The 90 Slide Illusion
The Annual Media Strategy deck is a work of art. It has 90 slides. There are "Psychographic Heatmaps" that map human emotion to ad slots. Sometimes there is even a "Day-Parting Matrix" that looks like a NASA launch schedule. There is a slide dedicated to targeting a segment called "Eco-Conscious Millennial Moms named Sarah who love Yoga but hate Gluten."
We nod. We feel smart. We feel like we are in control. We approve the plan and sign the PO.
Then the rubber hits the road.
Strategy vs. Execution
If it’s a digital buy, (social, search, programmatic), the agency goes back to office, opens Meta’s Ads Manager and toggles the ‘Advantage+’ switch on (increasingly so). The AI ignores your Sarah and finds the cheapest click.
If it’s a traditional buy (TV, OOH), the media buyer can’t find your Sarah. So, instead, he buys ‘adults 25-54’ on prime time.
This is the dirty secret of modern media: Most of our precision planning is a theatre.
We continue to pretend we are the Pilot - furiously calculating wind speed and manually adjusting the flaps. In reality, the Autopilot (the AI) is flying, and our manual inputs are mostly just adding drag.
The shift has already happened. Whether it’s Meta’s Andromeda update 2 months back, Google’s PMax, or Amazon’s Agentic AI - the mechanism is the same. The algorithm is no longer a tool that we can use to select audiences. It is a Predator that hunts for them. And it hunts faster, cheaper, and more ruthlessly than we ever could.
We are at the junction of VERY EXCITING and VERY SCARY. And it would be wrong to say that any of us has it all figured out. The truth is that it is going to take some time to understand the full impact of this on brands, businesses, and demand generation. In this newsletter, I am going to share my thoughts on how we, commercial marketers, can approach this.
If you want to build a "Marketing System" that works in 2026, you need to stop micromanaging the theatre and start leveraging the machine. Here are the 4 inputs we are likely ignoring, and some protocols to fix them.
The Targeting Delusion
The SEO Witchcraft
The Control Freak
The Safety Valve
Let’s dive in.
1. The Targeting Delusion (Who vs. What)
The Theater:
We spend days discussing and crafting "audience personas" and linear "journey maps". We tell the machine: "find men, aged 25 - 40, who like 'outdoors' and 'craft beer'. First show them video A, then retarget with image B."
The Reality:
The "linear journey" is dead. Google calls it the "Messy Middle." One customer might buy in 5 minutes; another might need 50 touchpoints over 3 weeks. The algorithm figures this out in real-time, creating a customized journey for each and every single user.
Furthermore, the algorithm ignores your imaginary friend (Sarah who loves yoga but hates gluten). It looks at your Creative.
In the modern System, the creative is the targeting.
If you run a video of a cat, the algorithm will naturally find cat owners. It optimizes for engagement. It doesn't care if you said you wanted dog owners in the settings. It follows the signal, not the setting.
The Protocol: The ‘Full-Funnel Asset Check’
The modern media plan should not try to map the steps; it needs to stock the shelves. Your job is to ensure you have creative hooks for every stage of the psychological journey, and then let the AI decide when to serve them.
What you can do this week:
Audit your creative asset list against the "3 States of Mind." Do not launch until you have atleast a few assets for each:
Non aware potential buyers (Awareness): High-level emotional storytelling. (Fuel for the top).
Aware, looking for a solution (Consideration): Social proof, unboxing, the ‘ZPTO’ claims, and "Why Us" comparison assets. (Fuel for the middle).
Considering but not moving (Conversion): Hard offers, scarcity, and "Shop Now" drivers. (Fuel for the bottom).
The Rule: If you have great awareness ads but zero consideration ads, the AI will find people, interest them, and then lose them because it has nothing to show them next.
2. The SEO Witchcraft (Keywords vs. Truth)
The Theater:
For 20 years, SEO has been a form of corporate witchcraft. We paid agencies to write 2,000-word blog posts about "Best Dog Food" that no human would ever read, just to please Google’s Spiders. We stuffed keywords into white text on white backgrounds!
The Reality:
The new "Search Engine" is a Chatbot (Gemini, ChatGPT, Perplexity, CoPilot).
These bots do not walk through the garbage of our key word choked blogs. They are snobs. They operate on a Hierarchy of Trust.
Tier-1 (The Truth): Academic Journals, Government Data, Major News Outlets (NYT, WSJ).
Tier-2 (The Consensus): High-Authority Review Sites (TechRadar, CNET), Reddit Megathreads.
Tier-3 (The Junk): Your SEO-optimized corporate blog.
When a user asks Gemini: "What is the best dog food?", the AI scans Tier 1 and Tier 2 to find the consensus. If you are only present in Tier 3, you are ******.
The Protocol: The "‘Perplexity Audit’
You cannot yet ‘buy’ your way into a ChatGPT answer with a search ad. While those days might be coming soon, you won’t be able to just throw money and buy traffic. You will still need to work to get your brand in the main answers (above the fold, beyond the tiny mention with a ‘sponsored’ tag hanging next to it) You will have to earn it with Citations.
Run the Audit: Go to Perplexity.ai (or click on AI mode on your Google search results page) and type: "What are the best brands for [Your Category]?"
Check the footnotes: Click the little numbers to see where it pulled that info from.
Is it a specific "Best of 2025" listicle?
Is it a specific Reddit thread?
Shift the budget: Shift some of ‘generic keywords’ budget to Digital PR and Affiliate Partnerships. Your goal is to get your brand mentioned on those specific sites that the AI trusts.
Don’t fire your SEO team - the right SEO does help improve your changes and visibility with AI as well - and a large chunk of your traffic, for now, will still come from below the fold search results. But its not enough and an increasing number of people are dropping of at the fold.
In the age of AI, Truth is the new keyword.
3. The Control Freak (Directives vs. Constraints)
The Theater:
We try to control the agency by giving them a "White List" of specific websites we want to appear on. We treat the internet like it's 1999 and we are buying a billboard on a specific highway.
The Reality:
The AI is obsessed with efficiency. It is a psychopath.
It does not care about your brand equity or your annual brand love scores. It cares about hitting the lowest possible CPA (Cost Per Acquisition). If left unchecked, the AI will destroy your business in three specific ways to hit its math target:
Brand Erosion (The Context Risk): To lower costs, the AI will place your premium ad on polarizing political sites or low-quality "Clickbait" farms because the inventory is cheap.
Customer Burnout (The Frequency Risk): The AI figures out that "Michael" is likely to buy. It will then relentlessly stalk Michael, showing him your ad 40 times in 2 days until he buys (or blocks you). The sale happens, but the brand sentiment is destroyed.
Financial Waste (The Inventory Risk): The AI floods "Audience Network" slots - flashlight apps and gaming sites - where clicks are often ‘accidental’.
The Protocol: The ‘Guardrail Box’
Don't tell the pilot how to fly (Directives). Tell the pilot where the ‘no fly zones’ are (Constraints).
Every plan that gets signed off for implementation should have a mandatory ‘guardrail box’ that defines what the AI is forbidden to do.
The Placement Guardrail: "Exclude 'Audience Network' and 'Mobile App Categories'. Feed only." (Force the AI to buy premium inventory).
The Frequency Guardrail: "Cap frequency at 4 per week." (Protect the user experience).
The Exclusion Guardrail: "Upload our 'Current Customer' email list and set it as a NEGATIVE match." (Do not pay to acquire people you already own).
Of course you can’t guess every way in which the algorithm can damage your business, and all the guardrails you need. It’s going to be a journey. But you won’t know if you don’t start somewhere.
4. The Safety Valve (Transitioning Responsibly)
The Theater:
"This AI thing is so cool! Put 70% of the budget on auto-pilot tomorrow!"
The Reality:
If you do this without the right creative inputs and the right learning journey, you will burn cash at record speed and run (not walk) to bankruptcy.
The AI is an engine. Creative is the fuel. If you put a Ferrari engine in a car with an empty gas tank, it doesn't go fast - it stalls.
The Protocol: The ‘Creative Velocity’ Graduation
The goalpost should be a 70/30 Barbell - 70% AI / 30% Manual, eventually. This is a ball park - and I’ll share my reasons why I think this should be.
70% on autopilot (Scale): The robot is better at finding new patterns and cheaper audiences than we will ever be. Let it do the job, of course with the right signals and the right guardrails. So, in a way, you are using Advantage+ and PMAX for your prospecting.
30% on manual (precision): Keep your hands on the wheel for Retention, Brand Defense, and strategic interventions.
Retargeting: Don’t let the AI harass your loyal customers. Manually control the frequency.
Niche segments: If you need to target “CEOs of Fortune 500 Companies”, the AI will struggle. Do this manually.
Strategic Interventions: Heard of the chaos caused by Indigo Airlines (market leader in India) recently? The challenger, Air India could have taken the high road and leveraged the massive brand opportunity. Strategic interventions like that one.
But, like I said, this is where we want to get to EVENTUALLY. We earn the right to increase our AI spend only as we build our Creative Muscle. The journey would likely look like the 3 phases below:
Phase 1: The Sandpit (10% AI / 90% Manual)
The Goal: Train your team, not the algorithm. Your creative team needs to learn to produce ‘creative signals’ rather than generic ads.
The Task: Building capability is hard, but crucial. Your team needs to deliver both quality as well as volume. Can your agency build this capability? Do you need an inhouse team for this? These are some hard questions you’ll have to navigate, both with your market reality as well as with your Finance Head. Either way, even if you go the agency route, your inhouse team will need to learn how to ask the right questions and have a system to differentiate between a ‘signal creative’ and a ‘noise creative’, between a ‘price creative’ and a ‘quality creative’.
The Guardrail: Keep the media budget low for now. Test if the AI can actually find the right audience using only your creative.
Phase 2: The Calibration (30% AI / 70% Manual)
The Goal: Benchmarking.
The Task: Run your new ‘signal creatives’ on Autopilot (Broad) against your best Manual Audiences.
The Check: Look at Blended CPA. If the AI is winning on efficiency and you have enough creative assets to prevent fatigue, you are ready to scale.
Phase 3: The Scale (70% AI / 30% Manual)
The Goal: Velocity.
The Task: You are now feeding the beast. Your creative team must shift from ‘big ideas (fireworks that die in 4 weeks) to ‘long ideas’ (bonfires that get smarter over time). More on this distinction next week.
The Golden Rule: Do not increase your AI Budget % faster than your creative velocity. If you can't build the assets, keep your hands on the manual wheel.
Summary: The "System" Cheat Sheet
If you want to know if your current Media Plan is "Theater" or "System," use this simple cheat sheet.
Component | The ‘Theatre’ brief (Old World) | The ‘System’ brief (New World) |
Objective | "Reach Women 25-40" | "Feed the Algorithm with Full-Funnel Creative" |
Targeting | Detailed Demographic Settings | Broad Targeting + Creative Filters |
The Journey | Manually Sequenced (Step 1 -> 2) | Liquid (AI serves right asset at right time) |
Search Strategy | Buying Keywords (Google Ads) | Buying Citations (Digital PR / Affiliates) |
Brand Safety | "Be Safe" (Vague Directive) | "Exclude Audience Network" (Hard Constraint) |
The Manager | Micromanages the Settings | Micromanages the Creative Supply Chain |
The Bottom Line:
We are stepping into a whole new world of advertising. And if the last year is anything to go by, the next year will bring more bolder changes. You cannot out-calculate the robot. Stop fighting the autopilot. Start designing the system that will help you make the most of it.
Focus on being the Architect.
Feed it better Creative.
Feed it better Authority.
Give it harder Constraints.
The plane will fly itself. Your job is to make sure it goes to the right airport.
-Sumeshwer
