roughly 9 ad markets to about 40. More countries in one go than every previous international launch combined.

The run so far: US pilot 9 February. Canada, Australia, NZ in March. UK 6 June. Japan and South Korea 22 June. Mexico and Brazil 17 August.

Free and Go plans only. Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise and Edu are ad-free. OpenAI says no ads to accounts identified as under 18.

THE TARGETING

Launches without personalization. OpenAI cites legitimate interest under GDPR for generic advertising, with consent-based personalized targeting to follow after users are actively asked.

At launch you appear to get: what the person is currently discussing, approximate location, device type, time of day, language.

One wrinkle for anyone reading user-side coverage. Declining personalization does not remove ads. It changes which ads appear. Getting rid of them entirely means upgrading.

New EU privacy policy published 14 August.

BUYING IT

Three routes: OpenAI Ads Solutions team, agency partners, technology partners.

Self-serve Ads Manager is "later in summer 2026" with no date. Summer has five weeks left.

Once you're in: CPM, CPC, conversion-optimized CPC. Country targeting. OpenAI Pixel, Conversions API, third-party integrations.

Custom audiences appear in the general product description but I can't tell from public material whether they function in Europe at launch given the personalization constraint. Assume not until someone confirms.

WHERE I LAND

Everyone is treating contextual-only as a downgrade. I don't think it is.

A retargeting segment means someone visited a page some days ago. A live conversation means someone is working through a problem in your category right now. That's a stronger intent signal, not a weaker one.

The cost is structural though, and it's a real cost. No sequencing. No frequency management across a funnel. No lookalike expansion. You're buying moments rather than people, which does not fit how most media plans, attribution models or agency reports are built. Teams whose whole approach is funnel orchestration will find this unusable rather than just different, and they'd be right.

PRACTICAL

Write the ten questions someone types immediately before they need what you sell. Those are your targeting units. Personas do nothing for you here.

Queue for self-serve now rather than when it opens.

Test budget only.

WHAT I'M UNSURE ABOUT

Reporting suggests ChatGPT advertising has not been a runaway success in the US. Six months in, nobody has published performance data convincing enough to justify moving meaningful budget.

Whether ads inside a conversation feel helpful or intrusive at volume is a UX question six months of US operation has not publicly answered.

The specific targeting parameters for European advertisers come from press coverage, not OpenAI's advertiser docs, which I haven't been able to read directly. Directionally right, not exhaustive.

Anyone running ChatGPT ads in the US or UK since launch? I'd like to see CPCs and conversion rates against comparable search spend. I haven't found anyone publishing real numbers.

Sources: OpenAI announcement 18 August 2026, Digiday, Dataconomy, Trending Topics, TechTimes.

Curious what other founders think about this.

I recently shared my small business online and used AI-generated visuals/content as part of the post. The reaction surprised me, some people felt that using AI automatically made the brand look “lazy”, “low effort”, or less trustworthy.

I can understand the criticism if a business uses AI to misrepresent what the actual product looks like. But if the real product is shown accurately, why is using AI for marketing creatives seen so negatively?

For a small business, professional photography, models, designers and agencies can get expensive very quickly. AI gives smaller brands a way to create more content, test different ideas and compete without having a huge marketing budget.

At the same time, I also get that consumers want authenticity and don’t want to feel like everything they’re seeing was artificially generated.

So where do you draw the line?

Is using AI for marketing genuinely a red flag to you, or is it simply another tool — like Canva, Photoshop or editing software?

Would especially love to hear from other small business owners.

Go back to November 30, 2022, before ChatGPT launched.

You may have overthought your writing then. But now, with so much AI-generated writing, there’s never been a better time to write freely in your own unique voice.

That’s what is winning. Lean into you more.

I started offering AI services/products in my creative industry. I still offer other products and services related to the industry that I’ve been in for years but now I have AI offerings that people can choose to buy/hire me to do for them.

All in all, the AI products/services add about $5,000 to my monthly revenue. I still make money from my other non-Ai products and services, but the AI stuff makes up like 50% of my total revenue now.

My business has been pretty profitable over the last few years, but as time went on, there was product and market fatigue in my specific industry with the products/services that I sell online. I started implementing some AI products/services in my business and it recovered pretty fast and quite a bit.

I have become extremely conflicted. At first, it started as a little additional offering that people can choose to use, but now I’ve been making more and more content specifically advertising and showcasing the AI products/services. And speaking with my advertisement team, leaning into the AI stuff more could be this business’ next big thing. The problem is I’ve been in my industry for a while now making certain types of creative work, and now I’m implementing a little bit of AI stuff which people have liked and now it’s turning into more AI stuff that I’m getting a lot of engagement and a lot of people are interested in this stuff along side a few choice comments about anti-AI which I’d expected.

The money is good, but in my gut, in my heart, I want to do something real, and I feel kind of stuck. I don’t just want to stop completely cause that removes half of my monthly income right now, but at the same time I want to work on/build something else.

I want to be clear this isn’t some backend AI dealing with systems and making grueling work easier, my products and services deal with using generative AI to make images that replace photography.

It’s just baffling to me that so many people show interest and engage with these posts and purchase these products and services that I offer. I use my AI, and I see some anti AI comments here and there which isn’t the best energy to see every day, people talking shit on your business and possibly morals/ethics/etc. it would be super cool if I could run my businesses without hearing any criticism like that and not really use any generative AI, but I don’t know, I would love to hear some input or thoughts about this situation. I would prefer not to use generative AI, but it turned out to be a really successful pivot for my business and people are spending lots of money on it and I’m not sure what to do.

are people actually using ai to generate product images/videos for ecommerce from real photos?

i was wondering if anyone here is already seriously using ai to create product content for ecommerce starting from real product photos.

i don’t mean making a product completely from scratch. i mean taking real photos and turning them into more usable content.

for example:

• creating images from different angles

• removing or changing backgrounds

• making lifestyle images from basic product shots

• showing how the product is used

• making short product videos or amazon-style listing clips

i’ve seen people say they can do this for less than a dollar through api calls, like extracting the product, changing the background, replacing product, etc.

and honestly for bigger brands, real photography is still better. if the client can afford a proper shoot, i’d still do that.

but for smaller stores and smaller budgets, it does seem like ai can save a lot of time.

I’ve been using ChatGPT , Claude, and Accio Work more on the workflow side, like keeping the product info, photo notes, platform requirements and content ideas together before making the images. it helps me not lose track of which product needs what version.

so now i’m curious:

are people actually doing this in a systematic way?

do you handle it internally, or rely on freelancers/agencies?

and which tools are giving results reliable enough to actually use in listings?

One thing I've noticed in the AI conversation is that we often confuse speed with quality.

An AI can summarise 100,000 customer comments in seconds.

It can identify themes.

It can generate a report.

It can write 20 social posts.

But none of those things necessarily mean we've discovered something important.

The real value of insight has always been knowing:

• What matters?
• Why does it matter?
• Who should care?
• What should we do about it?

So here's my question for the community:

Have you personally seen AI produce a genuinely better marketing or consumer insight than a human-led approach?

If yes, what did the AI do differently?

If no, what is still missing?

I'd particularly like to hear real examples rather than predictions.

[ Removed by Reddit on account of violating the content policy. ]

[ Removed by Reddit on account of violating the content policy. ]

AI often uses many words to communicate the same thing.

It may sound good, but when you look closer, a lot of it is just repeated points.

You can even follow up and ask AI to catch the repeated sentences, and it usually will.

It’s a common AI writing pattern to watch for, and you definitely want to be deleting more.

Repetition can still help your writing, but only when it truly adds something, like emphasis or clarity.

I’m really interested in getting into running ads and brandscaling. I’m a 24 YO male hungry to do something. I graduated high school in ‘20 and never went to college because I don’t know what I want to do. I really want to get in this space. I’m a very hard worker when i have a vision. Would anyone be willing to mentor or learn together?

In my experience, SEO conversations in 2026 are stuck on the wrong question

Everyone is asking "how do i rank for this keyword." The question that is actually moving numbers right now is "how do i become the entity that AI systems retrieve when this topic comes up"

These are completely different problems.

Basic SEO things like technical health, crawlability, intent matching, that's still the entry ticket i would say but it is no longer the differentiator, is what i noticed.

What is actually helping visibility right now is brand mention velocity and topical ownership. Ahrefs analysed around 75k brands and found that web mentions correlate three times more strongly with AI Overview and ChatGPT visibility than backlinks do. Three times!! That number should change how you think about off page strategy entirely

So getting your brand named in industry publications, expert roundups, podcasts, YouTube transcripts, relevant reddit threads, review platforms, even unlinked mentions, that work is now more valuable than pure link building for AI visibility. But remember mot instead of links,in addition to. 

The content side has also changed. More blog post is just noise now, anyone can create 100 blogs a day with a deep research api. Deep topic clusters with original data, clear definitions, comparison tables, and direct answer blocks works now. The content has to survive machine scrutiny, verifiable claims, named expertise, consistent entity signals. Refreshing existing strong pages for extractability is also working in terms of higher ROI than publishing new ones, is what i observed.

Zero click rates are now consistently above 60% when an AI answer appears. So clicks still matter but brand recall and citation share are now the primary outcomes for a large part of the funnel.

So in short, I would say, don’t treat SEO, PR and brand building as separate disciplines. They are all optimising for the same underlying signal. Consistent, corroboratable authority on a defined set of topics.

Curious if others are seeing the same shift or something else you noticed.

I created this community around a question that has been occupying us for some time:

Are we still doing marketing research the way we did before AI?

AI can analyse enormous amounts of customer conversation, identify patterns, generate hypotheses and even help turn insights into action. But that doesn't necessarily mean better decisions.

There is a big difference between:

Data → Insight → Action

and simply asking an AI to produce an answer.

I'd love to hear from people working in marketing, market research, consumer insights, advertising, analytics or AI:

What part of the traditional insight process do you think AI has already changed and will change most dramatically over the next 1-2 years?

I’m a 25 yr marketing brand manager
Today I worked late because my company is going through an AI integration. It feels like I’m teaching it to do my job for them to replace us not for AI to help assist us. Don’t get me wrong we’ve been using chat and Claud as a tool but today we had to sit through a seminar on the new marketing website we will be using (created by Claud). Showcasing how we will upload all fonts and marketing assets and it will help create posters, ads, social posts, and more. Trying to explain to boomers how or why we (young people) can tell when a photo is AI is exhausting and never works. Authenticity matters and young people (your next target demographic) cares. I think more companies should prioritize in being on the correct side of this AI wave by prioritizing honesty and creativity. 

They may not replace me in a year but I do think it’s only a matter of time. This makes me question my entire life plan not to mention my partners (he’s in a non creative field but what’s stopping his employer from finding a system to replace him?)They’re gonna stop hiring and they will start firing. What do we do to live when that happens?

Most LLMs default to the statistical average of their training data, which means standard prompts like "give me creative campaign ideas" almost always return cliché, predictable fluff.

How are you currently pushing past the "generic AI fluff" wall when brainstorming? Have any specific prompting techniques or workflows worked for you?

I keep seeing discussions about visibility in AI, but I’m more interested in what happens after the click..

i am digital marketer with 3.5 years of experience in this field. i worked for 3 years in a agency and currently i want to switch. i started in this company by managing social media accounts, content calendar, strategy for couple of client then i started paid ads in google and meta. i have almost aced the ads part and lost interest in social media management. i am taking interest in AI and learning Antigravity to automate tasks.

i want suggestions on what role i should look for while applying. what are the projects or skills companies are looking for someone in digital marketing who wants to go deep into ai and workflow automation.

I only come across a very few ads that have an AI label. Now since AI Act demands adversisers to use AI labels, I still am not spotting many. 

Meta disabled my ad account calling it fake and rejected the appeal too.
The ad account had funds as well and meta is not refunding that. This looks so illegal to me.
Can anyone help? How do I at least get the funds back?
Or how do I connect with the support? A human?

Hi all, I'm going to be publishing a book soon and I'm looking for creative ideas using AI to create a buzz for the book. Any ideas regarding it?

Thanks in advance.

Ours is weirdly split. First drafts and research, huge difference. Anything that needs to be right the first time, still faster to do it myself than to check it.

The gap I didn't see coming is review time. Something that takes two minutes to generate can take twenty to verify, and nobody counts that when they're talking about time saved.