Are Performance Marketers becoming obsolete?
Why managing ad platforms is no longer enough
I started my career just as Facebook’s self-serve ad platform was exploding, alongside the rise of the paid social marketer.
I believe that role and other performance marketing roles are now dying. In some companies, they’ll already be gone.
Managing an ad platform is table stakes now. The algorithms have become so effective that the need for deep platform knowledge has faded. With a set of basic principles, any commercially minded analyst, engineer or creative can operate Google or Meta ads effectively, while bringing a much broader skill set to the table.
I’ve been thinking about this while building the growth marketing function at Lovable. We were already moving in this direction at Cleo, but it’s now clear to me that this is where performance marketing is heading.
Here’s how I think about the future of performance marketers..
1. Channel managers are becoming redundant
In 2026, you don’t need someone whose core skill is “I manage Facebook campaigns”.
That skill has become extremely basic. The best people who once sat in that seat have been advancing their technical, data and/or creative skills for a long time.
Ad platforms are easier to use, automation is easier, and almost anyone can be taught how to launch a campaign effectively with a small set of principles. If you still have people on your team whose main responsibility is posting ads and reporting on performance, I believe you’re being taken for a ride.
2. Channel management is now a basic skill, not a job
Running ads is no longer a standalone role. It should be coupled with at least one other important competency.
These are the skill areas that now actually matter:
Marketing analytics
Writing SQL is no longer enough. You might think I’m being harsh, but anyone can vibe code SQL now with access to a database.
The real value is doing more advanced analyst work such as understanding signalling, analysing and improving LTV projections, designing experiments, and building tools that enable things like geo-lift studies or incrementality testing.
Engineering capability
With AI and vibe coding becoming standard in businesses, engineering work is being democratised. If you can’t enable your marketing team to raise PRs in Github, you’re falling behind.
Growth hires who have this skill should be capable of building ad landing pages from scratch, setting up server-to-server tracking, and implementing conversion APIs end to end. I used to think every marketing team needed a dedicated engineer. I now think the marketing team should be engineers.
Creative expertise
I’m not sure how long this window will last, but there is still a huge need for people who can create great ad creative end to end. Combining a deep understanding of the product and audience with knowledge for what works in ads, and then being able to actually make that creative, remains a high value skill.
3. Building a well-rounded performance marketing team
This does not mean everyone on a growth team needs to spike at all of these areas.
The strongest teams I’ve been part of are made up of people with different spikes. One person leans heavily analytical, another is technically strong, another is exceptional creatively. What matters is that channel management is now a shared baseline skill, not the defining feature of anyone’s role.
When you combine these spikes effectively, you get a team that can move fast, learn quickly, and scale without being dependent on external functions.
4. The takeaway for 2026 and beyond
Channel management has not been an advanced skill for years and it’s clear to me that channel management in the future should be a shared skill for a team full of advanced technical, analytical and creative skill-sets.
If you can’t add value in at least one of those areas, and running ads is your only skill, you will find fewer and fewer roles that match what you can do.
The next era of growth hires are not channel managers, they are technical and creative people who operate channels alongside their other work, are you one of them? Get in touch, we’re hiring!
Yeah this is a great insight and very similar to the view I had last year where I called the end to the t-shaped marketer https://read.earlystagegrowth.com/p/the-death-of-the-t-shaped-marketer
For me, the future upside is that everyone becomes a growth artisan – someone who can grow something from start to finish end to end.
That’s extremely true. I can completely relate to how performance marketing have changed over the 10 years I spent at Google. And that’s the main reason why performance marketing agencies are struggling so much for the past years.
Just a few months ago I was mentoring an agency folk for mastering performance marketing; and was told that he only manage 1-2 campaigns, for 1 business line, for 1 region. Altogether at the agency there’s maybe 30 or more people focusing on 1 single company’s performance marketing (and they have no idea what they are doing).