{"slug": "with-ai-ad-tools-expanding-meta-courts-agencies-while-reshaping-their-role", "title": "With AI ad tools expanding, Meta courts agencies while reshaping their role", "summary": "Meta is expanding its AI-powered ad tools while reassuring agencies of their continued importance, as the company expects to surpass Google in digital ad revenue for the first time this year with a projected $243.46 billion by 2026.", "body_md": "# With AI ad tools expanding, Meta courts agencies while reshaping their role\n\nDigiday covers the latest from marketing and media at the annual Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. [More from the series →](https://digiday.com/series/cannes/)\n\nSubscribe: [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-digiday-podcast/id962605432) • [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/show/21TOeNMf1BLdSlQEdJ2rYY)\n\nA shift is underway across the ad industry. Platforms are rolling out more automated marketing tools, lowering the barrier to entry for advertisers to manage campaigns directly. Agencies, long since tasked with managing those relationships, are on alert.\n\nEven as the tools change, Nicola Mendelsohn, Meta’s head of global business group, aimed to quell any advertiser anxiety at this year’s Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.\n\n“Agencies are our critical partners here,” Mendelsohn said. She added, “How they see it as an acceleration of getting more insights for their creative will help them more with their advertisers.” The Meta exec spoke on a recent episode of the Digiday Podcast recorded during the Cannes Lions festival.\n\nEven as the language leads itself to agency partnership, the ad tools point toward a more automated ad system within Meta’s ecosystem.\n\nThe platform [made a series of announcements at the festival](https://www.facebook.com/business/news/cannes-2026-cross-ai-threshold), including expanded ad tools, a unified creator marketplace hub and AI-powered end-to-end creative solutions. With the updates, creative and media teams can share a new Meta software tool to understand what ads are performing and generate new ones. There’s also a “brand memory” feature that learns about a brand’s identity from existing ads and brings those insights into the creative generation capabilities within the tool, per Meta.\n\nMeta also announced plans to collaborate with WPP to bring its revamped AI ad tool experience to WPP Open, the holdco’s agentic marketing platform.\n\nMeta’s AI and automated ad tools bet seems to be paying off — even if marketers [continue to gripe ](https://digiday.com/marketing/google-doesnt-care-that-its-terrible-brand-agency-execs-air-frustrations-with-the-trade-desk-googles-performance-max-metas-advantage/)about Advantage+’s so-called black box nature. [According to eMarketer,](http://emarketer.com/learningcenter/guides/meta-to-surpass-google-in-digital-ad-revenues-for-first-time-ever/) Meta is set to surpass Google in digital ad revenue for the first time ever this year. The social network is expected to rake in $243.46 billion by 2026 in comparison to Google’s projected $239.54 billion.\n\nWith those dollars in mind, Meta is currently prioritizing scaling agentic experiences for larger enterprise advertisers, Mendelsohn said. Meta also plans to continue investing heavily in their AI suite to iterate on existing tools and deliver even stronger returns on ad spend. (The exec did not share specific spend figures).\n\n### More in Podcasts\n\n####\n[\nSpotify rebuilds ad business around automation, AI to secure bigger media budgets ](https://digiday.com/podcasts/spotify-rebuilds-ad-business-around-automation-ai-to-secure-bigger-media-budgets/)\n\nSpotify is expanding its ad business beyond audio with automation, AI and video as it competes for larger platform budgets.\n\n####\n[\nWhat are digital twins? Marketers weigh the opportunities and risks ](https://digiday.com/podcasts/what-are-digital-twins-marketers-weigh-the-opportunities-and-risks/)\n\nDigital twins are helping brands scale content and talent deals. Marketers are still navigating the tradeoffs.\n\n####\n[\nHow automation and AI is reshaping the traditional upfront marketplace ](https://digiday.com/podcasts/how-automation-and-ai-is-reshaping-the-traditional-upfront-marketplace/)\n\nAs programmatic automation and AI agents reshape the traditional upfront marketplace, media buyers are navigating a new balance.", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/with-ai-ad-tools-expanding-meta-courts-agencies-while-reshaping-their-role", "canonical_source": "https://digiday.com/podcasts/with-ai-ad-tools-expanding-meta-courts-agencies-while-reshaping-their-role/?utm_campaign=digidaydis&utm_medium=rss&utm_source=general-rss", "published_at": "2026-06-25 04:01:00+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-06-25 04:24:41.041955+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["artificial-intelligence", "ai-products", "ai-tools", "generative-ai", "ai-agents"], "entities": ["Meta", "Google", "WPP", "Nicola Mendelsohn", "Advantage+", "eMarketer", "Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity", "Digiday"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/with-ai-ad-tools-expanding-meta-courts-agencies-while-reshaping-their-role", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/with-ai-ad-tools-expanding-meta-courts-agencies-while-reshaping-their-role.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/with-ai-ad-tools-expanding-meta-courts-agencies-while-reshaping-their-role.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/with-ai-ad-tools-expanding-meta-courts-agencies-while-reshaping-their-role.jsonld"}}