Advertising’s confidence problem, according to the man who used to price its stocks

July 08, 2026

By Seb Joseph At an IAB Europe forecast panel yesterday (July 7), Ian Whittaker — a former City equity analyst who now runs Liberty Sky Advisors — dropped the kind of line that tends to go quiet in a room full of ad execs: “Advertising has lost its way.”

His reasoning is that four or five decades ago, there was a straight line from a business’s needs to what its agency did on its behalf. That line is gone. Advertising, he said, has become “self-absorbed” — an industry that talks to itself more than it talks to the businesses paying for it.

It’s a blunt assessment of a widespread practice — one that’s never short of example: Ad tech vendors spend entire conferences debating whether agentic AI will transact media autonomously. Brand-side finance teams haven’t been asked if they want it to. Holdcos tell Wall Street a story about AI-driven margin expansion and organic growth. Clients get a very different story about why their budgets keep getting squeezed. Agencies report up CPM, viewability and engagement. The CFO wants to know what it did for revenue. Continue reading this article on digiday.com. Sign up for Digiday newsletters to get the latest on media, marketing and the future of TV. …read more

Source:: Digiday