Inspired by Digital Marketing in an AI World by Frederick Vallaeys
In just a few years, Google Ads has gone from being a manual tool in which every bid and ad is adjusted by hand to a platform that is largely helmed by artificial intelligence (AI). Adjustments to CPC, ad creation, and even audience selection are now the responsibility of algorithms that can process thousands of signals in real time that would otherwise be impossible for a human to analyze.
Smart Bidding, Responsive Search Ads, Performance Max campaigns... all formats and strategies in which a machine makes the decisions, thereby promising gains in both performance and time. The result? Managing advertising is becoming more accessible for the inexperienced and faster for the experts.
But a profound transformation lies hidden behind this simplification: a transfer of control from the hands of marketers to a closed system in which Google acts as both referee and coach.
This context is forcing advertisers to rethink their role and surround themselves with expertise in order to transform automation into a tool that is truly strategic.
Automation doesn't just transform how a Google Ads campaign is optimized, but also whose responsibility it is.
Seduced by solutions like Smart Bidding or Performance Max, more and more companies are managing media internally. What used to require teams of specialists can now be handled internally by a reduced workforce, and sometimes even by a single skilled marketer.
In this new context, technical specialists are losing ground, since AI is taking on operational execution, while teams are repositioning more around management and strategy. For decision makers, the reasoning is simple: reduced costs, better reactivity, and better control over data internally.
This certainly sounds great. But at what cost?
The Google Ads AI excels at execution: real-time bidding, multiple-signal processing, continuous optimization. But certain roles remain irreducibly human: understanding the real objectives of a business, interpreting a market context, challenging automated recommendations, and reassigning media decisions to the domain of business strategy.
But not all teams have the same ability to play this critical role. An internal team may be able to use automated tools effectively, but an expert agency brings advantages that are hard to replicate:
In other words, AI is handling the mechanics, but it's humans supported by a specialized agency with experience in business intelligence that set the course. This is where you get true added value—by exploiting the machine without becoming dependent and returning strategy to its central role.
AI has deeply transformed Google Ads, making the platform more powerful... but also more of a black box. For companies, the real issue is no longer launching a campaign, but understanding how to stay at the helm of a system whose control knobs are slowly disappearing.
This problem won't be resolved by opposing humans and machines—it's about working together. AI excels at execution, but only human expertise can ask the right questions, interpret weak signals, and return media decisions to the domain of business vision.
At adviso, we help advertisers find this balance. Our role is to transform automation into a competitive advantage, anticipate platform evolutions, and translate the complexity of Google Ads into simple, aligned, profitable decisions.