AI starts buying the ads. Cannes insists humans still own the strategy.

In the third episode of Assistant to the CMO, Lexie Meskouris speaks with Will Nash and Harjot Singh about two stories that turn out to be the same argument: AI agents moving into ad buying, and Cannes declaring that AI handles production while humans keep the strategy.

The episode opens on agentic ad buying, with Meta wiring ad accounts into ChatGPT and Claude and Google running its Ask Advisor agent across Ads and Analytics. Harjot reads it as catch-up that quietly lowers the barrier for everyone, even a one-person shop, while the real skill shifts from knowing the dashboard to knowing advertising. Will pushes back: the value sits in the standalone agent layer for sophisticated in-house teams, and for most marketers, using these tools directly just creates work and risk. The second half turns to Cannes and its tidy line between execution and strategy. Will thinks the line is false because the two were never cleanly separable. Harjot thinks it is broadly true but self-serving, a way for agencies to defend margins while production costs collapse. The takeaway is a fork: decide whether agentic ad buying is even relevant to you before you touch it, and if you test it, keep it small and name who owns the result.

Highlights of this Episode Include:

• The Dashboard Moat Just Evaporated: Knowing your way around Ads Manager matters less now, and advertising judgment matters more.
• Who Is This Actually For: Harjot says it opens to everyone, Will says only sophisticated in-house build teams should bother yet.
• The Chat Window Is a Red Herring: Both agree the real shift is the agent layer, not talking to your ad account.
• You Still Cannot Skip Strategy: An agent can run the campaign, but CPM, channels, and targeting still need a human.
• Cannes Drew a Convenient Line: Harjot argues "humans keep strategy" protects agency margins while production costs quietly fall.
• The Line Itself Is Shaky: Will argues execution and strategy were never cleanly separable, so the slogan misleads people.
• Run It Small, Name the Owner: Test one agentic tool as a separate experiment, and assign someone accountable when it breaks.

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New episodes of Assistant to the CMO land every Thursday.