• by Maarten Albarda , Featured Contributor, April 11, 2025

Change is inherently difficult. For humans, it often feels counterintuitive and risky. Many of us have experienced firsthand how challenging it is to drive change within an organization, whether in marketing or elsewhere.

Our brains, via the limbic system, are primed to perceive significant change as a threat.

But it is not impossible. I have see examples where an organization changes and improves itself.

But for our industry as a whole, change seems really hard.

That’s because the system is rigged against itself. Each major player often has more incentive to maintain or expand the current state of affairs, instead of genuinely seeking better solutions for everyone.

In this way, the ad business mirrors some aspects of our current political climate: It often seems less about what "we" can do to improve things collectively, and more about what "I" need to do to protect my position -- even if that negatively impacts other parts of the industry. Preserving and strengthening the status quo for individual benefit often seems to be the dominant strategy.

For one example: Agency holding companies pursue principal buying at scale. Is that good for the industry? Objectively: no. But the revenue stream it generates for  holding companies and their shareholders are more important than driving change for the benefit of the wider industry.

For another, platforms have “walled” themselves to protect their revenue streams and muddy the waters of objective evaluation and pricing. Changing this strategy would obviously be beneficial for many parties in the industry ecosystem. But that would mean a potential threat to the status quo and power position platforms currently have.

Then there are the tools meant to govern and analyze our industry. They remain fragmented, often siloed ("walled"), and provide an incomplete picture. For years, industry analysts and data experts launched countless initiatives to address this fragmentation, yet none have truly solved the core issue: Each set of metrics often functions as an isolated "currency" serving the specific interests of one stakeholder group. Few seem prepared to collaboratively create a unified "currency zone," as it would mean conceding ground and risking exposure -- perhaps being revealed as the proverbial emperor with no clothes.

And then there is the time, money and resources issue -- or rather, the lack thereof. Most people in our industry are perpetually stretched, and many feel the constant threat of obsolescence with the rise of AI, ageism, in-housing and offshoring, to name but a few threats. Making things better would require more money, which is an immediate no-go.

Money and resources in general are scarce commodities, but the fact that we are now living in a highly volatile economy makes this even worse. It’s sad that our economic woes are “the worst self-inflicted wound that I have ever seen an administration impose on a well-functioning economy,” per Janet Yellen, who served as chair of the Federal Reserve during Donald Trump's first term.

Luckily, there are initiatives underway, and industry organizations that are truly trying. So we agree: Change is hard. Effecting changes within a system where the incentives are so heavily stacked against collective improvement is even harder.