“She’s last year’s model.” Elvis Costello

When Elvis Costello snarled that line back in 1978, he was skewering pop culture. Today it reads like the perfect epitaph for advertising itself, an industry that once defined the cultural moment but now risks being remembered as yesterday’s machine: glossy, polished, but already irrelevant.

It’s been said that it’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism. The same could be said of advertising. Not because anyone loves it, but because it’s become so baked into our mental air supply that it feels as natural, and as unavoidable, as breathing.

But the system is creaking. The old machine still hums in the background, but no one’s really listening. And three forces are dismantling it at the core.

1. AI-Powered automation.

Meta, Google, TikTok, Amazon, the pipes are already running on autopilot. Campaigns are optimized by machines, not by Mad Men.

In 2024, digital ad revenue surged to $259 billion (+15% YoY) while traditional media fell by 1% (IAB/PwC, Magna). Why? Because the platforms now run their own game.

As the Wall Street Journal warned:

“Tech giants’ new AI ad tools threaten big agencies.”

If the platforms can generate, optimize, and serve the ad itself, what’s left for agencies except invoices and excuses?

Even WPP, the world’s largest ad group, admits the threat. The Financial Times put it plainly:

“WPP is racing to harness AI before the technology kills its business.”

Investors aren’t buying it. WPP’s share price has halved.

2. Agentic AI & reputational search.

The old way of buying reach is dying. People won’t “search” anymore. They’ll ask their AI. And the answer won’t be ten blue links with banner ads. It will be a single, trusted response.

That flips the model: you don’t pay to be seen, you earn the right to be believed. If your brand isn’t credible, you don’t exist.

Or as one analyst put it:

“The battle won’t be for attention, it will be for authority inside the AI’s response.”

3. Brand collapse.

The cultural monopoly of “the brand” is collapsing. Every teenager with CapCut and MidJourney can look like a global company. The high-cost production moat is gone.

Meanwhile, consumers are openly hostile to tracking and surveillance advertising. If governments finally crack down, the data economy could collapse overnight.

“If governments crack down, the ad-tech ecosystem could collapse almost instantly.” Forrester Research

That’s the Black Swan: not creative irrelevance, but the legal guillotine. A post-cookie, post-tracking world where attention can’t be bought at all.

The existential question.

So what happens? Two futures:

• One, advertising regresses into Meta’s AI business model: an endless stream of machine-made, machine-bought, machine-optimized noise. Cheap. Efficient. Indistinguishable.

• Two, it claws back its soul. It stops pretending to be an optimization industry and becomes what it always claimed to be: a purveyor of creativity, surprise, and cultural meaning.

Advertising luminary, David Droga, who knows the game better than most, didn’t mince words:

“Advertising can’t keep pretending it’s business as usual. AI isn’t going to replace creativity, but it will replace mediocre thinking. If agencies don’t reinvent what they’re for, they’ll be left behind.”

The futurist verdict.

Advertising isn’t dying with a bang. It’s going out like a once‑necessary machine someone forgot to switch off. A machine still humming in the background while the future builds itself elsewhere.

At The Think Room, we see it clearly: the industry stands at a crossroads. Down one path lies obsolescence, as agencies try to out‑Meta Meta. Down the other lies renewal where strategy, storytelling, and human creativity once again matter.

As communications futurists, our bet is simple: meaning wins. Machines may optimize, but only humans can surprise.

And surprise might be the last business strategy left of any value in an AI-automated world.

As always, this article was written with humanity in mind.

Sean & Liora