IAB ALM 2025: The Ad Industry Stares Into the Abyss and Calls It AI

The IAB Annual Leadership Meeting (ALM) 2025 in Palm Desert wasn’t a conference so much as a reckoning. The industry’s biggest players sat under the California sun, squinting into a future they can no longer predict. Cookies are crumbling, AI is rewriting the rules, and regulation looms like an Old Testament prophet, promising ruin—or, depending on who you ask, redemption.

AI: The Black Box That Swallowed Advertising and Didn’t Spit It Back Out

AI wasn’t just a hot topic at IAB ALM 2025—it was the topic. The kind that makes industry veterans sweat through their expensive button-downs, wondering if their decades of expertise still mean anything. Not long ago, AI was just a quiet assistant, a glorified calculator running in the background of programmatic buys. Now it’s in the driver’s seat, and the people who built the system are realizing they might not even be passengers. They’re standing on the side of the road, watching the car speed away.

The existential crisis is real. AI isn’t just optimizing ad spend—it’s strategizing, it’s targeting, it’s making the creative itself. More than that, it’s making decisions about what advertising even is. The industry has long worshiped at the altar of data, believing that the right metrics, the right insights, the right behavioral signals could engineer perfect persuasion. But now, the high priests of media buying are realizing they’ve built something that doesn’t need them anymore. AI doesn’t just crunch the numbers—it writes the script. It selects the images. It determines the audience. It even predicts what will work before a single dollar is spent.

And the machines don’t need permission. AI doesn’t worry about career trajectories, legacy agency structures, or whether creatives are having their egos stroked. It doesn’t ask for a pitch deck or a creative review. It generates, optimizes, and scales at a speed no human team can match. Suddenly, the CMO doesn’t need an army of junior media buyers or even a creative department running on all cylinders. AI can do in seconds what took weeks, maybe months.

Meta’s generative AI demos were the moment when the audience collectively stiffened in their seats. The machine-generated ads weren’t just passable; they were compelling. Hyper-personalized, micro-targeted, and eerily seamless. There was no uncanny valley, no telltale robotic awkwardness. Just content—endless, scalable, near-perfect content. When you can generate thousands of ad variations instantly, what happens to the human beings who once made them?

It’s not just an industry question; it’s an existential one. The digital advertising world has always revolved around creatives, strategists, and buyers fighting for their slice of influence. But AI doesn’t fight—it just takes. And now the people in that world are left wondering: What happens when the machines don’t need them anymore?

Cookies: A Slow, Quiet Death (With a Side of Humiliation)

A year ago, cookie deprecation was the big bad wolf, the monster under every marketer’s bed. Now? It’s the ad industry’s version of an aging rock band still touring on nostalgia—everyone pretends to care, but no one actually believes the final show is coming. The panic has faded, replaced by weary shrugs.

At IAB ALM, the conversation around cookies felt like watching someone argue with a ghost. The industry has moved on—not because it wants to, but because it has no choice. Third-party tracking is already half-dead, thanks to Safari, Firefox, and Apple’s ATT kneecapping its utility years ago. Google keeps dragging out the funeral, teasing another “official” deadline, but no one’s holding their breath. Even advertisers have stopped clinging to the idea that a magical replacement will appear.

Instead, they’re bending over for whatever scraps of identity they can get. Contextual advertising, once dismissed as primitive, is back in fashion. Google’s PAIR protocol—essentially an effort to force everyone into first-party data partnerships—is getting traction. Clean rooms, retail media networks, privacy sandboxes—each one promising to be the answer, yet all of them requiring advertisers to surrender control in new and different ways.

But the real consensus? There is no one-size-fits-all solution. Those waiting for a silver bullet are waiting for a train that left the station years ago. The industry’s new reality is a fragmented mess, where marketers are expected to stitch together data sources like a mad scientist resurrecting a corpse.

At this point, cookie deprecation isn’t even a threat—it’s just an industry ritual, a conversation that happens out of obligation, like an awkward family gathering where no one acknowledges that grandma has been quietly dead for months.

Regulation: A Knife at the Throat of Surveillance Advertising (And IAB’s Weird Submission Kink)

The industry has been playing a game of chicken with regulators, but the FTC isn’t flinching. For years, ad tech bet on Washington’s incompetence, assuming lawmakers would remain too confused or too slow to crack down. That bet isn’t looking so safe anymore.

The term surveillance capitalism has stopped being a paranoid whisper in privacy circles and become a full-blown indictment. The FTC, state attorneys general, and consumer advocacy groups now see the ad industry as something closer to a shadow government—tracking, profiling, and manipulating people with the kind of precision that would make intelligence agencies jealous. The IAB, ever the industry’s PR arm, knows this perception is dangerous, but instead of fighting back, they’re scrambling for a deal.

And here’s where things get weird. At ALM, some IAB leaders, desperate for relief from the regulatory vice grip, all but admitted they’re ready to bend over for Trump—and not in a metaphorical, political strategy kind of way, but in a tone so awkwardly submissive it made the room uncomfortable. The idea? That a Trump administration would be “kinder and gentler” to the industry if ad tech just… showed the right amount of deference. No one said the quiet part out loud, but the implication was clear: they’d rather grovel than fight.

And grovel they must, because the future of digital advertising is at stake. With 20 different state privacy laws already on the books, compliance has become a nightmare. The IAB is pushing hard for a single, preemptive federal privacy law—one that wouldn’t just unify the rules but override stricter state regulations. The problem? Congress knows exactly what the industry wants: a free pass to keep hoarding data under the guise of “consumer choice.”

But even if they get their way, AI governance is coming. The EU has already locked down its regulations, and the U.S. won’t be far behind. AI-driven personalization, predictive modeling, and real-time bidding are all getting a second look from regulators who aren’t thrilled with algorithms making invisible decisions about people’s lives.

Then there’s kids’ privacy. COPPA was just the beginning. Lawmakers are now targeting the entire business model of targeting minors, and it’s not looking good for ad tech. No one wants to be the executive explaining why an AI-powered recommendation system served weight-loss ads to a 13-year-old.

And finally, Section 230 is on life support. Platforms may soon be forced to take more responsibility for what’s posted on their sites, which means advertisers will be dragged into content moderation wars they’ve avoided for years. The days of a freewheeling, brand-safe internet are ending.

Regulation isn’t a distant threat. It’s here. And the industry, rather than fighting for its autonomy, seems ready to kneel—especially if they think it’ll earn them a more “forgiving” regulatory hand. It’s an ironic twist for an industry that built itself on optimization—because right now, ad tech is optimizing for survival, even if it means giving up whatever dignity it had left.

The Industry’s Uneasy Future: A Long Pause Before the Plunge

What wasn’t talked about? TikTok. Or rather, what wasn’t talked about out loud. Off-stage, in hushed bar conversations and side-hallway murmurs, everyone knew the clock was running out. The 75-day deadline on TikTok’s fate in the U.S. was looming like a storm over a fragile house. Yet in the main sessions? Silence. Not because it wasn’t important, but because no one wanted to say the quiet part out loud: TikTok, one of the most powerful ad platforms in the world, might not be around much longer in its current form. The industry isn’t sure if that’s a catastrophe or just the latest disruption in an era where disruption is the norm.

And maybe that’s the real theme of ALM 2025—discomfort. There was a time when advertising’s biggest players dictated the rules of the game. Now, they’re not even sure what game they’re playing. The move to San Antonio in 2027 and 2028? On paper, it’s just a venue shift. But symbolically? It feels like an admission: the old strongholds—Palm Desert, New York, the coastal tech hubs—aren’t the only places that matter anymore. The industry is being forced into unfamiliar territory, both literally and figuratively. AI is rewriting the rulebook. Regulation is tightening the leash. Consumer behavior is evolving at speeds no forecasting model can keep up with. And through it all, the people who built this empire are realizing they’re not as in control as they once believed.

The real takeaway from ALM 2025? Advertising isn’t dying. But it’s no longer the king of its own kingdom. The machines are learning, and they don’t ask permission. The regulators are watching, and they’re sharpening their knives. The biggest names in media, tech, and marketing are still at the table—but for the first time in decades, they’re not calling the shots.

The industry is holding its breath. And the future? The future isn’t waiting.