Compared with the ad platforms’ own AI campaigns
If most of your spend is on one platform, its own automation finds buyers there with signals no one else can see. Each one works inside its own platform, sets its own limits and reports its own results.
What it does well
The platforms’ AI campaigns are better than their reputation. Fed your conversions, including offline ones, and set to bid toward value, they find buyers well, and they read your product feed, stock included. What they don’t see is your email or what you spend elsewhere.
- Targeting and bidding inside its own platform, with data no one else has.
- Bidding toward conversion value, using value rules and offline conversions you import.
- Finding placements and formats you’d never set up by hand.
- No cost beyond your ad spend.
Where it stops
- 1It optimizes for the conversions it counts and credits to itself, even with value rules and imported conversions.
- 2It works on one platform, so it can’t move money between ad platforms or coordinate with your email.
- 3It sees your product feed and stock, but not your stock plans, your margin by line, your email or your other ad spend.
- 4It explains results in summary reports rather than one decision at a time.
- 5It follows each campaign’s own budget. There is no shared limit across channels.
Side by side, with cost and time
| Question | The ad platforms’ AI | Heraldic |
|---|---|---|
| Across channels | One platform each | One set of rules, one contact policy, one record |
| What it optimizes | The conversions it counts, inside one platform | Your conversion events, each valued by what it’s worth to you |
| Who sets the limits | The platform | You, and the software holds them |
| Stops at your limits | Its own campaign budget | Checked by software before every change, and again on approval |
| Video and large-scale creative | Your uploads, plus its own variations | Still images from your approved library; video you upload sits beside them |
| Explains itself | Summary reports | A record of every action, with its reason |
| Holds your credentials | It is the platform | Agents never do. Only the executor, the part that makes changes, holds them |
| What it costs | No fee beyond your ad spend. | Not set yet. Ad spend goes straight to the ad platforms |
| Time to a first result | A learning period after each significant change, then continuous optimization. | Set by your funnel: at a store with daily orders, a test can be called in two weeks; a lead-generation funnel takes longer. |
When to choose it instead
If you advertise on one platform, trust its conversion count, and don’t need to know why it made each decision.
Using both
They work well together. Agents work through the platforms and their campaign types: an agent can propose budget, pause and resume changes for an AI campaign, and judge it on your own conversion data alongside everything else.
Questions about this comparison
Doesn’t value-based bidding already optimize for profit?
It optimizes for the values you send it, inside one platform. Agents decide how much each platform and campaign should get, judging each sale by what it’s worth to you: order value, margin, or any value you send with the event. With your stock data connected, they read it when they plan.
Will agents replace my AI campaigns?
No. They work through the campaigns you already have. Launching a new campaign is a proposal that waits for your approval by default.
Whose conversion count wins?
Each platform’s own count steers that platform’s bidding. Decisions across channels, like moving budget from one platform to another, are based on your own conversion events.
Other comparisons
- Shopify Campaign AutopilotShopify’s free AI for ads and email, built into the store admin.Costs: free; you pay for ads and sends
- Klaviyo ComposerKlaviyo’s marketing agent: drafts and audits email and SMS.Costs: priced by usage
- HubSpot’s marketing agentsHubSpot’s agents plan and draft campaigns inside your CRM.Costs: Marketing Hub Pro or Enterprise, plus credits
- MadgicxAn AI media buyer for Meta ads, built for e-commerce.Costs: from $45 a month
- An agency or freelancerExperienced people, on a retainer and a regular call.Costs: a retainer, a share of spend, or hours
- A chatbot on your accountsA general AI assistant connected to your ad accounts.Costs: a subscription, plus your time
- Doing it yourselfYou, the platforms, and whatever time is left.Costs: your time, every day
Keep the platforms’ AI campaigns. Put one set of rules across all of them.
Your work email is all we need to start.