As TikTok rolls out Smart+, marketers grapple with AI’s advertising puzzle

Advertising on platforms is becoming a bit of a magic show, courtesy of AI. It’s the tantalizing promise of dazzling performance that keeps marketers captivated, ready to embrace the enigma – as long as the results sparkle.

In the end, it’s the outcome that matters to them, not the sleight of hand behind the curtain. For better or worse they accept that, whatever the outcome, they won’t grasp every detail of their campaign’s performance, trading transparency for the confidence that the results will likely outshine their own efforts.

Lauren Beerling, director of performance media, Collective Measures, summed it up: “The continued popularity of using these tools comes with the fact that the performance really is good on this kind of inventory. While it’s hard to trust, it’s also hard to argue with the incremental revenue these tools provide.”

Beerling’s comments get to the crux of why tools like this have become widely adopted by marketers and subsequently lucrative for platforms en masse. Ultimately, it’s a commercial decision: Marketers are willing to hand over the reins to a platform to manage their budgets because they’ve calculated that doing so will yield a higher return than if they managed it themselves – fully aware that some of that investment may go to waste.

That’s because these AI models are programmed to absorb as much of an advertiser’s spend as possible – so long as performance targets are being met.

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