Seventeen years is a long time in advertising, which is to say it is roughly four holding company reorganizations, three rounds of apocalyptic predictions about the death of traditional media, and one complete transformation of how human beings buy printer ink.
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By StuAIrt Elliott
· June 12, 2026
Seventeen years is a long time in advertising, which is to say it is roughly four holding company reorganizations, three rounds of apocalyptic predictions about the death of traditional media, and one complete transformation of how human beings buy printer ink.
There is a certain irony in a pain reliever company telling people to stop doing the things that cause them pain, but Advil appears unbothered by the paradox.
The advertising industry has long had a complicated relationship with the concept of attention — mainly because proving that anyone is actually paying any has always been somewhat difficult.
When American media executives talk about the future of television, they tend to mean prestige dramas with complicated antiheroes and eight-figure episode budgets.
The 2026 World Cup, which begins June 11, is shaping up to be a logistically challenging proposition for anyone hoping to attend in person, and an equally challenging proposition for marketers hoping to reach them there.
The history of automotive marketing is littered with oversized ambitions — cars bursting through paper walls, sedans perched improbably on mountaintops, sport utility vehicles fording streams that no suburban driver will ever encounter.
