Every marketing platform is now trying to help you with AI support.
Meta gives you a campaign score.
Google Ads pushes daily recommendations.
SEO plugins tell you whether your page is “optimised” or not.
Most of the platforms go as far as giving you a score out of 100.
And they can be a little fear-mongering — turning red to tell you your page isn’t optimised at all.
The thing is that these tools are rarely foolproof and almost never objective.
We’re going to take you through the different platforms and tools, how they work, and how much weight you should place on their scores.
Your built-in tools in the backend of your website, on Meta, or in Google Ads are designed to feel objective and authoritative.
They give you:
- Scores out of 100
- Clear recommendations
- Warnings when something isn’t “right”
It creates a sense that there’s a correct way to run a campaign or optimise a page.
But there isn’t. There’s only what works for your business, your goals, and your actual campaign strategy.
Each of these tools is built with a specific goal in mind. That goal isn’t always aligned with yours.
Ad platforms: optimisation or revenue engine?
- Increase your budget
- Broaden your targeting
- Turn on more automation
- Apply all suggestions to improve your campaign score
And look, sometimes they are right. If you up your daily budget, then you might bring in more leads.
But does that daily budget fit within your broader marketing budget? Is your business set up to accommodate a higher number of leads?
Ad platforms like Google and Meta make money when you spend more. So it makes sense for them to encourage you to do so.
It doesn’t mean they’re wrong. But it does mean they’re biased.
- Increasing the budget might improve delivery, but hurt efficiency
- Broader targeting might increase reach, but lower intent (meaning you’re reaching more users but they aren’t actually keen to use your services)
- Automation might simplify management, but remove control over who is seeing your ad.
From the platform’s perspective, a “better” campaign often means more activity, more coverage, more spend.
From your perspective, it should mean better results.
Those two things don’t always line up.
When the recommendations are actually helpful
Now, it’s important to note, we’re not saying all AI recommendations are a trap.
Some are genuinely useful:
- Fixing broken tracking
- Flagging campaigns stuck in learning
- Highlighting under-delivery issues
It’s just important that you’re discerning about them. Take a look at the suggestions or flag them with your agency, and then decide whether they are real issues impacting your campaign.
Use the tools as exactly that: tools. Not instructions. They can point you in the right direction, but they shouldn’t be making your decisions for you.
SEO plugins and the outdated scoring model
If you have an SEO plugin on your website, like Rank Math or Yoast SEO, then you’ve probably seen your page score before.
These plugins will give you a score based on how well your page is “optimised” for a keyword.
Usually this includes:
- Keyword in the title
- Keyword in headings
- Keyword density
- Meta description usage
If you follow the checklist and hit the perfect keyword density (2%), you get a green light.
Feels like a job done right. But this is built on an outdated model of how search works.
Search has moved on. Most scoring systems haven’t.
- Variations of keywords matter
- Related topics matter
- How well you answer the full intent of a query matters
A page can rank well without repeating the exact keyword over and over. In fact, you might just use it once or twice. On a 1,000-word page, that’s a 0.2% keyword density and that would make your SEO plugin maaaad.
A page can tick every SEO plugin box, score anywhere between 80 and 100, and still not actually perform or rank.
The tool is benchmarking your page against a really simple checklist, while the algorithm is evaluating something far more complex.
What these tools can’t measure
This is where a lot of business owners can get a bit stressed out. They wonder how a page can be optimised, but Yoast or Rank Math aren’t giving it a good score.
It’s important to remember that these SEO scores can’t properly assess:
- Topic depth and coverage
- Natural language and readability
- Whether you’re answering related or follow-up questions
- Content structure and hierarchy
- Actual usefulness to a reader
In other words, they can’t measure what actually makes content good.
You can ignore the score and still have a really solid page strategy that outperforms competitors.
What we’re saying is, don’t optimise for a tool.
Whether it’s thinking about your SEO in the backend of your website or looking at your paid ads, don’t worry about what the tools say.
You want to optimise for:
- Conversions
- Revenue
- Rankings
- User experience
Think about real-world impact in your campaigns. In the same way, reach doesn’t mean anything without conversions, an AI tool turning green because you did exactly what it wanted doesn’t mean anything if you’re not seeing business impact.
Let the AI tools serve you, not the other way around
These tools aren’t completely useless. Let them help you with diagnostics, important alerts, and thinking of new ideas or ways to approach things.
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