This year, I’ve had over 20 long conversations – some lasting three hours – with senior marketers managing annual digital ad spends between $5 million and $20 million. They’re seasoned professionals, yet every conversation hits the same nerve:

RoAS from digital advertising isn’t just low. It’s unacceptably low.

Many* digital campaigns are returning only 30 to 70 cents for every dollar invested. 

(*Campaigns my firm doesn’t handle. Of course I’d say that, wouldn’t I?)

Why? 

Because marketers are increasingly relying on automated tools like Meta’s Advantage+ and Google’s Performance Max (PMax). 

And the results aren’t pretty.

So why are so many smart people trusting algorithms so blindly? Because the ‘experts’ insist they should. Just look at what Mark Zuckerberg said during Meta’s earnings call in May 2025:

“[AI will] improve recommendations, so that any business [...] can just come to us, not have to produce any content, not have to know anything about their customers.”

He also stated:

“Over the last 5 to 10 years, we’ve basically gotten to the point where we effectively discourage businesses from trying to limit the targeting.”

And:

“We believe at this point that we are just better at finding the people who are going to resonate with your product – than you are.”

Sounds like someone’s been hitting the Kool-Aid pretty hard.

Two quick observations:

1. Meta isn’t even the biggest player – Alphabet remains #1 globally, with most clients allocating their largest ad budgets to Google.

2. Meta’s Advantage+ – their flagship AI-driven toolset – consistently underwhelms. For many of our agency’s new clients, audits of their existing work routinely show returns between 30 to 70 cents per dollar spent. Negative returns are commonplace.

Zuckerberg’s pitch essentially says, “Give us your cash, and we’ll do the rest”. But turning over your budget to automation without oversight isn’t strategic – it’s gambling.

Ask yourself honestly: Would you trust anyone encouraging you to take a similar approach with your bank or stock market investments? Press a button, sit back, and you can watch the guaranteed 2x or 3x returns flow in?

Exactly. Me neither.

Algorithms aren’t ready to fully replace us because digital marketing isn’t black and white – it’s nuanced shades of grey. AI still needs human insight to guide it, not vice versa.