"Just use auto ads, manual placement is dead" — false

"Just use auto ads, manual placement is dead" — false
The lazy take: "manual is for boomers, let AI place everything."
Manual is where the margin lives. Auto ads optimize for Google's blended outcome across all publishers — not your specific layout, your specific reader.
I rebuilt one site's top 20 posts with hand-placed in-content units at the exact paragraph where I knew people scroll-stall. RPM beat the auto version by 22% on identical traffic.
Use auto for the long tail you'll never touch. Hand-place your top 10% of pages.
That's where the money hides. Steal it.