Since 2013, Meta had been making significant investments in AI, many of which were directed toward enhancing its digital advertising business. However, in 2025, CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that Meta was ready to take over entire digital advertising process for its advertisers. His controversial vision offered advertisers the ultimate black box model: no longer would advertisers need to plan and execute customer targeting, creative development, media placement, and budget allocation; rather, Meta's AI would optimize each of the 6 M's of a digital advertising campaign (mission, market message, media, money, measurement) on its own. Advertisers and platform users were nervous about what's Meta's new AI-fueled vision meant for them and were watching with apprehension as OpenAI, Google, Tik Tok, Amazon, Apple, and others were developing AI tools that would change the digital marketing ecosystem. Would this new Meta "black box" vision be net positive for the 10 million businesses who were currently advertising their products and services on Meta's platforms? What could the impact be if Meta's advertisers adopted, on a wide scale, Meta's AI-driven tools and ceded control of their advertising to Meta's algorithms? What could the impact be on the over 3 billion people who frequented Meta's platforms every day? And, would AI be the next competitive moat that Meta built around itself to continue to dominate the digital advertising business or would it be the disruptive technology that eroded its competitive advantage?