AgenticAdvertising.org wrote to the next CEO of the ANA and told marketers that brand growth "never comes from the volume of impressions a brand can buy." Growth, the letter says, comes from big ideas and from "the enduring, compounding value of a brand's relationship with the people who love it."

The Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, the marketing science shop that has spent decades counting how brands actually grow, read the same letter. Its answer, from Senior Marketing Scientists Dr Bill Page and Dr Erica Riebe: "Brand love is real but rare." The kind of quality the letter prizes, advertising that makes people love a brand and build a relationship with it, "has not been shown to drive growth."

That would be an academic argument if the letter were only about creative. It isn't. It is a pitch for AI agents to start buying media, with four rules to protect brands when they do. Page and Riebe's warning about those agents is the line every CMO should tape to the monitor:

"Hand an AI agent a sales target and it will find your existing customers, because they're the cheapest sales to claim. That looks efficient, but it quietly shrinks the brand."

Keep reading free with your email: what the letter actually asks the ANA to do, where the science agrees with it, where it breaks, and what an AAO board member says the four rules are really for.