James Murray
October 12, 2026
Good morning, it's James here. Last week at Advertising Week New York, Meta said its assistant will soon change your campaigns when you ask it to, and TikTok put its ads controls inside Claude and Perplexity. Agency executives told Digiday they want approval thresholds and human oversight on agent-run buying. Also, a Google Ads setting turns on by default today. It is at the bottom, and your paid search lead should see it before lunch.
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The Lead: Meta and TikTok Want Your AI to Buy the Ads
What happened. On Oct. 6, Meta said that advertisers will soon be able to plan a campaign, generate creative and change a budget by talking to its Meta AI business assistant. Meta says previews, approvals and controls will let advertisers decide what to hand over (Meta, translated by me from Meta's Spanish-language newsroom, the only version I could find). Meta also said its Ads MCP server supports more campaign workflows for large advertisers and agencies. MCP, or Model Context Protocol, is the standard that connects outside AI tools to a platform like Meta's.
TikTok's connector, unlike Meta's assistant, is live now. TikTok launched its MCP server in May, and on Oct. 6 it made the server available as a connector in Claude, Perplexity, Snowflake and several other AI tools, with the stated aim to "plan, launch, and manage advertising workflows with fewer manual steps" (Net Influencer).
Why CMOs should care. I read the agencies as more cautious than the platforms. WPP Media's Lauren Wetzel told Digiday, "We require explicit controls, approval thresholds, accountable human oversight." Dentsu's Rebekah Shalit said, "Everything still requires human oversight," and she listed repeatable tasks, billing and campaign reporting (Digiday). One takeaway in Adweek's recap of the week was "Agentic media buying is real but not yet scaled" (Adweek). Your agency's approval rules do not cover someone on your own team who connects an AI tool to an ad account, and TikTok's connector now sits inside Claude and Perplexity, which your team may already have.
The take. The companies building these agent connections are the same companies that sell the ad inventory, and I expect Meta's assistant to judge Meta campaigns by Meta's own numbers. I would set the rules before the first agent touches a budget. Pick the dollar amount an agent can move on a budget or bid without a person approving it, and name the person who gets the alert when it does. Then ask your agency and your in-house team, in writing, which of your ad accounts already have an AI connector authorized and who authorized it. Put both answers in the next media review.
By The Numbers: 45%
That is the share of brands confident that sports sponsorship delivers business results, according to a study by the IPA and the Sponsorship Effectiveness Forum of 143 brands, agencies and rights holders. It was presented at the IPA Effectiveness Conference on Oct. 7 (Marketing Week).
The study says brands that consistently set commercial objectives, measure commercial impact and build the sponsorship into wider brand communication are "almost six times more likely to be confident that their sponsorships deliver business results." SEF chair Rory Natkiel said, "It's rare that a brand shares meaningful commercial data with its rights holder," and called that "self-defeating."
If you have a sponsorship renewal coming up, agree on one commercial metric with the rights holder at signing. Then share the sales data the two of you need to measure it.
The Reading List
Mark Ritson grades Jaguar's Type 01 launch (The Drum) Ritson interviewed Jaguar's brand boss and scored the launch 45 out of 70. He also flags Chinese competition, falling prices and rising costs in the car category.
OpenAI's ads pitch at Advertising Week (Digiday) Samantha Jacobson, OpenAI's VP of monetization partnerships, on how ChatGPT ads will be targeted: "It doesn't really matter who I am or some of the other third-party attributes we've targeted in the past." OpenAI reportedly told investors it expects $2.5 billion in ad revenue this year.
Digiday's 2026 media agency report (Digiday) 77% of agency respondents plan to raise AI search budgets over the next 12 months, and 40% of those say the money will come out of general marketing. Only 30 agency people answered the survey.
Southwest's "Enter Airplane Mode" campaign (Marketing Dive) Customers scan a QR code and upload a screenshot of their phone notifications to earn Rapid Rewards points. It launched as enrollment in the program rose 35%.
One More Thing
Starting today, Google Ads will take promotions it finds on advertisers' websites and attach them to some campaigns (Search Engine Roundtable). For now it covers Search and Performance Max campaigns with linked location assets and no promotion assets attached. "This is opt out, so Google will automatically opt you in," per the report. To turn it off, open the account-level automated assets settings, find Automated Promotions and select Off. My concern is an expired offer or a code meant for one customer group ending up in an ad, so ask your paid search lead to check the setting this morning.
See you next Monday.
—James