U of Digital Newsletter - 6/4/25 (premium)

May 29th-June 3rd // Estimated Reading Time: 10 minutes

Below is a roundup of last week’s notable industry news, with summaries and our opinions. Zuck is skating to where the puck is going…

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Top Story 👁️

Meta Aims to Fully Automate Ad Creation Using AI🔒
Source: Wall Street Journal
June 2nd, 2025

Summary: Meta is pushing toward complete AI automation of advertising on its platforms by the end of 2026. In CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s vision of the future, businesses will simply provide a product image and budget, then Meta's AI will handle everything else—from creative generation, copywriting, and targeting to measurement and even real-time personalization based on user context.

Meta already has tools that let brands use AI to optimize creative and make different versions of ads, but the new capabilities would generate entirely new ads from scratch, including imagery, video, and text. They would also let brands hyper-personalize creative—such as showing snowy landscapes to users in cold climates while displaying a city backdrop for urban viewers.

Here's exactly what Zuck said to shareholders last week: “In the not-too-distant future, we want to get to a world where any business will be able to just tell us what objective they’re trying to achieve, like selling something or getting a new customer, how much they’re willing to pay for each result, and connect their bank account and then we just do the rest for them.”

Just "connect their bank account" — that's Zuckerberg’s dream, right? But not all advertisers are onboard, and some hesitate to give Meta even more control of their budgets, especially with its track record of insidiously grading its own homework. For smaller advertisers, however, these tools may help affordably create professional-looking ad campaigns and grow efficiently.

As Meta goes all-in on AI, the company is also looking to automate how it evaluates risks on its platforms. Meta will use AI to automate up to 90% of risk assessments performed on its platforms, including algorithm updates, content sharing, and safety features, rather than continue using human reviewers.

Opinion: Meta's AI automation push makes perfect sense—and everyone up in arms🔒 about Zuck "hating agencies" and "killing jobs" is being naive. AI automation is obviously where marketing is headed, and Meta controls 20%+ of the industry. Leading this charge is literally their job.

The near-term impact is obvious: AI will make advertising better. More precise targeting, personalized creative, real-time optimization, better measurement. That lifts all boats and raises the bar. Great!

But the long-term impact is more complicated. When Meta's AI generates thousands of "personalized" ad variants for millions of advertisers—all optimizing against the same signals and metrics—it paradoxically recreates what digital advertising was supposed to replace: homogenized mass marketing. Your apparel ads showing snow in Minnesota and beaches in Florida won't be eye-catching when every brand is able to execute the exact same playbook at scale. And in a way, this homogeneity will make advertising worse.

As AI-generated campaigns flood feeds, consumers will tune out. That's when human creativity becomes valuable again, not for executing basics but for creating authentic, unexpected marketing moments that an algorithm can’t replicate.

We don't know what that next generation of standout marketing looks like, but we're betting it won't come from letting Meta's AI "do the rest." The marketers who resist full automation and figure out where human insight still matters will write the playbook for what comes after this AI gold rush.

Other Notable Headlines

FTC Investigates Ad Groups and Watchdogs, Alleging Boycott Collusion🔒- Antitrust collusion or legitimate brand safety concerns? The US Federal Trade Commission sent letters to Media Matters, Ad Fontes Media, and a dozen other organizations asking for detailed records about their business practices, budgets, and communications, along with other materials to determine if they illegally coordinated advertiser boycotts. Everyone knows advertisers left X in droves after Elon Musk bought the platform and brand safety concerns escalated. Everyone also knows that Elon Musk’s X sued advertisers, Media Matters, and the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) over the boycotts, which led the World Federation of Advertisers to shut down GARM instead of fighting the lawsuit. Advertisers say they can spend their ad dollars to reflect their values and avoid appearing next to inflammatory content, but the FTC's new chair characterized it as a censorship of conservative views that threatens "the free exchange of ideas." Okay…

Snowflake to acquire database startup Crunchy Data - The independent cloud platform is the latest company to snap up a database startup to power AI agents, following recent moves by Salesforce (Informatica), ServiceNow (Data.World), and Alation (Numbers Station). The 13-year-old Crunchy Data provides tools to build with the popular open-source PostgreSQL database system, with clients like UPS and the Department of Homeland Security. This acquisition will enable Snowflake to launch "Snowflake Postgres," a PostgreSQL database that taps into what the company calls a "$350B market opportunity" to add Postgres to its AI Data Cloud. The new tech will be available in private preview soon.

Sharpening Its Edge, Prime Video Quietly Rolls Out Show-Level Ad-Reporting🔒- Amazon's streaming platform now offers marketers real-time visibility into which specific shows, genres, and content ratings their ads appear alongside—a first among major streaming services. While competitors like Paramount, Disney, and Peacock only provide this data in post-campaign reports, Prime Video has made it instantly accessible through the platform's "content details" section since late 2024. Marketers can also exclude up to five genres or content categories from campaigns, though they can't target or avoid individual titles. In addition, Amazon is also trying to lure advertisers to its ecosystem and keep them there with the promise of scale and a 1% tech fee for programmatic guaranteed deals on premium open web inventory, compared to 10% or more at other DSPs. The message from this pitch deck is clear: Amazon wants to be the DSP for all advertiser spend, not just Amazon-specific campaigns.

WPP Achieves The Media Singularity, Unveils Industry-First 'Large Marketing Model' - The agency holding company claims that its new "Open Intelligence" platform can process trillions of data signals to deliver predictive marketing insights across all channels and markets. The system combines client data with WPP's proprietary data and information from over 350 partners, including major platforms like Google, Meta, TikTok, and Microsoft. WPP says the model enables continuous optimization of audience segmentation, creative development, and media buying while generating predictive signals that can deliver campaigns that reach 5B people worldwide. WPP positions this as a breakthrough that allows marketers to train custom models based on their specific business objectives and make faster, ROI-improving decisions across owned, earned, shared, and paid media channels. In pilot tests, Open Intelligence reduced acquisition costs by 60% and increased revenue by 28%, according to WPP. The solution uses tech from its recent Infosum acquisition, so that marketers "never have to move, share, or expose your data."

Zeta: Incredibly Cheap Ahead Of Potential M&A Interest🔒- Zeta Global David Steinberg said the mar tech and data cloud company has been fielding interest from aspiring acquirers due to its healthy balance sheet. Here's what he said during the company's recent earnings call: "As you know, we'll continue to look at our M&A pillars, and we have a very, very strong balance sheet, and we're currently spending free cash flow on share buybacks. But quite frankly, I've been spending a disproportionate percentage of my time taking calls from people trying to buy us over the last few weeks. And that's been keeping us busy." Zeta Global has itself been the acquirer, scooping up about a company every year for the last seven years, most recently buying email marketing company LiveIntent for $250M in late 2024. A few months later, Zeta was fending off short seller reports alleging shady behavior, hitting its share price, which has declined even further since. Zeta joins a couple of other major ad tech companies that have been in the news as potential acquisition targets in Yahoo🔒 and Criteo🔒. It’s been awfully quiet lately, but we think major M&A might be on the horizon.

Other Notable Headlines
(that you should know about too) 🤓 

EY Joins Consultants’ Race for Marketing Dollars With New Unit🔒- The new EY Studio+ will combine EY's design, sales, marketing, and customer experience tech services to compete against other consultancies like Accenture and agency holding companies such as WPP and Publicis.

Paramount Cuts Ties With WPP Media After Two Decades🔒 - Entertainment giant Paramount fired WPP Media as its media agency of record after 20+ years, handing the business to Publicis as part of cost-cutting efforts ahead of its pending Skydance merger.

What does WPP Media’s course change actually mean for advertisers? - WPP has reorganized GroupM under the WPP Media banner and a single P&L model. The benefits: bespoke, cross-disciplinary teams that marry media, creative, and data capabilities, connected by WPP’s data businesses Choreograph and Infosum.

Donna Speciale to Exit TelevisaUnivision, Tim Natividad Named New Ad Sales Chief - Natividad joins TelevisaUnivision on June 9th after leading US enterprise sales at TikTok and holding other major roles at Amazon, Roku, and Google. No word on where TV ad vet Speciale will land. 

Target's Retail Media Network Roundel Shows Ad Revenue Growth Despite Retailer's Sales Dip - Roundel, Target's retail media network, generated $649M in ad revenue, up 25% from the year before.

Amazon Again Halts Google Shopping Ads - Amazon's presence in Google Shopping ad auctions has fallen off a cliff. It's unclear if it's a strategic pivot or sign of larger market dynamics at play.

Disney lays off hundreds in film, TV as industry woes linger - The layoffs are impacting employees in Disney's marketing, publicity, casting and development, and corporate financial operations.

In Touch, Life & Style, Closer and First for Women Magazines to Shutter, Lay Off Entire Staffs - The celebrity tabloids and women-focused magazines will close later this month.

That’s It For This Week 👋

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