What if you could set a campaign goal and walk away? Not check it tomorrow. Not optimize it next week. Just set it, approve a few suggestions, and let a Google Ads AI agent handle the rest. That future arrives in December 2025 when Google rolls out Ads Advisor to all English-language accounts. But the real question isn't whether this agent works—it's whether you're ready to use it.

The advertising industry is experiencing a fundamental shift in how campaigns are managed. AI advertising agents are no longer experimental features buried in beta programs. They are becoming the primary interface through which performance marketers interact with ad platforms. Google's Ads Advisor, powered by Gemini large language models, represents the most significant change to Google Ads workflow since the introduction of automated bidding. This is not an incremental improvement. This is a new way of working.

Ads Advisor lives directly inside the Google Ads console. It analyzes your unique business context, campaign performance, landing pages, and historical data to provide personalized recommendations. The critical difference from previous optimization tools is that Ads Advisor can take action with your approval, turning suggestions into applied improvements in minutes rather than hours.

The agent handles four primary functions that previously required manual work from performance marketers. First, it maximizes campaign performance by offering specific, contextual recommendations. When you ask "How can I optimize my campaign for back-to-school season?" it suggests relevant actions like adding sitelink extensions, then applies those changes directly to your account after your review.

Second, it generates creative assets and keywords. Ads Advisor brainstorms campaign ideas, suggests headlines and descriptions for seasonal promotions, and generates new keywords based on your website context and existing assets. This addresses the constant demand for fresh, high-performing creative without requiring manual brainstorming sessions or external copywriting resources.

Third, it provides personalized performance analysis grounded in your data and business goals. You can ask conversational questions like "My main holiday campaign just dropped. Can Ads Advisor tell me why?" and receive diagnostic analysis that identifies possible issues and suggests next steps. The agent learns from your past interactions and actions to become more tailored to you over time.

Fourth, it troubleshoots policy issues and ad disapprovals. Ads Advisor acts as a policy diagnostics expert, identifying root causes of disapprovals, recommending fixes, and in some cases taking action to resolve policy issues—such as editing an ad URL—for you to approve.

The market for AI agents is expanding rapidly. The global AI agents market reached $7.6 billion in 2025, up from $5.4 billion in 2024. Currently, 80% of organizations are using AI agents, and 96% plan to expand their use in 2025. Among senior executives surveyed in May 2025, 88% reported plans to increase AI-related budgets in the next 12 months specifically due to AI agent capabilities.

Gartner predicts that by 2026, 40% of enterprise applications will incorporate task-specific AI agents, up from less than 5% in 2025. More dramatically, Gartner forecasts that by 2028, 90% of B2B buying will be AI agent intermediated, pushing over $15 trillion of B2B spend through AI agent exchanges. These are not distant possibilities. These are near-term realities that will reshape how performance marketing operates.

The competitive landscape is moving quickly. Google's announcement of Ads Advisor follows similar moves by Amazon, which unveiled AI-powered ad agents at its unBoxed 2025 event. Yahoo is quietly testing six AI advertising agents within its demand-side platform. Meta, TikTok, and LinkedIn are likely developing comparable capabilities. The window for early adoption advantage is narrow.

The introduction of Ads Advisor changes the fundamental nature of campaign management work. The shift is from tactical execution to strategic oversight. Previously, performance marketers spent significant time on manual tasks: generating keyword variations, writing ad copy, diagnosing performance drops, troubleshooting policy issues. Ads Advisor handles these tasks autonomously, with human approval serving as the quality control layer rather than the primary execution mechanism.

Beta testers describe the experience as having a trusted consultant embedded in their workflow. One tester noted that "Ads Advisor serves as our primary guide, offering specific insights and acting as a trusted consultant. It helps us identify and address large-scale issues effectively." Another emphasized the trust factor: "Whatever advice was given to me, it wouldn't lead me astray. When I ask for headline suggestions for a sale, Ads Advisor breaks it down for me with specific reasons why they're suggesting headlines because it has enough experience to guide me properly. My decisions are based on trust."

This trust is not blind faith. It is earned through transparency in reasoning and consistent performance. Ads Advisor explains why it recommends specific actions, grounding suggestions in your campaign data and business goals. The agent learns from your interactions, becoming more aligned with your preferences and objectives over time. This creates a feedback loop where the quality of recommendations improves with use.

The practical implication is a compression of time. Tasks that previously required hours of manual work—analyzing campaign performance across multiple dimensions, generating creative variations, diagnosing sudden performance changes—now happen in minutes. This time compression does not eliminate the need for strategic thinking. Instead, it frees performance marketers to focus on higher-level decisions: setting campaign objectives, defining brand positioning, determining budget allocation across channels, and evaluating creative direction.

Ads Advisor begins rolling out to all English-language Google Ads accounts in December 2025. This creates a specific window of opportunity for performance marketers who adopt early. The learning curve for working effectively with AI agents is real. Understanding how to frame questions, when to approve recommendations, and how to set strategic parameters requires practice. Marketers who begin this learning process in December and January will have a competitive advantage over those who wait.

The skill set required for performance marketing is evolving. Traditional PPC skills—keyword research, bid management, ad copywriting—remain relevant but are increasingly handled by performance marketing AI tools. The emerging skill set centers on AI supervision and strategic direction. This includes prompt engineering for campaign agents, understanding AI decision-making processes, and exercising creative and strategic judgment that AI cannot replicate.

Some performance marketers worry that AI agents will eliminate the need for human marketers entirely. The Reddit PPC community has debated whether "it's only a matter of time before everything is fully automated, and PPC specialists are no longer needed as the middlemen." This concern misunderstands the nature of the shift. AI agents do not replace strategic thinking. They replace tactical execution. The marketers who will thrive are those who learn to lead with AI rather than resist it.

Industry experts predict that 2026 will be "a year of reckoning, when the feet of AI power brokers will be held to the fire to realize ROI." Organizations that invested in AI capabilities in 2024 and 2025 will need to demonstrate actual value, not just hype. This creates pressure on AI agents to deliver measurable performance improvements. For performance marketers, this means the agents you use must prove their worth through clear metrics: time saved, conversion rate improvements, cost per acquisition reductions.

The arrival of Ads Advisor in December means you should take specific actions now to prepare. First, audit your current campaign structure and documentation. Ads Advisor works best when it has clear business context, well-organized campaigns, and documented goals. If your account structure is chaotic or your campaign objectives are vague, the agent's recommendations will be less effective.

Second, identify which campaigns would benefit most from AI campaign optimization. Start with campaigns that have sufficient data volume for the agent to analyze but are not performing at their full potential. These are ideal testing grounds for Ads Advisor's capabilities.

Third, develop a framework for evaluating AI recommendations. Not every suggestion from Ads Advisor will be correct for your specific situation. You need criteria for deciding which recommendations to approve and which to reject. This framework should consider brand guidelines, strategic priorities, and performance thresholds.

Fourth, educate your team on how to work with AI agents. If you manage a team of performance marketers, they need to understand that their role is shifting from execution to oversight. This requires training on how to evaluate AI-generated recommendations, how to provide effective feedback to the agent, and how to focus their time on strategic decisions rather than tactical tasks.

Fifth, establish baseline metrics before Ads Advisor goes live. You need to know your current performance levels—time spent on campaign management, conversion rates, cost per acquisition, return on ad spend—so you can measure the impact of using the agent. Without clear before-and-after data, you cannot assess whether Ads Advisor is delivering value.

The fundamental truth of this transition is simple. AI agents are not coming. They are here. Google Ads Advisor launches in December. Amazon's agents are already in beta. Yahoo is testing six agents. The platforms you use for performance marketing are becoming agent-first environments. The question is not whether you will work with AI agents. The question is whether you will learn to work with them effectively before your competitors do.

by WB
for the AdAI Ed. Team