Walled Gardens’ AI is not the solution CMOs need

Meta’s plan to fully automate advertising with AI by 2026 is a powerful vision. Soon, with just a few inputs, brands will be able to generate campaigns on Facebook and Instagram that are dynamically tailored to individuals, optimized in real time and delivered with minimal human intervention.

But here’s the problem: this vision only exists within Meta’s walls. In this model, AI is designed to serve the platform’s interests, not the brand’s strategic goals.

While automation may be convenient for smaller advertisers, it raises critical questions for CMOs managing multi-million-dollar, cross-channel budgets. CMOs develop plans that adapt to evolving market dynamics, including consumer trends, breaking news, seasonal shifts and even viral moments. A walled garden’s AI can’t account for holistic agility, which isn’t helping; it’s restrictive and limiting.

Setting the right agenda for AI

AI should not be a closed-loop system that makes decisions in isolation. It should be an open, strategic tool that allows CMOs to guide, adjust and learn from media performance across all channels: social, display, CTV, retail media, audio, digital out-of-home and more.

Platforms like Meta, Amazon and Google have long offered rich targeting, which is now made more powerful by built-in AI solutions that optimize performance, but only within the boundaries of the platform itself. The challenge is that they offer little visibility or interoperability, so advertisers often sacrifice data ownership, insight and long-term brand value.

Marketers are being asked to invest heavily in ecosystems where they can’t see their audience, cannot port insights elsewhere and cannot unify measurement across platforms. As a result, CMOs risk building a strategy around short-term metrics instead of long-term growth.

Augmenting a human-led strategy

The value of AI in advertising lies in augmenting a human-led strategy, not replacing it. AI needs to enable marketers to influence decisions based on more than just past performance.

But to do this, marketers need clear insight into how AI makes choices, where budgets are going and what results are being achieved. They need the option to shift spending flexibility and quickly if — and when — market dynamics change throughout a campaign. And they need consistent, cross-channel attribution that reflects the actual impact of the campaign beyond what a single platform reports.

Given this understanding, there is a growing push among marketers for AI that works across the entire digital landscape. Open frameworks, such as Prebid or OpenRTB, allow advertisers to see and control their supply chain, optimize in real time and align media strategy with business goals.

This is not just a technical preference, it’s a strategic imperative. CMOs need AI that plugs into their strategy, not a system that forces them to conform to someone else’s logic.

Let CMOs drive the future of AI

If AI becomes just another layer of platform automation, it risks turning marketing into a black box that serves the seller rather than the buyer.

But if AI is built around the CMO’s vision — designed to enhance strategic planning, real-time agility and full-funnel insight — then it becomes a powerful engine for growth.

Platforms shouldn’t dictate the future of advertising. It should be built by the people who understand the audience and the business. That’s not a future of automation for automation’s sake. That’s AI as a strategic tool, on the CMO’s terms.

This op-ed represents the views and opinions of the author and not of The Current, a division of The Trade Desk, or The Trade Desk. The appearance of the op-ed on The Current does not constitute an endorsement by The Current or The Trade Desk.