Behind the A.I. Boom, a Boring Business Is Soaring With Better Ads

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Behind the A.I. Boom, a Boring Business Is Soaring With Better Ads

Google and Meta are enjoying a digital ad boom, as artificial intelligence automates marketing and drives record sales.

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Shira Inbar

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By

Tripp Mickle

and

Eli Tan

Tripp Mickle and Eli Tan report on Google and Meta from San Francisco.

April 29, 2026

For years, DribbleUp, a sports equipment company, spent its own time and resources figuring out whom it should advertise its basketballs and soccer balls to on Facebook. But for the last two years, it has placed those ads entirely through Facebook’s artificial intelligence tools.

Since then, DribbleUp’s sales have outpaced its marketing expenses. It has also started spending more money on Facebook.

The company’s experience speaks to how A.I. is reshaping the digital ad industry. Over the past three years, Google, Meta and other tech companies have used the same artificial intelligence behind chatbots to power advertising.

The emerging A.I. systems are helping companies automate their marketing. Small and large companies alike can now create ads, target audiences, bid for space and measure results. The process has made it easier for local businesses to develop campaigns as sophisticated as ones from corporate giants.

The technology is also making the ads more effective, tech companies and brands say. Meta and Google, the industry’s leaders, are using it to better match companies with potential customers, increasing the odds they are paid for their service.

More advertising money is flowing to tech’s biggest companies as a result. In 2022, the year ChatGPT launched, A.I.-related sales totaled $1 billion, but that rose to $35 billion last year, according to

Madison and Wall

, a consulting firm that tracks the industry. This year, sales are expected to balloon by 60 percent, to $56 billion.

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