Humans can advertise better than robotic Google algorithms. That seems to be the take-away message from advertising agency M&C Saatchi‘s founding brother Maurice Saatchi, who uses a Q&A in today’s FT to debate readers on the efficiency of AdWords versus traditional approaches. The web, and Google in particular, thanks to keyword search advertising, is eating up many advertising budgets that conventionally skewed toward TV, radio and newspapers, but Saatchi disputes it will conquer all other media: “Google, brilliant organization though it is, takes a step too far in suggesting that an individual’s digital search history is all that is required to know what they want. That is like saying all you need to sell something to someone is their CV.”

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Saatchi conceded digital was the fastest-growing part of his business, but said “there is no rivalry” between Google and older advertising forms - the search behemoth is just one of many outlets and ad agencies need to evaluate them all. “When television arrived, it claimed to solve the problem of low reading and noting scores for national press advertisements by providing a ’captive audience’. That was said to be the charm of the 30 second TV commercial. Today Google says it has a replacement for the interruptive TV model. We are neutral about all these competing claims.”

All this while Saatchi & Saatchi, the rival ad agency the brothers lost in a 1995 boardroom coup, accelerates its digital activities as part of the Publicis/Digitas group, currently aiming to ramp its digital revenue up to 25 percent.