AI Ad Spend Is Exploding — But Are New York Businesses Getting Real ROI?

Google and Meta want you to hand your entire ad budget to their AI and trust the machine. For large advertisers with massive data sets and armies of specialists, that pitch is largely true. For the typical New York small to mid-size business spending $5,000 to $15,000 a month in one of the most expensive advertising markets in the country, the reality is considerably more complicated. Independent research shows Performance Max underperforms Search campaigns on conversion rate 84% of the time for lead generation accounts. Meta attribution inflates results by 30 to 60% compared to true incremental impact. And the structural tension at the heart of all of it — the platforms' interests and your interests are not the same — is the thing most AI advertising coverage conveniently skips. This post doesn't.