Are digital ads the enemy of advertising?

"My biggest complaint with the digital ads ecosystem is it, by design, strips the ability of the advertiser to make some of those decisions-not merely placement, but targeting, and with the emergence of dynamic creative and generative AI, messaging too. In the process, we've turned advertising from a very deliberately engineered system-where the architect knows what each part of the process should do-into one that's, essentially, a black box."

"And within this black box, there's little room for creativity. The Process Is Creative When we think about advertising-and, in particular, good advertising-we always think about the messaging. It's true that some of the best campaigns in history have always used clever wordplay, or coy psychological tactics, to drive a point home. The Pepsi Challenge, for example, started off as a series of in-person taste tests"

Advertising began nearly 5,000 years ago in Ancient Egypt. The advertising business historically required intentional choices about language, imagery, audiences, and distribution. Advertisers traditionally controlled placement, targeting, and messaging across media from papyrus notices to radio and television. The contemporary digital ads ecosystem increasingly strips advertisers of decision-making power by automating placement, targeting, and, with dynamic creative and generative AI, messaging. That automation turns advertising into a black box and reduces opportunities for deliberate design and creativity. The loss of control undermines the role of the advertiser as the architect of campaigns and narrows the space for inventive strategies and creative experimentation.

Read at Fast Company