AI Performance Gains Remain Trapped Inside Google and Meta
Nearly 76% of advertisers see measurable gains from AI-driven performance marketing, but the benefits are heavily concentrated within two platforms. Research from Taboola found that Google and Meta dominate AI adoption, while the broader open web remains structurally under-optimized despite strong advertiser demand to expand beyond search and social channels.
The gap between intent and action is stark. Some 82% of performance marketers say they're ready to adopt intelligent, goal-based campaign systems that operate beyond search and social. Yet 74% of advertisers still allocate at least a quarter of their performance budgets to paid search, and 67% do the same for paid social. The open web receives moderate allocation by comparison.
Concentration in Two Platforms
Google Performance Max reaches 91% of advertisers at scale. Meta Advantage+ reaches 88%. Outside these ecosystems, adoption drops sharply. Only 36% of advertisers use open web solutions at scale, even though 44% are currently testing them.
TikTok's Smart+ is being tested widely, but hasn't yet achieved the scale or integration maturity of Google and Meta's tools.
Operational Barriers, Not Belief
Advertisers aren't skeptical about performance potential on the open web. They're blocked by operational constraints. The top barrier is integrating agentic AI tools into existing workflows (54% cite this), followed by vendor complexity (74%) and fragmented measurement systems (71%).
Brand safety concerns (54%) and limited internal resources (42%) add further friction. The problem is scalability, not performance.
Demand Signal Is Clear
Three-quarters of marketers say finding incremental performance beyond search and social is very or extremely important. Urgency is highest among senior decision-makers and high-spending advertisers.
The shift potential is substantial. Some 80% of advertisers say they would immediately increase open web spending if comparable agentic AI solutions were available. Another 86% would allocate up to a quarter of their performance budget to such a shift.
On average, respondents expect to allocate 24% of performance budgets to the open web under an AI-driven model. At least 39% say they would increase that to 26% or more.
The Infrastructure Gap
AI is already delivering measurable gains, but primarily within closed ecosystems where automation infrastructure is most mature. The next phase of performance marketing depends on whether open web environments can match the optimization level, attribution clarity, and workflow integration that Google and Meta currently offer.
For now, advertisers are ready to expand. The infrastructure is not.
This pattern extends beyond advertising. A McKinsey report found that while AI adoption is now widespread across Southeast Asia, most organizations struggle to translate usage into measurable business value. Many remain in pilot or early-stage deployment, highlighting a gap between experimentation and full-scale integration.
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