In this op-ed, Nick Marshall, planning director at Carat, unpacks why AI might be reshaping our industry, but it won’t be replacing sharp human thinking anytime soon.
If you’re a planner or strategist and have been reading the headlines lately, you’d be forgiven for wanting to stick your head in the oven. Every Linkedin post is telling us that AI can think faster, plan better, and automate everything. From agentic AI tools that can build entire media plans with a push of a button, to platforms that promise the perfect strategic platform in seconds, the hype (and hysteria) is everywhere.
Mark Zuckerberg recently spoke about his plans to automate the entire ad process in Meta, a black-box ‘solution’ that handles audience, creative, and buying all in one. Input your objective and let AI do the rest. The Diary of a CEO podcast released an episode called: AI AGENTS EMERGENCY DEBATE: These Jobs Won’t Exist In 24 Months! In it, five men discussed the impending impact of AI on ‘all humanity’, warning of ‘massive job disruption’, and that (essentially) we’re all hopelessly careening toward the ‘end of days’. Fun.
However, before we collectively panic and start Googling TAFE conversion courses into teaching, let’s take a breath.
We’ve been here before.
Back when I was a bright-eyed exec surviving on free toast, programmatic and real-time bidding were the new kid-on-the-block. Hailed as the ultimate way to harness data and to drive efficiency, clients handed over huge budgets and data in the name of automation. Some of that potential was realised, but it also came with brand safety issues, unfettered arbitrage, and triggered regulatory backlash like GDPR. A beautiful own goal.
That early rush toward programmatic automation left a legacy of short-termism, scepticism, and fostered suspicion from clients who wanted transparency, fidelity in data, and to know why, where and how their ad dollars are being spent.
Let’s not make the same mistakes again.
A study from Accenture and UK finance, shows the barriers organisations face in adopting AI. Many of which are the same topics our industry has struggled to battle for the last decade; data security, regulatory concerns, and accuracy (see fig below)
AI is here to stay. It’s already making a difference in how we model spend, automate forecasting and analysis, and ideate. But the idea that AI will replace media planners and strategists misunderstands what media planning and strategy really is.
It’s not just maths in excel.
It’s about generating cracking campaign ideas. Understanding ethical red lines. ‘Getting’ cultural waves and knowing the newest publisher in your market. Optimising toward attention and choosing the right formats different payback windows.
Here’s a few things we should consider:
AI will always need a translator who is responsible
AI can cite great research (thanks to Byron Sharp, Binet & Field etc), but knowing when to trust what AI spits out requires knowledge and judgement.
AI can crunch numbers, but it doesn’t understand the ‘grey’ decisions. It won’t generate a never been done before media idea. It can’t weigh up the risks of going after position 1 on Google and sell it into your financial director. And what about DE&I? A report from MIT showed that AI can be racially biased, while another showed ChatGPT May Be Eroding Critical Thinking Skills. Who’s accountable when an AI generated plan reinforces harmful stereotypes, if not us?
We need to interpret what AI tells us, make the call, and take the flak if it goes wrong.
True culture is beyond AI
As an expat in Sydney, I know the pain of telling a joke that doesn’t land. An Australian-born planner understands the nuance of Aussie humour better than I ever could. It’s the same with AI. A metaphor, a colour, even a number might resonate differently across markets.
Individual publishers are not an island
Publishers like Meta can use AI to optimise within their own environment, Mark Zuckerberg would love brands to spend 100% of their budgets in Meta, but they don’t.
Real media planning means managing overlap, finding incremental reach, and championing better creative for the format. The more walled gardens build their own AI tools, the more planners will be needed to ensure a diversified strategy.
AI can be your Robin, but remember you are Batman
Truly great campaigns often come from brilliant research, late nights, and brave clients who say yes, not (just) data models. Could AI generate a human insight like McDonalds Raise Your Arches? Or fight to use a choir and massive TV budgets for T mobiles iconic Welcome Back launch? Likely not.
Cassie Kozyrkov, the former chief decision scientist at Google, said recently that agentic AI’s main role still lies in taking over repetitive tasks with ‘well understood and well-designed processes that do not require ‘creative spin’’.
I’d go further and argue even the most BAU media plan deserves some ‘creative spin’, or at least an engaged brain. We need human oversight or AI slop will take over.
Sweating the answer is what clients are paying for
AI can’t sit in the room and convince your client to increase spend or get them to pause TV and put the money into influencers. Clients buy your confidence in the approach.
The thought-process we take when we plan a campaign ‘manually’ matters. Thinking through the audience builds, consulting R&F and MMM response curves, makes us know the detail.
If you can’t explain the ‘why’ in the room, with a steady eye and a clear voice, or don’t understand how the LLM arrived at the outcome, clients will lose faith and go elsewhere.
So…
Do not despair, compatriots. The end is not yet nigh.
At Carat, we use AI as a supplementary aide for better human planning. We’ve embedded Microsoft Co-pilot AI into our identity tool Merkury, to help planners move faster, dig deeper, and make sharper decisions. But always with a human hand on the wheel. Our parent, Dentsu goes one further, and believes AI is driving a new era of marketing altogether: The Algorithmic Era.
Our planning process, ‘Designing for People’, puts emotional intelligence at the very centre of our planning, because no matter how good tech gets, marketing is still about talking and selling to humans. Each one striving for connection in this mad Trumpian world.
So, AI is already helping us plan better and automate tasks. Fact.
But will it, or should it, replace the media planner who understands the latest TikTok trend, champions bold ideas, and can confidently sell in an unconventional plan to a jittery CMO?
Not anytime soon.
