Social media giant Meta’s recent layoffs have caused a significant upheaval in the advertising industry. Specifically, the company has been replacing its human account teams with Artificial Intelligence (AI) and chatbots. This change has ruffled many advertisers who feel sidelined and stripped of their premium services.
One instance involved a Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) whose entire Meta account team got downsized and overhauled without prior consultation. Although they never worked directly with the previous account manager, they felt entitled to inter-human communication due to their considerable ad expenditure. The agency executive they raised this issue with noted that a real-life human presence was desirable but not entirely necessary.
Last year, 20,000 job losses at Meta created a significant disruption in the advertising sector. Despite the layoffs being reductions rather than full automation, they paved way for a wave of dissatisfaction among marketers. Many felt short-changed, citing that they were not getting the service value that corresponded with what they were paying.
Despite its challenges, including encountering bugs, Meta continues to tower above other social platforms due to the considerable amounts being funneled into it. Notably, they are gradually replacing human teams and services with AI and chatbots. Despite these limitations, marketers feel obliged to stick with Meta due to its superiority over other platforms.
Ironically, some marketers confided that their entire Meta account teams did not impact their business significantly. Hence, upon notification that their account team was becoming more automated, their frustrations gradually turned into submission. The marketer contended that their account was laden with people whose job roles were undefined or unresponsive to requests.
Albeit gruesome, the downsizing forced the realization of how overstaffed these teams were. Previously, account teams would have between five and ten people serving the same advertiser across local, regional, and global marketing divisions. Those teams have now been whittled down to two or three people.
Marketers who evaded the downsizing still felt the pressure on Meta to deliver more with less. Existing Meta account executives are being stretched thin, taking on extra responsibilities from account management to ad operations. Despite this, they don’t expect Meta to automate the process regardless of the advertiser’s budget size.
With the improvement of Advantage Plus, Meta is plainly pushing toward automating ad operations. However, this transition is handing over control of ad operations to Meta, depriving advertisers of access to analytics and insights.
The shift toward automation is frustrating for marketers who feel they are losing control over measurements. Trust shifts to algorithms and away from integrated measurements, which is counterproductive for brands leveraging Advantage Plus.
Communication, or rather the absence of it, is a crucial issue. Ad executives lamented the lack of sufficient help and communication in adapting to these changes. It leaves advertisers feeling that Meta has handled these changes in a high-handed manner.
Despite these challenges, Meta’s modifications are all in an effort to optimize its digital ecosystem, with the aim of maximizing ad revenue opportunities at all given platforms. The shift toward AI is likely to persist as Meta seeks a progressive balance between costs, profit, and investor satisfaction in maintaining a potent stock price.
Meta’s regular team restructuring, sometimes happening every quarter or even twice per year, is part of their aggressive push for increased ad revenue. They aim to lean away from handling tasks like troubleshooting system bugs or campaign problems and focus more on strategic optimization of investments on platforms like Instagram and Facebook.
Source: Meta’s layoffs continue to impact advertisers as the company replaces account team members with AI}}.
