AI in paid media comes in two distinct forms, and conflating them creates confusion.
The first is the kind you actively reach for – ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini. You use these to write ad copy faster, brief creative, summarise performance data, or stress-test a strategy. They’re utilities. Useful ones, but tools you control.
The second is the kind you don’t see – the AI baked into the platforms themselves. Smart Bidding. Meta’s delivery algorithm. Performance Max. These aren’t things you open in a tab. They’re running continuously underneath your campaigns, deciding who sees your ads, when, and at what cost.
This piece is about the second kind. And understanding that distinction matters, because the implications for how you work are completely different.
PPC: From keywords to intent signals
PPC used to feel very manual. You picked keywords, you matched searches, and you controlled where things showed up. That version of PPC still exists, but it’s no longer the main way performance is driven.
Google now leans heavily on AI to interpret intent rather than exact search terms. Smart Bidding decides bids in real time. Broad match expands reach beyond what you explicitly choose, and Performance Max spreads delivery across multiple surfaces without much visibility into the details.
It can feel like control has been reduced – but that’s only true at the surface level.
The real control has moved into inputs. If your conversion tracking is weak, the system guesses. If your data is strong, it learns quickly and performs well. PPC has become less about managing keywords and more about teaching the algorithm what a good customer actually looks like.
The work is still there. It just happens earlier in the process now than it did before.
Paid Social: From targeting to creative
Paid Social has gone through a similar shift, but in a different direction. Platforms like Meta and TikTok have gradually removed the need for detailed audience building. Instead of advertisers defining exactly who should see an ad, the algorithm now finds the people most likely to respond.
That changes the focus completely. Targeting is no longer where performance is won or lost. Creative is.
The difference between a strong and weak campaign is often just the ad itself. The hook. The first second. The angle. The clarity of the message. The ability to stop someone mid-scroll. So instead of obsessing over audiences, advertisers now spend more time on variation, testing, and creative volume.
Paid Social hasn’t become simpler. It has just shifted its complexity into creative execution. We’re all guilty of shorter attention spans, which only reinforces the need for ads to stop us in our doom-scrolling tracks.
What actually drives performance now?
Across both PPC and Paid Social, the biggest change isn’t loss of control. It’s the rise of systems that optimise continuously in the background.
Campaigns now adjust themselves in real time based on behavioural and conversion signals, many of which advertisers don’t directly see. Performance improves or declines depending on what the system is being fed, not how often someone tweaks settings.
But advertisers are still very much part of that system.
They decide what gets measured. What counts as success. What the algorithm should optimise towards. And what messages are used to influence behaviour. Those decisions shape everything downstream.
So while it might feel like platforms are “doing more,” the reality is that advertisers are designing the environment those systems operate within – and increasingly, using generative AI tools to do it faster and sharper than before.
It’s just a different kind of control. Less visible, but arguably more important.
The Job Hasn’t Gone. It’s Just Different.
AI hasn’t taken advertisers out of paid media. It has changed what their job looks like inside it.
Platform AI handles optimisation and delivery. Generative AI tools help advertisers think, create, and move quicker. Both are now part of the job – but they’re not the same job.
PPC is about shaping intent through data and signals. Paid Social is about shaping response through creative and messaging. In both cases, advertisers still decide the direction, the inputs, and what success actually means.
The work hasn’t gone away. It has just become less about controlling the system, and more about building one worth scaling.
Words by: Amy Rowell
Amy Rowell is a Paid Media Manager here at SQUIDGY, specialising in paid search and online advertising. Amy shares insights on campaign management, audience targeting and maximising return on ad spend.
