The convergence is obvious if you are watching
TikTok's Smart+ campaigns now automate targeting, creative selection, placement, and budget allocation in a single campaign type that the advertiser sets up and the platform optimizes 1. The Q1 2026 updates added Auto-select for creative (the system scans your existing ads and TikTok One creator content to recommend performers), multi-URL support, higher asset group limits, and a new four-level reporting structure: campaign, ad group, ad, and creative 2.
If this sounds familiar, it should. Meta's Advantage+ does the same thing. Google's Performance Max does the same thing. Every major ad platform is converging on the same architecture: hand the platform your creative assets, your conversion goal, and your budget. The platform handles everything else.
The architecture is identical across platforms
Compare the three:
Google Performance Max: you provide asset groups (images, video, text, landing pages), the system allocates across Search, YouTube, Display, Discover, Gmail, and Maps. You get limited visibility into which channel spent what (new as of April 2026), and no manual control over allocation.
Meta Advantage+: you provide creative variants, the system targets broadly, allocates budget across placements (Feed, Stories, Reels, Threads), and optimizes toward conversions. You get limited visibility into which audiences performed, and your control is restricted to the existing customer budget cap.
TikTok Smart+: you provide creative assets (or let Auto-select choose for you), the system optimizes targeting, placement, and budget. You get creative-level reporting but limited manual override of the algorithm's choices 1.
The differences between these three are cosmetic. The structure is identical: the platform automates the targeting and delivery layer, and the advertiser's only meaningful input is the creative and the conversion destination.
What this convergence means for operators
When every platform automates the same layer, the differentiator cannot be platform expertise. Knowing how to set up a TikTok Smart+ campaign is no longer a skill that produces advantage, just as knowing how to set up a Meta Advantage+ campaign is not a skill that produces advantage. The setup is the default. Everyone has it.
The differentiator becomes what you feed the system. The creative assets. The landing page. The offer. The conversion experience. Those are the variables that separate a 2x ROAS from a 5x ROAS on the same platform using the same campaign type with the same automation.
This is the firm's thesis expressed across all three platforms simultaneously. The platforms have automated the targeting layer. The leverage sits in the ad itself and in the page the click goes to. Agencies that sell platform-specific expertise as their primary value proposition are selling a depreciating asset.
The Auto-select feature is worth watching
TikTok's Auto-select is a new wrinkle. The system does not just optimize which of your ads to show; it scans your entire creative library plus eligible TikTok One creator content and recommends creatives you did not explicitly choose 3. Creator content recommended by Auto-select is pre-approved for ads, with TikTok handling payments to the creators.
This further removes creative selection from the advertiser's hands. The platform is not just choosing which audience sees which ad; it is choosing which ad exists in the first place. The advertiser who produces a high volume of creator-style content gives the system more material to work with. The advertiser who produces three polished brand videos and nothing else gives the system no room to optimize.
Meta is heading the same direction with its AI-generated creative tools. Google with Gemini-powered asset generation. The future of all three platforms is: give us your brand guidelines and product catalog, and we will generate, test, and optimize the creative for you.
The operators' response should be the same across platforms
Produce more creative, more often. The systems reward volume because volume gives them more material to test. A single hero video refreshed quarterly is the wrong approach on every automated platform.
Produce creative that looks native to the surface. On TikTok, that means vertical video shot in a creator style, not a polished 16:9 brand film. The Auto-select feature will deprioritize assets that do not match the feed's native format.
Measure at the creative level, not the campaign level. TikTok's new four-level reporting makes this explicit. The meaningful performance data is not "Campaign A produced X conversions." It is "this specific hook on this specific creative produced X conversions at Y cost." That granularity is where the learning happens.
Accept that platform-level control is gone. Fighting the automation by trying to reconstruct manual campaigns within Smart+ or Advantage+ is a losing strategy across all three platforms. The control moved to the creative layer. That is where the hours should go.