Generative AI is the new ad land obsession: a shiny promise of a fully autonomous world of self-driving advertising.
But behind the hype lies the costly delusion that automation can replace judgment and more content somehow means better marketing.
We’ve entered the age of machine-made abundance, where content can be generated faster than it can be briefed. Yet, amid this explosion, brands are losing something far rarer: coherence, consistency and connection.
The future may be self-driving, but if we don’t set the destination, we’re just accelerating toward a dead end.
The first advertising Big Bang
This isn’t the first time advertising has mistaken acceleration for progress. In 1986, the industry fused itself together while chasing scale. Today, it’s fusing itself to machines chasing speed.
In April 1986, BBDO, DDBO and Needham Harper & Steers announced they were joining forces to create a new holding company. Despite the obvious opportunity to name the new venture BBDODDBONHS, Omnicom Group was unveiled that June.
Two weeks later, Saatchi & Saatchi acquired Ted Bates, and the dominoes fell. WPP and Publicis went on acquisition sprees to keep pace.
It was the era of “bigger is better.” Agencies grew through mergers that promised efficiency and reach. That Big Bang built a system optimized for volume, not visibility, and for production over proof. The result was an industry wired to create more, not better.
The next Big Bang: Fully automated advertising
Nearly four decades later, another revolution is underway. The age of self-driving advertising has arrived. The promise is alluring: Plug in data, press go and watch AI produce endless variations of creative across every platform.
But there’s a problem. Creative judgment still matters. Systems still need direction. And brands still live or die by consistency, not volume.
Where the 1980s agency boom chased mergers, today’s marketers chase models. Both stem from the same reflex: When faced with complexity, we default to more.
But more isn’t a strategy; more is noise.
What’s changing and what’s not
Jeff Bezos says people often ask him what will change in the next 10 years, but they rarely ask him what will stay the same. In his opinion, the second question is more important. You can only build a business strategy on the things that endure.
What’s changing in the AI era is speed, accessibility and volume. Anyone can now make something that looks like an ad.
But what’s not changing are the laws of effectiveness: Brands still need to be distinctive, consistent and memorable. These forces help advertising cut through the noise, build mental availability and drive choice. No algorithm can rewrite them.
The ability to discern what matters and forge a point of view remains marketing’s most human advantage. It’s what turns data into insight and insight into impact.
From content to creative
Everyone is talking about generative AI as if it already powers their entire content pipeline. In reality, it represents barely 1%.
Whether that grows to 5%, 50% or 90% in the next few years, other modes of creation (brand studios, agencies, creators, communities) will remain essential. Generative AI is just one new piece, but we’ve started acting as if it’s the whole puzzle.
The next frontier isn’t making more content; it’s connecting every execution back to the creative idea it came from and measuring whether that idea works.
Here’s how marketers can shift from managing outputs to evaluating ideas:
- Connect your content ecosystem. If your generative AI tool sits on its own island, you’re not seeing the whole campaign. Every asset, whether from a creator, a brand studio or a machine, must live in one connected system. Only then can you compare, learn and scale what works.
- Link creative systems to performance. Content platforms that don’t talk to performance data, or vice versa, trap marketers in partial truths. The more your creative and performance data connect, the clearer your picture of what drives growth.
- Embed creative data into measurement. Marketers have mastered media data. Now they must master creative data. Embedding variables like distinctiveness and adherence to brand principles into existing frameworks turns content analysis into creative intelligence. It lets you move beyond “what ran” to “what resonated.”
A new kind of scale
For decades, marketing has chased scale through size: bigger agencies, bigger budgets, bigger data sets.
Consistency is the new scale.
That’s the paradox of the self-driving age: The more we automate, the more human discernment matters. The promise of automation was to make marketing smarter. The paradox is that it’s made judgment more valuable than ever.
“Data-Driven Thinking” is written by members of the media community and contains fresh ideas on the digital revolution in media.
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