As advertisers everywhere plan for 2025 and beyond, we’re highlighting trends that will shape the digital advertising landscape. This article, focused on the shift from niche AdTech tools to comprehensive solutions, is the second in this three-part series.
You can find the other trends in this series here:
Part 1: Why AdOps teams need more speed to drive strategic growth
Part 2: Reducing AdTech bloat with interoperable systems
Cross-channel campaigns are a must for driving engagement, but they’re also labor-intensive for your teams to build, launch, and manage. To overcome these capacity challenges of multi-channel campaigns, more agencies are adopting interoperable systems that utilize AI, automation, and consolidated data from multiple sources.
Many publishers released helpful efficiency features in 2024. The problem is that, because every advertising platform operates independently, you are forced to work with only the tools and data within that system. This means your team wastes valuable time duplicating every workflow on each specific platform for multi-channel campaigns: building audiences, setting up tests, swapping creative, managing pacing or budgets, or analyzing results.
Navigating these multi-channel complexities is straining ad teams like never before. Our latest AdOps trends data found that 80% of ad strategists manage three or more platforms. Strategists face constant capacity bottlenecks, leaving little room for crafting high-level strategies or refining performance metrics crucial for long-term success.
Your team must go beyond publisher-specific features if they want truly agile cross-channel management capabilities. Using tools that unify data and execute automated actions across platforms is key to overcoming the operational roadblocks hindering your team’s capacity.
Forward-thinking agencies are activating seamless cross-channel strategies with speed and agility by using integrated data systems and interoperable AI and automation tools. Let’s dig in.
Publisher-native AI and automation advertising tools aren’t enough
Many publishers have added native automation and AI tools, particularly in the last year or two. For instance, Google Ads Data Manager lets you upload and manage first-party audience data on its platform. Meta announced Dynamic Ads in 2024, which allows you to “automatically promote your entire product catalog across Facebook, Instagram, and Audience Network without having to create thousands of individual ads.”
Automation tools have also made their way to advertising platforms. Google’s Performance Max (PMax) uses automation to simplify campaign management for teams. By leveraging AI to handle repetitive tasks like audience targeting and budget distribution, Performance Max reduces the heavy lifting from teams doing these tasks manually.
It’s tempting to rely solely on these publisher tools to ease operational strain without hiring more staff. However, these features don’t help your team significantly save time when building holistic campaigns across multiple platforms.
The pitfalls of oversimplified, “one-size-fits-all” publisher tools
AI and automation tools are increasingly used to handle complex tasks, reduce manual work, and improve efficiency within advertising platforms. However, this shift often comes at the expense of detailed human oversight.
This is because the automation and AI offered by publishers like Google often prioritize ease of use over full control. This is great for those users who are new to digital advertising or don’t want to put a lot of bandwidth into making strategic decisions.
For instance, PMax can do a lot of the heavy lifting when it comes to setting up audiences or allocating budgets using AI and automation. However, PMax isn’t likely to understand the overall strategy or goals of a multi-channel campaign because it doesn’t have access to the necessary data points. PMax’s capabilities can only operate within the Google bubble.
“Google is brilliant, but Google doesn't always know exactly what your goals are,” said Eric Mayhew, CPO and President at Fluency in a video about Google Performance Max’s strengths and shortcomings.
When publisher AI and automation tools operate as a "black box," it’s difficult for advertisers to understand why certain decisions are made or optimize campaigns for specific business objectives.
Yes, using first-party data to build audiences for your Google Ads campaigns is great. But what happens when those prospects engage with ads on Meta or via programmatic displays? Can your team easily see the actions prospects take across every channel to understand what’s driving conversion or how these actions shape the full-funnel customer journey?
Native tools excel within their own ecosystems. However, they’re failing your teams when it comes to multi-channel advertising because they restrict your control over broader campaign strategies.
Working exclusively with siloed tools limits your ability to apply insights or strategies quickly across all channels. Your team still wastes time switching between platforms to build cross-channel campaigns. Trying to get these answers by manually exporting and cross-referencing data from different platforms is time-consuming and prone to human error.
What your team needs is the power to seamlessly integrate AI and automation tools across multiple data streams. This provides them with a clearer, more cohesive view of campaign performance so they can be more prescriptive in executing unique customer strategies.
Why data integration is key to multi-channel advertising agility
Having a clean, comprehensive, and centralized data source is arguably the most critical component of a successful cross-channel advertising strategy. Working from one data set is the most efficient way to automate, manage, report, and analyze your advertising campaigns across all channels, publishers, and customer accounts—at any scale.
Bringing all your first-party and third-party data sources together gives you the foundation necessary to automate ad creation and delivery at scale, update campaigns in real time based on relevant factors, and ensure cohesive cross-channel distribution.
“Anchoring on your data and understanding the value of your data is key to any automation strategy,” said Mayhew. “Centering your entire advertising strategy around data offers you both convenience and functionality so that you can operate many different ad networks all from one central seat. Data becomes the key, central component of a hub and spoke solution.”
Watch: how automation is transforming advertising operations
Working from one comprehensive data set enables you to make both operational and goal-oriented leaps in your workflows, such as:
- Adapting to local, real-time conditions: Effortlessly update ad content to reflect changes in weather for multi-location clients, updating inventory-dependent campaigns in real-time so you don’t oversell products that run out.
- Making bulk changes: make a change across all channels or ad sets from one place, including specific words (e.g. “50%” instead of “30%” on promotional deals) and full phrases (e.g. “Black Friday sale” for “Cyber Monday starts now!”).
- Streamlined, collaborative communication: Easily synthesize cross-departmental work for ad campaigns, track changes and approvals, and utilize a centralized communication platform for all stakeholders.
- Localized customizations at scale: Quickly tailor campaigns for specific locations or target audiences en masse for more effective targeting and higher conversion rates without wasting hours of time.
- Instant cross-channel performance reports: Get real-time, detailed reports across your entire portfolio for a better understanding of campaign performance across all channels, making it easier to optimize and make data-driven decisions.
- Automated compliance management: Ensure you meet internal or third-party compliance regulations via automated checks and alerts that flag any questionable ads before they ship.
- AI-driven optimization recommendations: Train and use AI to automatically optimize campaigns based on your cross-channel goals (rather than just on one platform) to drive real-time performance improvements.
- Clear attribution: Synchronized data sources make it possible to better understand cross-channel attribution, enabling you to improve reach for multi-channel campaigns.
Bringing together data sources for these high-level insights and execution capabilities has been proven to reduce ad ops complexity, drive productivity improvements, and eliminate the risks and operational bloat created by siloed systems.
“If your data is your hub, the distribution networks and the campaigns that you generate off that become your spokes. As one data set changes, it manages and automatically automates all of your ad networks,” said Mayhew. “It keeps your strategy consistent, cohesive, centrally managed, and easy to scale.
Implementing automation and AI solutions one level above publisher-specific tools significantly enhances the agility and efficiency of your teams, campaigns, and overall operations.
What data-powered advertising looks like
Data-powered advertising makes your operational workflows faster and simultaneously make teams more effective. Systems designed to centralize and automate cross-channel operations enable your team to scale without additional overhead or resources.
As you look for solutions that give your agency more operational and strategic agility, focus on tools that enable your teams to take a data-first approach to everything they do. The right tools will support your entire operational workflow, not just specific segments.
Here’s an example of how your campaigns could be built with a data-powered solution like a Digital Advertising Operating System:
Pull in all relevant data sources
Bring the key data sets from all your internal tools into one structured system. This can include your CRM data (account contracts, budgets), DAM or creative data (creative assets), audience data, compliance, and business intelligence data from tools like Adobe, your ERP, or other internal systems.
Aligning your systems and data sources gives your agency unprecedented agility. You can respond to both real-time performance changes or external factors like the weather in mere seconds. You can also build ads that align directly with your customer’s needs in a matter of minutes, not hours or days.
Activate data across workflows
With all your data syncing to one place, teams can move faster than ever with incredible agility and accuracy. Here are a few examples of how different workflows can be improved with AI and automation tools with your comprehensive data set.
1. Campaign management: Create new accounts, campaigns, and creative in minutes
Using source data within your assets enables you to create and launch campaigns for every channel in just minutes. Working directly with data sources eliminates the need for the “middle management” of your data (e.g. manually uploading data to each channel or consolidating exported data sets for analysis).
You can also use AI and automation to create creative assets in seconds. AI can provide custom ad copy recommendations based on high-performing ads on every channel, not just the channel where the ad is running. For example, you can instantly implement something that’s working well on Google to Meta without having to manually create a new asset.
2. Budget management: hands-off pacing that eliminates overspend
Publishers make it easy to set daily budgets, but they don’t give you the ability to automatically pace a customer’s flighted budget over the course of a month. This means your teams have to manually reconcile what has already been spent with what you still need to spend before the end of the month. Multiply those workflows over multiple channels and it’s easy to see why pacing complexities compound quickly.
Automation simplifies multi-channel budget pacing by giving teams the power to run automated pacing strategies that are crafted to each location’s specific needs. Depending on your customers’ goals, monthly budgets, and localized nuances, you can implement different pacing automations that automatically align your agency’s strategic approach with different location needs.
3. Promotional management: update ads directly from inventory sources
Whether you work with SKU-based products or hotel room inventory, syncing your ad copy or promotional offerings to specific inventory levels means greater control of what offers to run under specific scenarios. These strategies can be turned on or off automatically when conditions are met.
For example, if all your standard hotel rooms fill up, automation rules can change your messaging and creative assets to reflect discounts on king-size bed suites instantly. This saves your team the hassle of making these changes manually as well as ensuring that you don’t run promotional offers when inventory is unavailable.
4. Reporting and analysis: instant portfolio-level insights
Building reports for multi-channel campaigns is a huge time suck for teams. Fragmented data, inconsistent metrics, and error-prone manual processes make it hard for teams to quickly build the custom monthly reports that your clients expect.
Integrated data and automation are essential to simplify workflows, ensure accuracy, and enable efficient, actionable insights.
From siloed efforts to synergetic workflows
It’s a positive sign that publishers are providing advertisers with more platform-specific AI and automation tools. However, these tools don’t enable you to save time or energy when building cohesive, multi-channel strategies. Managing cross-channel campaigns in siloed systems strains your teams and limits strategic growth for both your agency and your customers.
To overcome the operational hurdles of multi-channel campaigns, it’s crucial that your agency start adopting integrated systems that unify data and automate actions in bulk. Utilizing AI and automation technologies across publishers and channels streamlines a wide range of advertising operations, uncovers actionable and comprehensive insights, and gives teams the tactical and strategic agility needed for scalable success.
