According to a post on TechCrunch today - Sequoia Invests in SEM-Automator Kenshoo - SEM can now be totally automated using a platform called Kenshoo:

"…All you search-engine marketing consultants watch out. Sequoia Capital just invested in Kenshoo, an Israeli startup that automates the whole process of creating and managing search-engine marketing campaigns. It is a labor-intensive activity that has given rise to an entire cottage industry. Kenshoo competes with bid-management software from all the giants in online advertising (DoubleClick, aQuantive’s Atlas Solutions, and Omniture), but it goes a step beyond that to look at the quality of the campaigns. It finds relevant keywords across search engines, and changes the campaigns to maximize their returns.

It seems to me that anything technical can be automated if you put enough work in it - especially if much of the task is repetitive.    Can this product, running on automatic, take a client, create campaigns and then run them efficiently as well as create reporting?  I don't know - but it's noteworthy someone thinks it's worth developing software that totally manages paid campaigns.