Oct 16, 2026 · 58 min · 15 segments
“All of these products eventually are going to come together.” Who calls the shots once Meta’s AI takes over? Nik Ketkar (Director of Product Management, Meta) sits down with Connor MacDonald (CMO…
Connor MacDonaldHostConnor RolainHost
Cody PlofkerHost
One of the things I wanna start with here is, uh, we've talked at length, we've done hundreds of hours on this content basically, on how media buying has changed over the last couple years and how, um, historically, when Cody, Connor, and I really started, uh, there was a lot of value to create, you know, setting up the ad account, doing very manual lever buying within the, within the ad account, and it feels as if Meta is moving towards a more sort of autonomous, automated, connected system.
But I would love to hear your perspective and, and your experience at Meta and how you guys are thinking about that shift for media buyers.
So yeah, let's just talk about it over the last few years, right? I think for media buyers, for a lot of what they did previously, you can think of it as equal parts executional-oriented tasks, campaign setups, how do I get the structure right? What should my campaign configuration be? What should my ad sets be? What ads do I need? So there's a lot of, uh, what lever should I use? How should I think about budgets? How do I think about audience? So a lot of it was, uh, executional, operational in nature, about fifty percent at least.
Like, how should we build our brand? How should we be thinking about our campaign? Uh, where do we wanna go? Um, what are the right signals? What are the right metrics? How do I keep optimizing those metrics? And so it was like kind of think of it as fifty-fifty.
What we wanted to do over the last few years, and I think we've done pretty successfully with Advantage Plus, is take away some of these operational burdens away from our ad day.
So we wanna make it very simple for them to be able to create a performant campaign, uh, without a lot of setup tax and, and that was kind of the intent behind Advantage Plus.
I think last year we rolled out a product which we call unification internally, but it makes it very, very easy for folks to use Advantage Plus products as the default option.
They can still go in and interact with the controls that they need, but it's simple enough if you don't need those controls.
And I think in the future, where we're gonna go eventually is this ratio is gonna eventually morph completely towards, hopefully, uh, where media buyers are spending a hundred percent of their times on the strategic tasks, more about direction.
How do I, how do I give you guys the-- how do I give Meta the right inputs about their goals, about their constraints, about their creative direction, uh, brand needs, voice tone, all of that good stuff? And so that's where we see it evolving.
So I wanted to sort of unpack as I was doing research for this episode and this idea of like connected systems.
You brought up Advantage Plus as one example of maybe what you would consider a connected system.
I'm curious if there are any others that maybe advertisers are working with today where you guys, as, you know, the Meta product team think, um, they're good examples of where the platform's going.
A lot of the products that you can, you, you can think of as any place where you're adding any sort of input is gonna be a connected system in the future.
Um, value optimization is a good example because you're sending us signals in some form.
Catalog is a good, good example of, uh, precisely this particular connected system because even if it does feel a little discreet today, the idea is we can use all of the data in the future to connect all of these different, uh, different levers and give advertisers one sort of solution.
And so I think those are all examples that come to mind, of course, Advantage Plus being the, the, the easiest example for me to give just because it was focused specifically on solving the problem that you're speaking of, which is a connected system.
One of the things I wanna start with here is, uh, we've talked at length, we've done hundreds of hours on this content basically, on how media buying has changed over the last couple years and how, um, historically, when Cody, Connor, and I really started, uh, there was a lot of value to create, you know, setting up the ad account, doing very manual lever buying within the, within the ad account, and it feels as if Meta is moving towards a more sort of autonomous, automated, connected system.
But I would love to hear your perspective and, and your experience at Meta and how you guys are thinking about that shift for media buyers.
So yeah, let's just talk about it over the last few years, right? I think for media buyers, for a lot of what they did previously, you can think of it as equal parts executional-oriented tasks, campaign setups, how do I get the structure right? What should my campaign configuration be? What should my ad sets be? What ads do I need? So there's a lot of, uh, what lever should I use? How should I think about budgets? How do I think about audience? So a lot of it was, uh, executional, operational in nature, about fifty percent at least.
Like, how should we build our brand? How should we be thinking about our campaign? Uh, where do we wanna go? Um, what are the right signals? What are the right metrics? How do I keep optimizing those metrics? And so it was like kind of think of it as fifty-fifty.
What we wanted to do over the last few years, and I think we've done pretty successfully with Advantage Plus, is take away some of these operational burdens away from our ad day.
So we wanna make it very simple for them to be able to create a performant campaign, uh, without a lot of setup tax and, and that was kind of the intent behind Advantage Plus.
I think last year we rolled out a product which we call unification internally, but it makes it very, very easy for folks to use Advantage Plus products as the default option.
They can still go in and interact with the controls that they need, but it's simple enough if you don't need those controls.
And I think in the future, where we're gonna go eventually is this ratio is gonna eventually morph completely towards, hopefully, uh, where media buyers are spending a hundred percent of their times on the strategic tasks, more about direction.
How do I, how do I give you guys the-- how do I give Meta the right inputs about their goals, about their constraints, about their creative direction, uh, brand needs, voice tone, all of that good stuff? And so that's where we see it evolving.
So I wanted to sort of unpack as I was doing research for this episode and this idea of like connected systems.
You brought up Advantage Plus as one example of maybe what you would consider a connected system.
I'm curious if there are any others that maybe advertisers are working with today where you guys, as, you know, the Meta product team think, um, they're good examples of where the platform's going.
A lot of the products that you can, you, you can think of as any place where you're adding any sort of input is gonna be a connected system in the future.
Um, value optimization is a good example because you're sending us signals in some form.
Catalog is a good, good example of, uh, precisely this particular connected system because even if it does feel a little discreet today, the idea is we can use all of the data in the future to connect all of these different, uh, different levers and give advertisers one sort of solution.
And so I think those are all examples that come to mind, of course, Advantage Plus being the, the, the easiest example for me to give just because it was focused specifically on solving the problem that you're speaking of, which is a connected system.
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