Meta’s Q2 earnings call sounded like a victory lap. Revenue soared, ad spend rebounded, and its AI-powered ad engine — Advantage+ — took center stage. But beneath the applause, there’s a harder truth: Meta is sprinting to catch up in a race it didn’t start.

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After falling behind in generative AI, Meta is throwing billions at the problem. Billions to buy infrastructure. Billions to poach talent. Billions to acquire companies that get them closer to the foundation models they didn’t build. But money only buys speed. It doesn’t buy trust — and it certainly doesn’t buy leadership.

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Let’s be clear: Advantage+ is not a science project. It’s Meta’s attempt to automate performance — to replace human decision-making with machine optimization. It works because Meta controls the full stack: the audience data, the ad placement, the feedback loop. It’s not just AI-enabled — it’s AI-closed-loop.

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And CPGs are watching. Enviously.

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They see the results. They see the margins. They see the growth. And the temptation is clear: build our own version. Automate everything. Replicate the Advantage+ effect.

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But here’s the trap: you’re not Meta. You don’t own the data. You don’t control the pipes. You don’t sit on a walled garden with billions of signals. Trying to mimic Meta’s AI strategy without Meta’s infrastructure is like trying to fly a jet with no runway.

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And when you lose control, you lose accountability.

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Can you explain why a campaign worked?
Can you connect media spend to a retail sale?
Can your AI answer to the CFO — or is it just outputting confidence scores and “trust us” metrics?

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For CPG brands, that’s not a technical problem. It’s a business risk.

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At Becausal, we’re watching the AI arms race accelerate. But we believe performance without transparency is performance you can’t own. That’s why we’re betting on causal AI — AI that not only predicts, but explains. That connects media exposure to product movement. That provides not just lift, but proof.

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The most dangerous assumption a CPG can make right now is that what works for Meta will work for them. It won’t. Because Meta’s business is built on attention. Yours is built on transactions — and that means the definition of performance is fundamentally different.

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So what should CPGs do instead?

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Don’t chase Meta’s tools. Build your own feedback loop. Use AI to reveal what actually drives purchase — not what gets clicks. Apply a litmus test to every audience segment: Can we tie this to revenue, or just reach? And above all, stop treating explainability as a luxury. It’s the key to repeatability.

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Meta’s Q2 earnings aren’t a blueprint. They’re a warning shot. AI is no longer experimental. It’s structural. And if you don’t build it on your own terms, you’ll be building someone else’s business.

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Because in the end, AI isn’t about automation. It’s about control.

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