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For most of its history, advertising thrived on context.

Marlboro could posture as rugged freedom in the pages of Life.

Coca-Cola could sell happiness in the glow of a family television. Brands borrowed gravitas from the stage they performed on.

That stage has collapsed.

Open any feed, and the juxtapositions border on derangement. A luxury perfume ad sits next to footage from kids dyeing a war zone. A “get ready with me” makeup tutorial plays before a video of protesters clashing with police. A parody song about eugenics algorithms trends, while a new snack food launches in the same scroll. Luxury and suffering. Irony and sincerity. Progress and regression. All jostling for the same square of glass.

This is not culture. It is collision.

Algorithms, of course, insist they are solving the problem. They offer “personalization”. But what they actually know are the following: They know when you are restless, when you pause for three seconds on a video, when you hover over a product before abandoning it. They know your pulse. What they do not know is your soul. Why you can’t sleep, why you feel sad, why you are crying.

Prediction is not the same as understanding.

Machines are superb at exploiting moments of weakness—2am insomnia, doomscroll fatigue, payday jitters. Yet they cannot tell you why people yearn, what they aspire to, or what makes life meaningful. The industry has mistaken behavioural prediction for intimacy, and in doing so, has surrendered its one true advantage: the ability to craft enduring meaning.

This is advertising’s awkward dilemma. Do brands add more shards to the pile, fighting for a microsecond of fractured attention? Or do they resist the gravity of the feed and try to create coherence instead?

The uncomfortable truth is that advertising has become a contributor to the breakdown. By chasing “relevance” at all costs, brands pour gasoline on the chaos. Every campaign becomes another dissonant signal fighting for scraps of cognition.

Yet the opportunity is hiding in plain sight. In an environment where everything is noise, coherence becomes radical. In a feed where every signal contradicts the next, a brand that offers consistency, clarity, or even a moment of calm stands out far more than one that shouts louder.

Yesterday’s diagnosis was economic: loyalty is no longer earned, it is rented, renewed only as long as the offer makes sense. Today’s diagnosis is cultural: meaning itself has fragmented.

The future of advertising will not be won by algorithms alone, nor by nostalgia for heritage brands. It will be won by those who can do what machines cannot: give people a story that makes sense of the chaos.

The algorithm may know your pulse, but only humans can write your soul. The question for brands is brutally simple: do you want to feed the collapse—or carve coherence out of it?

For a century, marketers preached the gospel of brand loyalty. People bought Coca-Cola for the dream. Marlboro for the cowboy. Mercedes for the badge.

That religion is over.

Euromonitor’s Trending Topics 2026 makes it plain: despite household incomes crawling upward at just 0.4% a year since 2021, consumers don’t judge by price alone. They demand health, convenience, sustainability, digital ease. If you can’t deliver, you’re irrelevant.

71% of consumers worry about the rising cost of everyday items. But they aren’t clinging to legacy labels. They are defecting to private label. Cooking ingredients, staple foods, dairy—once the strongholds of heritage brands—are now being stripped bare by discounters and warehouse clubs.

And then come the insurgents: Temu. TikTok. SHEIN. They don’t sell myths. They sell speed, affordability, and relevance. And they are winning.

The report names the shift: brand loyalty is weakening. Loyalty isn’t earned. It’s rented, renewed only as long as the offer makes sense.

Winners already know this. InterContinental Hotels sells NOMO solo-stay packages with wellness perks. SAIC’s MG4 EV became a European bestseller by combining affordability with advanced features. They didn’t trade on heritage. They traded on delivery.

So stop polishing your history. Nobody cares.
In this economy of squeezed incomes and rising costs, the only question is: Do you deliver today?

The cult of the brand is dead.
The cult of delivery has begun.

Covering the latest campaigns, news and trends, along with industry interviews, events and case studies.

WARC’s The Future of Programmatic 2025 is a meticulously composed document. The charts are polished. The language is neutral. The predictions are framed as progress.

But read it closely and a deeper truth emerges:
It’s not a report. It’s an autopsy.
What’s dying is unpredictability. Creativity. Humanity.
And we’re all expected to applaud as the corpse is carried off, sanitized and smiling.

We Are Optimizing Ourselves Into Irrelevance

Every year, programmatic becomes more “efficient.” More “targeted.” More “brand safe.”
And with each incremental improvement, something irreplaceable is lost.

We’ve mistaken precision for persuasion.
We’ve traded emotional impact for mechanical relevance.
We’ve built a system that serves the spreadsheet, not the soul.

74% of European impressions now come through curated deals.
Which sounds like order. Until you realize it means the wildness is gone.
No chaos. No accidents. No friction. No magic.

We didn’t refine advertising. We tamed it. And in doing so, we made it forgettable.

Curation Is Not a Strategy. It’s a Symptom.

Let’s stop pretending curation is innovation. It’s not.
It’s fear management. It’s an escape hatch from a system that got too messy.
We created an open marketplace—then panicked when it did what open things do: surprise us.

So we closed it.

We built private marketplaces, multi-publisher deals, curated “quality” impressions.
And we congratulated ourselves for regaining control.
But in truth, we just shrank the canvas. The reach is cleaner, sure. But the resonance is gone.

Personalization Has Become a Prison

We’re shown what the machine thinks we want—again and again—until novelty disappears.
We call it relevance, but what it really is… is confinement.
When every ad is customized to our past behavior, we stop growing. We stop discovering.
We become static reflections of data points.

We aren’t advertising to humans anymore. We’re advertising to ghosts of their former selves.

AI Isn’t Making Ads Safer. It’s Making Them Invisible.

The report praises AI for enhancing brand safety.
But here’s the problem no one wants to name: AI doesn’t understand context.
It understands keywords, sentiment scores, and statistical tone.
So entire stories, entire voices, entire truths are algorithmically scrubbed out—because the machine can’t read between the lines.

It’s not safety. It’s sanitization.
It’s censorship with a dashboard.

We’re not avoiding risk. We’re avoiding reality.

Out-of-Home Might Be Our Last Chance

Digital out-of-home is the only space left that still feels human.
It’s dynamic, unpredictable, environmental. It responds to mood, weather, location.
It doesn’t follow you. It meets you.

It’s flawed. It’s physical. It’s not entirely measurable.
And because of that—it still has soul.

It reminds us that real advertising doesn’t beg for clicks.
It stops you mid-step.
It lingers in your head hours later, uninvited.

The Real Threat Isn’t Bad Ads. It’s Forgettable Ones.

We keep polishing the system, but forget why the system existed in the first place.
Advertising isn’t a math problem.
It’s a cultural force. A punchline. A provocation. A seduction. A story.
And we’ve allowed it to become… efficient.

That should terrify us.

Because efficient ads don’t change minds.
Efficient ads don’t start movements.
Efficient ads don’t get remembered.

Only real ones do.
Messy. Emotional. Imperfect.
Human.

In Case You Skimmed, Read This:

  • Curation isn’t strategy. It’s shrinkage.
  • AI brand safety is quiet censorship.
  • Personalization killed surprise.
  • The future of programmatic isn’t what’s next—it’s what’s left.

We didn’t lose the plot. We wrote it out of the story. Stay Curious

Two years ago, marketers used ChatGPT to draft blog posts.
Today, those who kept up are using AI to rebuild their entire marketing departments.

The shift is deeper than most realize.
We’re not just automating tasks.
We’re replacing entire teams with in-house AI agents.

And most agencies?
They won’t survive it.

The Hidden Transformation

Most small businesses are still stuck in 2023.
They think AI means asking ChatGPT for content ideas.
They don’t see what’s really happening.

But the smartest brands already do.

They don’t outsource anymore.
They build internal systems powered by custom GPTs and Gemini agents.
AI workflows that replicate the core functions of a digital agency—only faster, cheaper, and more aligned to the brand.

This isn’t a theory. It’s live.

The In-House Revolution

Here’s how it works.

Smart businesses now set up:

  • A brand-trained content engine that writes SEO-rich posts, links properly, and follows brand tone.
  • An internal brand assistant that remembers every meeting, every product detail, every customer persona.
  • A PR strategist that drafts releases and finds outreach targets.
  • A design agent that adapts templates to new offers and launches.
  • A media buyer that helps test and optimize ads.

Each of these is an AI.
Each one improves over time.
Each one lives inside the business.

So instead of paying $10,000 a month to an agency, they pay a few hundred for intelligent workflows that never sleep, forget, or outsource your voice.

The Future of Marketing Is Internal

Let’s break it down.

If you’re a business with under $2,000/month to spend on marketing
You’ll use software that does everything in-house.
Blog posts. Ads. Funnels. Designs. Email. All done instantly with your data and tone.

If you’re spending $2,000–$20,000/month
You won’t hire an agency.
You’ll hire an AI architect to build systems tailored to your brand.
One-time setup, continuous payoff.

Only if you’re spending over $50,000/month
Will it still make sense to bring in elite humans.
The visionaries. The top-tier creatives.
Even then, they’ll work with your AI stack—not in place of it.

Why Digital Agencies Will Vanish

This is the part people don’t want to hear:

Most digital marketing agencies will go extinct.

Not because marketing dies.
But because the need to outsource it dies.

Small and medium businesses will realize they don’t need external teams when internal systems do a better job.

And once that realization hits, it’s over.

Agencies that don’t evolve will fade.
The few that survive will become AI consultants, builders, or strategic partners—no longer execution factories.

The Only Thing AI Can’t Replace

What still matters?

Judgment.
Insight.
Taste.

The ability to ask the right question.
To find the right story.
To decide what not to do.

Everything else—copy, design, ads, funnels—is systematized and scalable.

Your only competitive edge will be your mind.

By 2027, marketing won’t be something you outsource.


It will be something you run internally, powered by your own intelligent agents.

Businesses that realize this will move faster, grow leaner, and make better decisions.

Those that don’t?
They’ll keep paying bloated retainers for work AI could have done better in seconds.

The age of digital agencies is ending.
Not because they failed.
But because they’re no longer necessary.

images via @freepic

Why Weak Thinking Is Starving Creativity

A strange thing is happening in adland.

Budgets are holding. Tools are multiplying. Content is everywhere.
And yet—campaigns are feeling flatter, safer, forgettable.
We’re showing up more. But saying less.

According to Lions’ State of Creativity 2025 report, we now know why:

51% of brands say their insights are too weak to fuel bold creativity.

The very oxygen of original work—insight—is running low.

Creativity Isn’t Dead. It’s Malnourished.

The study surveyed 1,000 marketers and creatives globally.
Only 13% said they were “very good” at developing high-quality insights.
And over half admitted their strategic thinking wasn’t strong enough to support brave ideas.

This isn’t about copy or color palettes.
It’s about the starting point—the thinking beneath the campaign.

When that’s soft, everything collapses.
We don’t create culture. We decorate it.

The Great Disconnect

Here’s where it gets messier.

26% of brands believe they’re good at generating insights.
Only 10% of agencies agree.

That’s not a disagreement. That’s a misalignment.
And it shows up in the work: campaigns with zero tension, zero edge, and zero memory.

It’s a quiet crisis—because no one gets fired for playing it safe.
But no one gets remembered for it, either.

Why This Is Happening

The report points to three key reasons:

  1. No one agrees on what a “good insight” actually is.
    29% of agencies said the core problem is not knowing how to define it.
  2. Insight development isn’t prioritized.
    It’s not funded. It’s not briefed. It’s not protected.
    (But production timelines? Always urgent.)
  3. Brands struggle to react to culture in real time.
    57% said they can’t respond fast enough to cultural moments.
    Insight, by the time it surfaces, is already stale.

As one respondent put it:

“Capturing cultural moments requires real-time data and courage. But fear of failure gets in the way.”

What Insight Isn’t

  • It’s not a stat.
  • Not a demographic.
  • Not “Millennials love experiences.”
  • Not pulled from a deck last year and recycled today.

Insight is friction. It’s clarity on a human truth your category hasn’t touched yet.
It’s the gut-punch behind the campaign—not the headline.

Without it, the work may look good.
But it won’t feel anything.

What This Means for Brands

If creativity is how we stand out, insight is how we break in.
Into minds. Into culture. Into relevance.

Without it, your ad becomes wallpaper.
With it, your ad becomes signal.

And right now, in an industry that can generate 10,000 versions of an idea with AI in under a minute,insight is the last unfair advantage.

This isn’t a creativity crisis. It’s a thinking one.

We’ve never had more tools, more channels, more data—
and yet, we keep mistaking noise for impact.

Without real insight, we’re just adding color to the void.
Insight is what gives a campaign a spine, a soul, and a shot at mattering.
Without it, we’re not communicating—we’re just performing.

And in a world flooded with content,
only the brands that see deeper will ever be seen at all.

Ad spend is falling. Only what proves ROI will survive.

Let’s start with the headline stat:
📉 54% of marketers worldwide plan to cut ad budgets in 2025.
📉 In Europe, it’s even worse—60%.

This isn’t a trend.
This is a reset.

And in a world where money is tight, there’s one new rule:

No proof, no budget.

Why It’s Happening

According to Nielsen’s 2025 Annual Marketing Report, marketers are reacting to:

  • Economic uncertainty
  • Supply chain instability
  • Sluggish consumer demand
  • Pressure from the CFO to cut anything that isn’t measurable

The result?
Marketing teams are being told:
👉 “Do more with less.”
👉 “Show me it worked, or don’t do it again.”

What It Means for You

Here’s how the landscape is shifting:

✅ What Stays❌ What Gets Cut
Digital with clear metricsBrand campaigns with no follow-up
Performance marketingAwareness-only TV buys
Retail Media Networks (RMNs)“Spray and pray” display ads
Connected TV with targetingVanity metrics (reach, impressions)
Tools that show ROITactics you can’t track

The Big Takeaway: ROI or Die

Nielsen found that 60% of marketers globally now prioritize return on investment—not just reach or awareness.
And guess what?
Most marketers still can’t measure their full campaigns properly.

Only 32% measure digital and traditional media together.
In Europe, it’s even lower—just 23%.

That means most brands are spending blind.

So What’s Working?

📈 Connected TV (CTV):
56% of marketers plan to increase spending here—it’s digital, trackable, and can replace expensive TV spots.

📈 Retail Media Networks (RMNs):
Think Amazon, Walmart, Uber, or even big travel apps. They offer closed-loop measurement—you can see exactly who saw your ad and bought your product. That’s budget gold.

📈 AI-powered campaigns:
Marketers love it for speed, personalization, and media optimization.
(And yes, it’s cheaper than hiring 5 analysts.)

What to Do Now

You don’t need to panic.
You need to prove.

Here’s your 3-part playbook:

1. Only run what you can measure.

Every campaign should show how it impacts revenue, conversions, or growth.

2. Switch to ROI-first channels.

If you can’t show what worked—on paper—it’s a risk.
CTV, retail media, search, and email are safer bets than brand ads with no call to action.

3. Bring finance into marketing.

Treat your campaigns like investments.
Every dollar spent should have a thesis, a goal, and a post-mortem.

This Isn’t Budget Cuts. It’s Budget Evolution.

You’re not losing money.
You’re losing unaccountable spending.

From now on, your best campaign isn’t your most creative.
It’s the one that comes with a receipt.

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