Why are ads so bad right now?

Author

Meredith McManus
March 10, 2025

Over the past year, the frequency of this lil newsletter has slowed to a crawl. It’s been four months since my last send and it’s been hard to feel compelled to write again.

At first, I thought the problem was my job. I was in an incredibly content-heavy role, pumping out social media posts, blogs, and newsletters weekly. By the time Saturday hit, the last thing I wanted to do was write another 3,000 word missive.

When I left that job to go freelance fractional 1 I thought I’d feel a new push to pick up writing again. But the Super Bowl and the Oscars came and went, and I felt nothing.

Several lovely people reached out for my hot takes but, candidly, I didn’t have much to say. They made Seal into a seal? Groundbreaking. (And that was one of the few spots I liked from the night!)

I’ve been thinking about this for months now. What does it mean when I’m more moved by memes about Kendrick Lamar’s 2004-coded flares than the multi-million dollar thirty-second ad spots?

It feels like the industry is kind of crashing out.

Don is all of us rn.

We have entered “the slop void” of advertising where campaigns can be made faster and cheaper than ever. But if we pick those two sides of the triangle, guess what the ads can never be. 🙃

Without getting too deep into the Thought Leadership™, there seem to be a few things at play here:

  1. AI is being used everywhere, for everything, with no real “strategy” or, arguably, need. We’re hurtling towards a world where most major brands just ChatGPT their way through their campaigns in the name of efficiency and cost savings.

     

  2. Companies (and their ad agencies) are rolling back DEI initiatives, including anything that could remotely be considered diversity or inclusion. A real ~choice~ considering research has shown that diversity in advertising is good for their bottom line and 65% of consumers said it’s important that the companies they buy from actively promote diversity and inclusion.

  3. We, as a society, are struggling with media literacy. Yea, yea I know this gets talked about a lot in the context of politics, but it’s seeping into pop culture too. There are entire subreddits dedicated to popular shows like Severance and White Lotus where people are spouting off extreme reach theories or questioning painfully obvious points because they seem to lack the most fundamental understanding of how to consume content unless it’s spelled out for them.2  

Not linking to The Cursed Site, but the sentiment stands.

All of this is why (IMO) advertising and marketing just feel so blah right now. We’re avoiding storytelling and risk-taking to create the most palatable sales pitch. The end result is content that tells us nothing about a brand or product beyond this general vibe: 😃 👍️ 😃 . Everything feels like a prescription pharmaceutical commercial (derogatory).3  

The end result is edgelord or milquetoast, but it definitely won’t be quality.

Take, for example, these LinkedIn ads I’ve been getting non-stop for some kind of virtual after-school program that teaches your kids to do entrepreneurship and crypto based on case studies. (It is taking all of my self-control not to put “?????” behind almost every word of that sentence.)

We’ve taken the concept of “10x-ing” too far.

Their targeting is pretty clearly off, since I don’t have kids. Their product explanation is vague at best. (What is “case study-based curriculum”? No idea, but great news, it’ll only take you 52 weeks - aka one full year - to see results.) It’s just a paragraph of executive jargon slop. But based on how frequently I get the ad they’re dumping a good amount of money into the campaign.

In a CPG version of bland marketing, the millennial store-brand site The Essential has been advertising their “AI-generated” mystery boxes with emails that are also, seemingly, AI-generated.

This is the entire email they sent to compel me to drop $95.

No real product information. No creativity to sell the idea of the mystery box. Just AI for the sake of AI, as if that will be enough to draw buyers in and drive revenue.

You get the picture. You’re being force-fed slop all day, you don’t need more examples from me. Hopefully you can see why I just haven’t been that jazzed to share my thoughts lately; I needed to have a cathartic little “old man yelling at clouds” moment. (And now that I’ve had my chance to grump, I’ll go back to finding the good stuff to share.)

Fortunately, it feels like brands may be recognizing that this slop strategy isn’t working and the tide may be turning. This week at SXSW there are multiple panels focused on creating better, more engaging content vs the current trend of “shallow campaigns.” Entertain or die? Please, I beg you.

The Scrap Pile

A few other things…

@katyrobinbird

She did, in fact, not skip her nap that day. I carried her the rest of the way down the mountain, and she was out cold for two hours.💤💤 Bu... See more

1  I help scale-ups nail their product and lifecycle marketing, from strategy to implementation. Sound like something you need? Let’s talk.

2  I have a theory this is related to the increase in trend awareness and speed at which we cycle through them, as a result of the internet broadly and social media more specifically. I could probably do a whole TED talk on this but TL;DR you aren’t really meant to interpret these types of trends. You’re meant to literally copy and paste it onto your life, using the exact same products and styling. (Shop that link in bio!) . Also related to this theory: the multitude of POV TikToks that incorrectly use the concept of POV.

3  There’s one pharma ad in particular that I’ve been trying to find but it is so bland, I can’t even remember the brand name. It’s a drone shot of a cruise ship and brief voice over about how many years the drug has been on the market, but the ad tells you none of the symptoms the drug treats or the side effects. If you know which ad I’m talking about, please let me know!!

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