Customers say Meta’s ad-buying AI blows through budgets in a matter of hours

Give the AI access to your credit card, they said. It'll be fine, they said. Users of Meta's ad platform who followed that advice have been getting burned by an AI-powered ad purchasing system, according to The Verge. The idea was to use a Meta-developed AI to automatically set up ads and spend your ad budget, saving you the hassle of making decisions about your ad campaign. Apparently, the AI funnels money to Meta a little too well: Customers say it burns, though, what should be daily ad budgets in a matter of hours, and costs are inflated as much as 10-fold.

The AI-powered software in question is the "Advantage+ Shopping Campaign." The system is supposed to automate a lot of ad setup for you, mixing and matching various creative elements and audience targets. The power of AI-powered advertising (Google has a similar product) is that the ad ...