• by Maarten Albarda , Featured Contributor, 18 minutes ago

If you’ve been reading my column over the years, you know I’ve been critical of the ad industry. I’ve complained about tech companies inflating ad prices, agency holding companies using programmatic and/or principal media to line their own pockets, agencies using AI to churn out junk faster, and agentic systems playing a risky digital game of telephone with your media budget.

We’re living in an "attention sink" where infinite content generates zero actual memory. Synthetic intimacy apps sell fake chatbots because people forgot how to connect.

And I stand by every word, but maybe I am being too negative. Perhaps I should be putting away the snark for a change -- or at least most of it.

Because amid the endless noise about algorithms replacing or downgrading jobs, we are told something remarkable is happening. Gen Z is buying dumb phones, vinyl sales hit record highs again, and people are craving real, unscripted human encounters.

Brands are starting to get it, too. Look at Heineken turning city rooftops into spaces for friends to drink beer IRL, or Uno setting up physical game clubs to get people out of their houses. They aren't trying to optimize an impression; they’re trying to facilitate belonging. In a sea of automated slop, human warmth has become the ultimate premium asset.

And inside our own industry, the narrative is shifting, too. The gloom-and-doom prediction was that AI would empty agencies of people. The reality? Not so fast. It seems the narrative is more about AI relieving us of toil. The mind-numbing assembly line work -- tagging, bid management, micro-optimizing match types, endless excel spreadsheets -- is finally being handed over to machines.

When you strip away the operational busywork, what’s left? Strategy. Empathy. Taste. Judgment.

So perhaps it isn't all doom and gloom. Removing the sludge means we are making time for enlightened strategy and analysis. Or so the argument goes… But what if these are actually false positives?

Of course, business leadership is currently declaring victory, insisting that automation gives us time for the cool stuff, the high-end work. What they conveniently gloss over is the math. The five people who used to manage sludge data or trafficking are now maybe 1.5 people.

And let’s be honest: Not everybody gets to step up and do the "interesting" strategic work. Some people won't be promoted to grand brand strategists. Some people will simply end up not working at all.

When C-suite surveys show optimism, remember who is filling out the surveys: the people saving on headcount, not the headcount being saved. Maybe we are celebrating the return of human taste, but are we doing it with a significantly smaller human footprint?

So, what do we do in this strange, contradictory moment? If humans still count, protect your talent, don't just cut hours. Use the efficiency gains of AI to fund senior human judgment, not just to shrink the agency contract down to a ghost crew. But also invest to grow the capabilities of that not-yet-senior human capital.

And then direct your super-powered, AI-plus-human-driven analytics to measure real connection. If your campaign looks great on a DSP dashboard but does nothing to build a real memorable brand structure in a human brain, it failed.

OK, I tried to write a completely positive column today and avoid the snark. I only half succeeded. But maybe that's just the human in me.