• by Morten Pedersen , December 23, 2024

Bill Bernbach famously said, “It may well be that creativity is the last unfair advantage we’re legally allowed to take over our competitors.” He was right, of course, but Bernbach might have been surprised to see how quickly creativity gave way to something else entirely.

Today, the advertising industry – long celebrated for its capacity to enchant, surprise, and persuade – finds itself locked in a numbers game. And it’s a game it's at risk of losing.

In a previous column, I explored how advertising has swung between its poles of “dust” and “magic” – from functional delivery systems to moments of creative brilliance, and back again.

Today, the pendulum feels stuck. Media planning and buying, once extensions of strategy, are now consumed by metrics. Not metrics of meaning or impact, but of delivery: impressions, views, clicks, and CPMs. These numbers don’t just measure the system – they shape it. And, just like the housing market of 2008, they’re starting to show cracks.

The Illusion of Control

In 2008, the sub-prime mortgage market collapsed under the weight of its own abstractions. Mortgages, once simple agreements, had been bundled, traded, and rebranded into products so complex that even their creators struggled to explain them. The system worked as long as house prices rose, masking the risks beneath. But when the illusion faltered, the consequences were immediate and far-reaching.

Media today operates under a similar illusion. CPMs, impressions, and clicks create a comforting sense of control. They allow campaigns to be planned, optimized, and predicted with precision. A CPM tells you how efficiently an ad was delivered. An impression counts how often it was seen. A click, though it rarely means much, at least suggests someone noticed. But like house prices in 2008, these metrics often obscure fragility rather than reveal value.

The greatest illusion isn’t what these metrics reveal – it’s what they obscure: the people behind them. Advertising has never been about delivery alone. Its purpose has always been to change behavior: to shift perceptions, create desire, inspire future action. But today’s metrics don’t measure future behavior. They measure delivery. They tell us how many ads were served, not whether anyone cared. When activity replaces impact, the purpose of advertising begins to fray. Plans are made to serve ads, not to persuade or build mental availability. Delivery is rewarded, while profound connection is quietly forgotten.

And the cost of this drift isn’t just abstract. It’s personal. When media forgets its audience, it doesn’t just fail to connect. It risks becoming irrelevant.

The Forgotten Audience

Advertising has always been about people; not as data points to target, but as individuals to understand. Decades ago, agencies prided themselves on being specialists in understanding audiences. Researchers and planners would sit in kitchens, wander through high streets, and listen as people talked about their lives: candid, contradictory, and wonderfully unpredictable. Those conversations weren’t just research; they were the foundation of advertising’s success.

But over the years, we’ve traded understanding for efficiency. Planning and buying prioritize platforms over people, reducing audiences to rows in spreadsheets; analyzed, targeted, endlessly optimized. Algorithms, for all their sophistication, are astonishingly incurious. They know what you clicked, but they’ve no idea why you cared. They can predict behavior, but they don’t explain it. They’re effective at delivering ads but woefully ineffective at creating meaning.

Media isn’t just a delivery system. It’s where brands encounter the unpredictability of real life. The best advertising doesn’t simply inform or entertain - it creates moments, starts conversations, and sometimes even changes minds. To rediscover its value, the media industry must reclaim what made it indispensable: its ability to understand people, not as data points but as complex and soulful individuals. Because when we lose sight of what moves people in the real world, we lose sight of what advertising is for.

The Disconnect in the Boardroom

This reliance on delivery metrics hasn’t gone unnoticed. In boardrooms, where advertising is expected to drive business outcomes, the language of CPMs and impressions has become increasingly irrelevant. CEOs and CFOs want to talk about customer acquisition costs, lifetime value, and churn – outcomes that require deep understanding of what inspires and motivates the audience. Instead, they’re often presented with dashboards that track activity but fail to explain its significance.

The more disconnected advertising feels from its customers, the harder it becomes to make its case in the boardroom. Metrics that obscure impact don’t just alienate audiences – they erode trust in advertising’s value at the highest corporate level. Once seen as a driver of growth, advertising is now viewed as an isolated cost. And when the industry can’t prove its relevance, sending in Procurement to cut budgets becomes an easy decision.

The truth is, we don’t just need better metrics. We need better conversations. Advertising doesn’t exist to serve algorithms or impress platforms; it exists to grow businesses by connecting meaningfully with real people. Until we can make that case convincingly, advertising will remain on the margins of the boardroom agenda.

A Quiet Reawakening

The sub-prime market didn’t collapse because people stopped wanting homes. It collapsed because the system stopped creating value, borrowing against a future it couldn’t sustain. Media faces the same risk – not because audiences don’t want stories, ideas, or connection, but because the industry has drifted from what made it valuable in the first place.

Advertising must stop borrowing against its future. Media must be about more than impressions served; it must focus on impressions made. Metrics can measure activity, but they should also measure meaning. The real question isn’t how many people were served an ad, but how many cared. When activity replaces impact, advertising loses its ability to persuade – but when we put impact first, it regains its power to build trust, spark imagination, and create lasting value.

The opportunity is clear: to stop borrowing against the attention and trust of audiences, and instead invest in understanding them. Media’s future doesn’t lie in what it delivers – it lies in the connections it dares to make.