Meta Advantage+ automation hits $75 billion run rate

Meta’s automated Advantage+ ad products now bring in revenue at an annual run rate of more than $75 billion. CFO Susan Li gave the figure on Meta’s July 29, 2026 earnings call Meta . In October 2025 the figure was $60 billion, and Meta had already made automation the default for sales, app and lead campaigns Meta .

For a business that pays a paid social agency, that shift changes what the fee should buy.

Meta’s automation push, by date

Date	What Meta said or planned	Figure
June 2, 2025	Goal to let brands create and target ads with AI by 2026, per a press report	A plan, not a launch
October 29, 2025	Sales, app and lead campaigns start with end-to-end automation on	$60 billion run rate
July 29, 2026	Advantage+ end-to-end products keep growing	Over $75 billion run rate
July 29, 2026	Small businesses using at least one AI creative tool	Over 9 million

In June 2025, MediaPost, citing The Wall Street Journal, reported that Meta planned to let brands create and target ads with its AI tools by 2026 MediaPost . Under that plan, an advertiser supplies “an objective and a price point,” and Meta delivers the finished ad. We found no Meta announcement that fully automated ad creation has launched.

On its October 29, 2025 call, Meta said advertisers running sales, app or lead campaigns now have end-to-end automation turned on from the start. The system chooses who sees the ads and where they run. Revenue through those automated products had reached a $60 billion annual run rate Meta .

Nine months later, Li said Advantage+ end-to-end products had reached “over $75 billion in annual revenue run-rate” Meta . A run rate is a pace, not a booked total. The figure comes from call remarks, not Meta’s financial statements. For scale, Meta’s Family of Apps ad revenue for the second quarter alone was $59.4 billion, up 27% from a year earlier Meta .

Meta’s AI now makes more of the ads

Meta said more than 9 million small businesses use at least one of its AI ad creative tools Meta . Adoption of image generation more than doubled in the quarter. The tool makes new images from a brand’s existing content, and it can now build images from video.

The push started earlier. In the third quarter of 2025, the number of advertisers using at least one of Meta’s video generation features rose 20% from the prior quarter. That quarter Meta added AI-generated music matched to the tone and message of an ad Meta .

Meta launched a creative product that turns performance data into the next round of ads. Li said Meta is “building with agency integrations from day one,” so agency teams can generate and scale creative without leaving their existing workflows Meta . In the 2025 report, MediaPost said Meta executives described the plan as a help to agencies, not a move to kill them off MediaPost .

Meta’s performance claims and rising prices

The system that picks which ad a person sees is changing too. Li said Meta now uses large language models to reason about ad content and user preferences together, then predict the best ad for each person Meta .

Meta said improved AI models produced an 8.3% increase in ad clicks and a 15.7% lift in conversions on Facebook in the second quarter of 2026 Meta . These are Meta’s own figures, not an independent test.

Prices climbed in the same quarter. Ad impressions grew 14%, and the average price per ad rose 12% year over year. Li credited better ad performance, stronger economic conditions than a year earlier and currency moves for the price rise Meta . Higher prices per ad make waste more expensive, so the quality of your tracking and creative matters more.

Zuckerberg wants businesses to pay for results

Mark Zuckerberg pointed to a pricing model with direct effects on agencies. He was speaking about Meta Business Agents, AI agents that talk to customers on WhatsApp and Messenger. He said more than 1 million businesses use them every week to talk to customers or complete sales. He expects more of these products to work “like our ad systems where businesses only pay us when we achieve results for them” Meta .

If a platform charges for results, a flat retainer for launching the same campaigns gets harder to justify. Big brands already feel that pressure. Our report on the shift from hourly agency fees to paying for outputs has the numbers.

What it means for a business that pays a paid social agency

Meta now sets targeting, placements and much of the creative by default. So a paid social agency has to earn its fee on work the system does not do alone. Four jobs matter most:

• Creative supply and testing. The AI needs raw material. A good agency brings new angles, offers and formats, and tests them on a written plan.
• Conversion tracking. Automated campaigns aim at the conversions you report. Broken tracking points the system at the wrong goal.
• Offers and landing pages. Meta can find likely buyers. Your offer and your page still have to close the sale.
• Honest reporting. Ask for the sales the ads added, not platform-reported conversions alone.

Ownership matters more as automation grows. Your business, not the agency, should own the ad account, the pixel and the creative files. Our guide to marketing agency contracts lists the ownership terms to get in writing.

Google is making the same move in search, with AI Max upgrades that run through February 2027. To compare paid media agencies on one public rubric, see our PPC shortlist.

Questions to ask your agency

1. Which of our campaigns use Advantage+ automation, and which Meta defaults did you change?
2. How many new creative concepts do you test each month, and how do you pick winners?
3. How do you check that our pixel or Conversions API reports purchases and leads correctly?
4. How do you measure the sales our ads added, beyond what Meta reports?
5. Who owns the ad account, the pixel and the creative files?
6. What does our fee pay for now that Meta automates targeting and placements?