{"slug": "is-ai-already-good-enough-to-create-the-missing-online-advertising-boom", "title": "Is AI already good enough to create the missing online advertising boom?", "summary": "A new analysis of the top 60 advertisers from 2009 to 2024 shows that 40 of them, or two-thirds, saw their growth rates fall below nominal GDP growth, despite heavy use of programmatic advertising from Google and Meta. The report argues that the duopoly's control over ad measurement creates an illusion of effectiveness, while Meta's revenue rose 28% but claimed conversions only increased 15.7%, squeezing customer acquisition costs. The piece suggests that open AI models could offer alternatives to the current surveillance advertising system.", "body_md": "**previously:** [Prediction from the AI-max\ntimeline: Vibeshop](https://blog.zgp.org/vibeshop/)\n\nOnline advertising is still stuck in its own version of the [productivity\nparadox](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Productivity_paradox) faced by pre-Internet IT. Back then, Robert Solow said, “You\ncan see the computer age everywhere but in the productivity statistics.”\nAnd now, Michael Farmer is pointing out that today’s surveillance\nadvertising is [Ineffective\nfor Many Advertisers and Unhealthy for Democracy](https://michaelfarmer.substack.com/p/ad-tech-which-creates-audience-balkanization).\n\nAnalyses of the revenue performance of the top 60 advertisers between 2009 and 2024 show that 40 advertisers, or 2/3rds of this group, all of them major programmatic users, saw their growth rates fall below nominal GDP growth rates from 2009-2024.\n\nWhile the surveillance ad [duopoly](https://blog.zgp.org/living-with-a-bigger-ad-duopoly/)\ngrows, the brands that *use* their advertising, not so much. And\nthe squeeze is getting worse, not better. [Meta’s\nrevenue is up 28% while claimed conversions on Facebook are up\n15.7%](https://www.adweek.com/media/metas-tepid-revenue-outlook-undercuts-its-ai-spending-spree/)—the [customer\nacquisition cost squeeze](https://blog.zgp.org/living-with-a-bigger-ad-duopoly/) continues.\n\nWhile advertisers, on average, are doing worse, each individual\nadvertiser’s dashboard makes it look like their ad spend with the\nduopoly is a win. Because the duopoly controls the measurements. In [Why\nSocial Media’s Ad Dominance Is A Billion-Dollar Measurement\nIllusion](https://www.adexchanger.com/content-studio/why-social-medias-ad-dominance-is-a-billion-dollar-measurement-illusion/), Vicky Chang writes,\n\nMeta’s attribution infrastructure is clean, fast and easy to defend in a spreadsheet. A brand CMO can walk into a board meeting with an ROAS number, a cost per acquisition and a clear story. That’s not a small thing. Internal budget decisions rarely go to the channel that works best. They instead go to the channel that can be proven most clearly.\n\nBut much of it is an illusion.\n\nWhen a platform owns the measurement, it is more likely to push the narrative that the ads are working. The measurement models make that easy to do.\n\n(And yes, this is the same kind of racket that the duopoly companies\nare trying to push into the browser with the [attribution\ncartel](https://blog.zgp.org/the-advertising-cartel-coming-to-your-web-browser/) scheme at W3C.protip: if you’re running\nan industry organization, have an up-to-date antitrust policy and\nenforce it, or big companies will turn your meetings into a crime\nclubhouse.)\n\nSo if Google and Meta control the ad measurements that your boss\nsees, it’s game over, right? Staying in marketing means sending money to\nthe companies that [push\nthe next measles epidemic or dictatorship or whatever](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-08-06/ragebait-how-facebook-is-paying-controversial-creators/106940696), and there\ngoes the chance to support anything win-win? Brian Jacobs writes, in [Lessons from\nSpock](https://www.bjanda.com/blog/lessons-from-spock/),\n\nIf the professionals know this is crazy, and if they are as well informed as they are, why do their clients do the exact opposite to what logic suggests they should do? Are agencies these days so removed from the real decision makers in client companies that nobody with any real say over budget allocation cares about, or even hears their advice?\n\nOr are agencies so complicit in the hopeless placing of their clients’ ads that they would rather keep quiet?\n\nBut what if that dismal, centrally-planned future doesn’t happen, and\nmarkets can win? Meta and Google were early adopters of machine\nlearning, for their own villainous ends, but other AI projects,\nincluding [“open”\nLLMs](https://newsletter.semianalysis.com/p/are-open-models-catching-up), are catching up.\n\nRick Bruner suggests borrowing some ML techniques from Big Tech and\nrunning them under control of the individual brand, in [RCTs\nAren’t Just Backward-Looking. They’re Training Data for Optimization\nModels](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/rcts-arent-just-backward-looking-theyre-training-data-rick-bruner-egmmc/)\n\nImagine instead a platform offering RCT incrementality testing transparently to advertisers while accumulating those experiments into its own causal benchmark. Advertisers get causal proof; the platform builds a valuable knowledge base; and the evidence improves its models and optimization systems.\n\nWith that kind of project in place, advertising decision-makers would\nhave an alternative to those slick Google and Meta measurements that\nback up the decision to dump more ad money into Google and Meta. A\nmarketer who wants to branch off from the [dystopia\ntimeline](https://rjionline.org/news/big-techs-economic-takeover-can-be-beat/) can vibe code a measurement tool that could show how\nfeeding money and customer data to the ad duopoly has lower ROAS than\nthe positive-sum options.\n\nI don’t think that kind of shift would happen on its own, though.\n\nMarketing decision-makers will need some kind of crisis to not waste.\n\nMore later.\n\n[The\nMulti-App Strategy That Helped Me Earn More Without Working Longer](https://therideshareguy.com/the-multi-app-strategy-that-helped-me-earn-more-without-working-longer/)\nby Sergio Avedian. (More platform choices means more money.)\n\n[Trump\ntried to curb clean energy. It’s booming anyway.](https://arstechnica.com/science/2026/08/trump-tried-to-curb-clean-energy-its-booming-anyway/) by Martha Muir.\nProducers can break even by selling solar and wind power for as\nlittle as $38 and $37 per megawatt-hour, respectively, compared to at\nleast $48 per megawatt-hour for gas, according to investment bank\nLazard.\n\n[Daily\nReminder To Not Listen To Google’s AI Overview](https://whatever.scalzi.com/2026/08/19/daily-reminder-to-not-listen-to-googles-ai-overview/) by Athena Scalzi.\nPlease please please stop Googling things, looking at the AI\nOverview, and assuming it has given you the correct answer to your\nquery. Don’t trust Google AI with anything, even with inconsequential\nthings! Because it will, and DOES, lie to you.\n\n(You can still [fix Google Search](https://blog.zgp.org/fix-google-search/) to\nremove the slop.)", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/is-ai-already-good-enough-to-create-the-missing-online-advertising-boom", "canonical_source": "https://blog.zgp.org/is-ai-already-good-enough-to-create-the-missing-online-advertising-boom/", "published_at": "2026-08-25 00:00:00+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-08-25 22:42:34.272244+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["artificial-intelligence", "ai-policy"], "entities": ["Google", "Meta", "Michael Farmer", "Vicky Chang", "Brian Jacobs", "Rick Bruner", "W3C"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/is-ai-already-good-enough-to-create-the-missing-online-advertising-boom", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/is-ai-already-good-enough-to-create-the-missing-online-advertising-boom.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/is-ai-already-good-enough-to-create-the-missing-online-advertising-boom.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/is-ai-already-good-enough-to-create-the-missing-online-advertising-boom.jsonld"}}