AI

Customers reject AI slop: Don’t let automated ads ruin your retail marketing strategy

Automation will mature and case studies will improve but, until that point, we must ensure advertising is for humans by humans.

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March 20, 2026 by Mike Schrobo — CEO and Founder, Fraud Blocker

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Last year, Blue Apron went viral for all the wrong reasons — the company's advertising copy generated complete gibberish. The incident is a visible example of a wider problem: AI-generated content is everywhere and customers are rejecting it. In fact, the problem is so widespread that "slop" — our collective label for low-quality AI content — became Merriam-Webster's 2025 Word of the Year.

For retail customers, slop advertising that crosses the uncanny valley and looks bad or feels wrong gives the impression that the company doesn't care.

At the same time, however, the big platform players are pushing automation. Meta's new algorithm prescreens and matches ads to individual users in real time, requiring a wide range of creative types, ad styles and messaging to keep up with the volume, which is realistically only possible with AI. Similarly, Google Ads' AI tools promise to "fix" creative bottlenecks by streamlining asset creation. So, if automated efficiency is here to stay, retail marketers and marketing must make sure slop isn't by maintaining final say.

AI slop can destroy brand trust for retailers

I've previously written that digital advertising has a "who's looking at what" problem. That is, ad fraudsters and agentic browsers are making it harder to determine campaign engagement and legitimacy. Now, we have a growing "who's making what" problem. Ad viewers are wary of what's real and what isn't and punish brands for perceived laziness.

Customers quickly spot AI-generated ads (particularly poorly executed ones) and often lose confidence in the brand. This is because the jury's still out on how we feel about the technology: More than half of Americans are "more concerned than excited" about AI in daily life, with trust levels significantly lower for AI-generated brand content than for human-created advertising.

The efficiency gains from automation are tempting but meaningless if AI-generated slop destroys the brand trust that actually drives sales. This is especially critical for smaller retailers competing on quality rather than price.

Automated campaigns can damage targeting and transparency

The complicating factor is that ad platforms are encouraging automation. Google's automated campaign manager, Performance Max, promises reach across all channels with minimal setup and hands-off optimization. The marketer selects the themes and the platform automates bidding, attribution, and placement. So far, the results are mixed.

The targeting can often cast too wide a net or focus on the wrong areas. Display ads — which Performance Max relies on heavily unless marketers say otherwise – convert at roughly one-seventh the rate of Search ads. This can quickly eat away at budgets without much impact to show for it.

Further, Google signaled another big shift to the customer journey with Universal Commerce Protocol, a new back-end agentic infrastructure that lets shoppers complete purchases without even visiting a retailer's site. But there are question marks since retailers rely on browsing behavior and session data to segment customers, detect fraud, and inform campaign decisions. Many are asking themselves: What comes back when the heavy hitters (Microsoft and Shopify are also moving in a similar direction) own this journey from end to end?

Black-box campaigns and opaque reporting confuse the very thing marketers need to do their job: data. Therefore, taken in concert with the dangers of slop, the age of automation requires careful and clear-eyed decision-making about what marketing is comfortable handing over.

Automation is critical but don't trade it for quality

The intent of automation is to make things easier and more efficient. So far, however, marketers are right to be wary. Creatively, slop looks amateurish and reflects poorly on the brand as a whole. Meanwhile, in terms of agency, handing over decision-making lets algorithms dictate success or failure.

Sure, emerging tools might offer valuable insights into demographics and retargeting, and streamline the creation of ad variants, but marketers should still retain control. The key to automation in this moment is to use it to refine rather than define marketing campaigns.

Automation will mature and case studies will improve but, until that point, we must ensure advertising is for humans by humans. This is especially critical for quality-focused retailers where brand trust drives purchasing decisions. Even small teams are better off retaining control over what their ads look like and where they're going. After all, no tool knows your audience better than you do.

About Mike Schrobo

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