MW211 | AI, Automation and Paid Media: How to Protect ROI When Platforms Take Control

Watch our session on how AI and automation are taking a bigger role in paid media, and what that shift means for the control you have over your budget and your return.

Find out how the 17ht August smart bidding update and the wider set of 2026 changes move more of the decision making onto the platforms, and how to protect ROI when you're being encouraged to hand over control.

What this session covers:

• Why the 17th August smart bidding update changes how Google treats your target CPA and target ROAS campaigns, and why efficient campaigns may start spending to their budget limit.

• How Google, Meta and the other platforms are competing for share of your budget by positioning themselves as full funnel solutions.

• Why AI Max, smart bidding exploration and journey aware bidding hand more control to the platform in exchange for more of your data.

• How invalid traffic climbs as campaigns go broader, and why conversion quality still matters more than the headline number.

• Why the commercial fundamentals of data quality, value-based bidding and clear margin targets are what keep automation working in your favour.

Key takeaways:

After watching, you will be able to:

• Understand what the 17th August update changes and why set and forget stops working.

• Review your target CPA campaigns and reset targets in line with what you're actually achieving now.

• Spot where automation is helping or hurting performance across different markets and campaign types.

• Give the platforms the signals they need through enhanced conversion tracking, server-side tracking and value-based bidding.

• Manage paid media as an AI system, with the right targets, guardrails and commercial checks in place rather than platform vanity metrics.