There were a bunch of conferences I didn’t go to this week — and you should thank me for that. The post–conference season circus rolled on anyway, with each event promising a visionary glimpse into “the future of marketing.” Translation: the same people, the same decks, the same apocalypse—just with fresher fonts.

Each room was filled with hopeful professionals trying to buy relevance, clutching iced lattes and optimism, nodding solemnly as someone in expensive sneakers explained how “AI will change everything.” It’s endearing, really. Half revival, half group therapy. Every speaker, every panel, every PowerPoint promised salvation through some miracle blend of data, automation, and the same empty buzzwords we’ve been spoon-fed since Web 2.0.

And yet—there were brilliant people there, too. Always are. Smart, curious, maybe even idealistic enough to think this time will be different. I feel for them. Because they’re surrounded by people selling the same recycled dream: marketing for marketers, by marketers, selling marketing.

Let’s be honest: no one actually knows where this is going. But that doesn’t stop anyone from pretending. The industry has split into four warring factions, each absolutely certain they’ve glimpsed destiny in a spreadsheet.

They whisper about “AI powered by humans,” as if that’s not just another way of saying we still need interns. They sell faith in dashboards, baptize clients in “strategic insights,” and keep the invoices flowing by translating numbers into mysticism. “Look,” they say, “the data tells us…” — conveniently ignoring that it always tells you what you want to hear.

Their gospel: humans are the inefficiency. Creativity is quaint. Strategy is obsolete. The future belongs to the algorithm. These are the platform guys—the brokers of the machine age—who believe if they automate every decision, the money will print itself. Their dream? A world where ads buy themselves and everyone else just applauds from LinkedIn.

They’ve rebranded manipulation as empowerment. The slogan isn’t “buy this” anymore, it’s “be this.” They’ll tell you that every brand is now a mirror, every consumer a project of self-invention. It sounds deep until you realize it’s just marketing therapy—selling insecurity in recyclable packaging.

Bless them, they mean well. They still think brands can build belonging, that “connection” can be scaled. It’s sweet, like a golden retriever trying to run a Discord server. They talk about “tribes” and “collectives” like they discovered friendship. But when the discount code expires, so does the “community.”

This is where the comedy turns tragic. Everyone’s obsessed with the “next thing,” while ignoring the only truth that’s ever mattered: the future doesn’t care about their slide decks.

These conferences sell fantasies of control—of human-guided AI, of ethical automation, of curated chaos. But here’s the brutal reality: it’s all marketing about marketing. The whole ecosystem exists to keep itself alive, endlessly selling the illusion that it’s inventing tomorrow, when really it’s just choreographing yesterday in slightly better resolution.

And honestly, I feel bad for anyone still trying to find meaning in it. Because there’s no epiphany waiting at the end of this circuit. Just more jargon, more “frameworks,” more LinkedIn posts written like spiritual manifestos.

Consumers made their choice while the industry was still ordering lunch.
They picked YouTube, not your bespoke branded docuseries.
They picked Netflix, not your “data-driven storytelling initiative.”
They picked Fortnite, and half the “experts” still think that’s a crypto exchange.

Every time marketing thinks it’s leading, it’s actually chasing. The audience has always been ten steps ahead, shaping the platforms, dictating the attention, deciding the winners.

So sure, let the agencies write manifestos about “human-centered AI.” Let the adtech bros host panels about “the death of creativity.” Let the consultants draw infinite circles on whiteboards about “authentic connection.”

Because the ending never changes.

And they’ve already moved on — while you’re still waiting for the next keynote.

Let’s stop pretending: AI marketing is a lie. A fiction wrapped in jargon, gift-wrapped in buzzwords, and sold at premium rates to clients desperate to sound like they understand it. Most of the companies shouting “AI-driven” the loudest are the same ones still dragging spreadsheets across dual monitors and calling it innovation. They’ve just slapped a digital sticker on the same tired workflow and rebranded it as “transformation.”

You’ve seen the theater. The overdesigned slide decks. The smug panel discussions moderated by people who still don’t know how to unmute on Zoom. The “agentic future” LinkedIn posts written by strategists who use ChatGPT once a week and call it “hands-on experimentation.” It’s not automation. It’s AI cosplay—the industry’s favorite new costume.

According to NP Digital, only six percent of marketers actually use end-to-end AI automation platforms. The rest are humans with ring lights and delusions of grandeur. Agencies have simply rebranded the old playbook: PowerPoint decks are now “intelligence layers,” campaign tweaks are “machine learning refinements,” and interns are “junior data specialists.”

Sure, AI can crunch data and auto-tag assets. But the soul of marketing—strategy, taste, judgment, interpretation—remains relentlessly human. None of that has been automated; it’s just been renamed for billable optics.

Clients, of course, want to believe. They want to feel futuristic. So the illusion persists: dashboards spitting out “insights,” “AI platforms” that generate PDF reports, and human analysts quietly massaging results so nothing looks like a glitch. It’s not a revolution; it’s a dress rehearsal with better graphics.

Gartner estimates that by 2027, 60 percent of enterprise workflows will “involve” AI agents. But read the fine print: every one of those systems will still be “human-supervised,” “guardrailed,” and “compliance-approved.” Translation: the humans never left. They just started billing in Python.

The modern agency doesn’t sell automation—it performs it.

Welcome to Automation Theater, a glossy production where dashboards glimmer, algorithms hum, and behind the curtain, overworked account managers manually adjust the dials. Clients see a futuristic interface; agencies see a buffer between their labor and accountability.

Meta’s Advantage+ suite is the poster child. It’s marketed as fully autonomous—a campaign autopilot for the modern marketer. In reality, it’s a babysitting gig for human managers who spend their days recalibrating performance, smoothing over errant results, and emailing slide decks to explain why the “learning phase” isn’t a euphemism for “we have no idea what just happened.”

Yes, automation works for the grunt work—bidding, pacing, data hygiene. But when real judgment enters the frame—creative calls, contextual nuance, brand voice—the humans take back the wheel. Across hundreds of campaign lift tests, people still beat automation roughly half the time.

The myth of the self-driving agency endures for one reason: it’s profitable to pretend it’s true. It lets agencies raise rates for “AI-enhanced strategy” while keeping the same people doing the same work—just with more dashboards and fewer showers.

So no, we’re not living in the age of autonomous creativity. We’re living in the era of illusion, where every PowerPoint pretends to be a neural network and every campaign report is another act in the great AI stage play.

You don’t even have to attend anymore. Just read the hashtag and you’ll know who was on stage — the same four archetypes rotating through every panel since the world reopened and decided “hybrid event” sounded fancier than “hotel ballroom with bad Wi-Fi.”

He’s usually a senior guy, well-groomed, with a résumé that peaked during the Obama years and a personal brand built entirely on “ethical courage.” He starts every panel with a grave expression and ends it pitching a product he swears will “restore integrity to the ecosystem.” It won’t. No one will use it unless they’re guilt-tripped into it by a trade association. Think of him as the televangelist of transparency—here to sell redemption by subscription.

Every year, same face, new buzzword. In 2021 he was a Metaverse Evangelist. By 2022 he became a Web3 Futurist. Then AI Visionary, then Agentic Systems Consultant. Next year, probably Quantum Attention Strategist.
His expertise is elastic because it’s built entirely on confidence and a ring light. Ask him where he studied machine learning or blockchain infrastructure and he’ll quote a Medium post. Experts require expertise. These guys require only bandwidth and caffeine.

You know the one. Reads every bullet on screen like the audience can’t. Uses phrases like “synergy activation” without irony. They show graphs with no axes, numbers with no sources, and say things like “data is the new oil” as if it’s still 2017. Their superpower is consuming 45 minutes and leaving you knowing less than when they started.

Always buried at the end of day two, in a side room next to the pastry table, this is the one person who actually knows what they’re talking about. No PR handler. No jargon. Just sharp, uncomfortable truths about how this industry really works. Half the crowd has already left for the airport, which is probably why they were scheduled there—the conference organizers wouldn’t recognize “interesting” if it ran pre-roll before a keynote.

Every conference since 2021 has been the same vaudeville act with different hashtags. The names change, the lanyards get thicker, but the message doesn’t: marketing keeps selling the future to itself, one PowerPoint at a time

It’s not just data—it’s the stories no one else will tell.

Inside ADOTAT+, we pull back the curtain on the Data Priests rebranding human grunt work as “AI transformation,” the Automation Cult preaching efficiency while draining creativity from the industry, the Identity Builders turning marketing into therapy for your self-image, and the Community Architects rebuilding trust one tribe at a time.

Everyone else reports what brands say about the future. We show you what they’re actually doing behind the dashboards.