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Top Experts Just Handed You the Playbook for Survival—Will You Use It?

The smartest people in advertising, tech, and media aren’t just making noise—they’re practically waving neon signs about where this industry is headed. And if you’re not paying attention, well, let’s just say your business model might already be outdated. Not because these experts are conspiring in some backroom, but because the patterns are obvious if you actually listen. AI isn’t a magic bullet, the open web is wheezing, and the way we work is undergoing a seismic shift.

Paul Bannister of Raptive, who’s been knee-deep in digital publishing long enough to see every boom and bust cycle, has been warning anyone who will listen: the open web is shrinking faster than your attention span on a 30-second unskippable ad. Advertisers are throwing money at Google, Meta, and TikTok, and the so-called “independent web” is looking more like an afterthought. The question isn’t whether the open web can fight back—it’s whether it even knows how.

Then there’s Rishad Tobaccowala, an industry oracle who’s been calling BS on ad industry nonsense for decades. He sees AI steamrolling entire business models, and agencies are still clinging to time-and-materials billing as if they have a choice. “Most of the employees in my company would not be full-time. Most of the work in the company would not be done full-time,” he says. Translation? The old employment structures are dead, and the people who don’t get that memo are in for a rude awakening.

Lizzie Chapman of NextRoll, is taking a different approach. While everyone else is hyperventilating over the death of third-party cookies, she’s treating it like a much-needed purge. “The cookie crumbling is an opportunity, not a nightmare,” she says, because let’s be honest—if your entire strategy relied on cookies, you weren’t exactly innovating to begin with. She’s doubling down on first-party data, contextual targeting, and actual strategy instead of hoping Google throws another lifeline.

And then there’s Erin Levzow, who’s been in the trenches of marketing long enough to see what really holds companies back. It’s not lack of budget, it’s not tech limitations—it’s fear. “People don’t come forward and say, ‘I’m really scared.’ Instead, they list all the reasons why change is too hard.” And that’s the real issue. The biggest roadblock to progress isn’t AI, regulation, or decentralization. It’s executives too scared to admit they don’t know what’s next.

These aren’t conference circuit talking heads spewing tired industry platitudes. These are the people actually building what comes next. They’re the ones willing to say AI isn’t the savior you think it is, that decentralization only works if nobody notices, and that most of today’s marketing strategies are running on fumes. If you’re still waiting for someone to spell it out in a PowerPoint deck, you’re already behind. Consider this your survival guide.

The Web is in Trouble. Maybe Even Dying. And Nobody Knows What to Do About It.

There was a time when the open web was supposed to be the future—a vast, democratized space where information flowed freely, innovation thrived, and anyone with a half-decent blog could build an audience. That fantasy is now on life support. The web isn’t just in trouble; it’s actively being gutted by platforms that offer advertisers better targeting, users better experiences, and publishers a fraction of the headaches that come with playing the open-web game.

Paul Bannister spells it out: “If you remove all those giant platforms, the open internet is something like $50 or $60 billion. And it’s the slowest growing part of the overall market.” Translation? The web, once the great equalizer, is now the aging rock star trying to book stadium tours while TikTok, Instagram, and walled gardens keep filling arenas.

And let’s be clear—the open web isn’t just losing because Facebook, Google, and Amazon have rigged the game (though they have). It’s losing because it can’t get out of its own way. “Can the web build things that are cool and great and better and grow the web’s share of the pie again?” Bannister asks. The fact that even he sounds skeptical should tell you everything.

The real problem? The open web isn’t even putting up a fight. While TikTok, Meta, and YouTube serve up hyper-personalized content and frictionless ad experiences, the open web still operates like it’s 2013—layering endless supply chain middlemen, demanding excessive tracking, and offering user experiences that make banner blindness seem like a mercy. The web’s biggest problem isn’t just the walled gardens—it’s its own slow, clunky, overcomplicated ecosystem.

Meanwhile, TikTok is serving ads that instantly convert users into customers, no third-party cookies required. Brands don’t need to wait weeks to analyze data; they get real-time results. The open web? It’s still making media buyers jump through a dozen hoops just to verify where their ad was actually shown.

This isn’t just a battle between open and closed ecosystems—it’s a battle between efficient and bloated. And right now, the open web is losing because it refuses to admit that it’s the latter.

AI is Transformative. Also, AI is Hype. Both Things Can Be True.

Ask anyone remotely involved in ad tech about AI, and you get two answers at the same time. On the one hand, it’s world-changing. On the other, it’s mostly just automation with better PR. Bannister, again, put it simply: “I do think it’s much more transformative than the others, but we probably don’t yet understand how it’s really gonna play out over the next five, 10 years.”

Lizzie Chapman calls out the hype directly: “Predictive AI has been the bedrock of programmatic advertising for a very long time. That is not a new thing.” In other words, AI is a tool, not a messiah. The best companies aren’t betting on AI to save them—they’re integrating it into their workflows without pretending it’s sorcery.

And Rishad Tobaccowala? He’s cutting even deeper, pointing out the existential crisis AI is creating for entire business models. “AI is going to significantly eliminate the ability to charge for time and materials. And today, almost all agency and marketing services are built on time and materials.” That sound you hear is a thousand consultants suddenly remembering they have Pilates class at 3 p.m.

And yet, despite the industry’s existential hand-wringing, the companies actually winning in AI aren’t the ones pontificating about it on stage at Cannes. They’re the ones quietly automating their own inefficiencies while their competitors are still debating the ethics of ChatGPT. AI isn’t coming for ad tech—it’s already here, and the ones ignoring it are the ones who should be worried.

Decentralization? Cool in Theory, But Only If You Don’t Notice It.

For years, decentralization has been a tech industry rallying cry. Web3 evangelists have been screaming about sovereignty, privacy, and breaking free from corporate overlords. The problem? Nobody actually wants to deal with the nuts and bolts of decentralization. The average user isn’t looking to host their own server, manage cryptographic keys, or manually select which federated instance of a social platform they should join. They just want to open an app, post their thoughts, and move on with their lives.

Paul Bannister was one of the skeptics. “I have been a negative, I would say, on decentralization, definitely on the kind of pessimistic side... But in the last couple of months, I moved a lot of my social time over to Blue Sky and have really liked it... What makes it good is they hide the decentralization.” And there it is. The only way decentralization works for the masses is if users don’t realize they’re using it.

The problem with most decentralization projects is that they prioritize ideology over usability. Mastodon? A fantastic concept in theory, but in practice, it feels like setting up your own email server in 1997. Sure, it works, but only if you have the patience and technical know-how to navigate its federation model, choose the right instance, and wrap your head around why posts sometimes don’t federate correctly. Meanwhile, centralized platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and TikTok require exactly zero effort to use—and that’s why people keep coming back.

And that’s the great irony of decentralization. The platforms that actually stand a chance at succeeding aren’t the ones shoving sovereignty and ownership down users’ throats. They’re the ones baking those principles into a seamless experience where people don’t have to think about them. Blue Sky works because it feels like Twitter, not because users are excited about the AT Protocol under the hood. If it had launched with the same UX complexity as Mastodon, it would’ve been dead on arrival.

Decentralization advocates have spent years preaching that users should care about self-sovereign identity, data ownership, and breaking free from tech monopolies. But the platforms actually winning in this space are the ones making sure users don’t have to care. Turns out, people want freedom—but they don’t want to read a 20-page manual on how to achieve it.

If the decentralized web is ever going to truly challenge its centralized competitors, it needs to accept this reality. The average user has the patience of a goldfish and the attention span of a TikTok scroll. If you’re making them think too hard about how their content is distributed, where their data is stored, or why federation matters, they’re already gone.

Agencies Are Not Ready for the Future of Work

If agencies were half as good at adapting as they are at writing think pieces about adapting, they might actually stand a chance. But instead, they’re stuck in existential panic mode, clutching their headcounts and bloated structures like a security blanket while the future barrels toward them at full speed.

Rishad Tobaccowala has zero patience for the corporate hand-wringing over return-to-office mandates. “One of the reasons that [employees] are resisting returning to the office... is they don’t want to return to their bosses. Okay, because this is the age of debossification.” Translation? People aren’t allergic to office chairs; they’re just done with bad leadership. The real issue isn’t real estate—it’s relevance. And agencies, with their obsession over control and structure, are rapidly losing both.

And it’s not just about where people work—it’s about how work happens. “Most of the employees in my company would not be full-time. Most of the work in the company would not be done full-time.” The future isn’t one monolithic, 9-to-5 workforce grinding away in an office park; it’s a decentralized, networked ecosystem of specialists, freelancers, and AI-powered automation. Agencies can either embrace that reality or die trying to fight it.

But here’s the kicker: agencies love to talk about transformation. They will draft endless reports, hold summits, create thought-leader panels, and flood LinkedIn with posts about “navigating the changing work landscape.” And yet, they are almost always the last to actually change. Why? Because their entire business model depends on billable hours and headcount, not on actual effectiveness. They measure value by how many people are on a project, not by what those people actually produce. It’s a model that worked when clients had no better options. But that era is over.

The agencies that survive won’t be the ones clinging to their org charts. They’ll be the ones embracing flexibility, breaking down hierarchies, and restructuring themselves around outcomes rather than hours. Work is modular now. AI is doing the jobs agencies once hired juniors to do. Clients don’t want to pay for your overhead—they want results. And the agencies that still think survival means having the biggest team and the highest fees are going to find themselves in the same place as the dinosaurs: an interesting case study in what happens when you refuse to evolve.

Fear is the Biggest Barrier to Innovation. Not Tech, Not Budgets—Just Fear.

If there’s one thing that kills progress faster than a bad quarter, it’s fear. Not competition. Not a lack of resources. Just good, old-fashioned, paralyzing, deer-in-the-headlights fear. It’s the silent killer of innovation, the thing that makes entire industries drag their feet while the real disruptors—who, let’s be honest, don’t have time for hand-wringing—sprint ahead.

Erin Levzow says it outright: “People don’t come forward and say, 'I’m really scared.' Instead, they list all the reasons why change is too hard.” That’s the thing—fear doesn’t show up in board meetings as “We’re terrified of the unknown.” It masquerades as “We need more data before making a decision.” It sounds like “We’re going to take a wait-and-see approach.” It justifies inaction with spreadsheets, endless meetings, and PowerPoint decks that could put an insomniac to sleep.

And yet, the pattern never changes. AI? Too new, too unpredictable. Let’s keep using the same inefficient workflows instead of figuring out how to integrate it. Decentralization? Too complicated, too messy. Let’s stick to walled gardens, even if it means we’re handing over control to the platforms eating our lunch. The cookie apocalypse? Too scary, too uncertain. Let’s just wait for Google to give us another extension and pretend it’s not happening.

Meanwhile, the ones who actually succeed in this industry—the NextRolls, the Raptives, the ones who aren’t scared to break things and rebuild—are thriving because they embrace the mess. They aren’t sitting around waiting for an industry consensus. They aren’t wasting months in “strategy alignment” meetings while their competitors are out there testing, iterating, and figuring out what actually works.

Lizzie Chapman gets it. “The cookie crumbling is an opportunity, not a nightmare,” she says. And she’s right. Anyone who built their entire business around third-party cookies without a backup plan wasn’t doing real marketing—they were coasting. The winners in this industry aren’t the ones crying about change. They’re the ones who see the shifting landscape and think, Good. Now let’s build something better.

So, if you find yourself clutching your pearls over the next big disruption, take a second and ask: Is the challenge really insurmountable? Or are you just afraid to deal with the discomfort of change? Because, like it or not, the future is coming, and the ones who embrace it—who see the mess as an opportunity, not an excuse—are the ones who will still be here when the dust settles.

The Takeaway: Adapt or Get Left Behind

Every single person here is saying the same thing in different ways: the industry is changing at warp speed, and the ones who survive aren’t the ones complaining about how hard it is—they’re the ones rolling up their sleeves and adapting. AI isn’t a theoretical disruption anymore; it’s automating away entire job functions while most agencies are still arguing about whether they should charge by the hour. The open web? It’s not collapsing—it’s being systematically drained of ad dollars by walled gardens that offer more control, better targeting, and a whole lot less transparency. ‘

And the workforce? The full-time, butt-in-seat, 9-to-5 employee is becoming an endangered species, replaced by a fluid mix of freelancers, contract workers, and AI-powered automation. The old playbooks—the ones built on predictable budgets, easy attribution, and rigid organizational structures—are crumbling, and the ones clinging to them are about to get a very rude wake-up call.

As Rishad Tobaccowala puts it, “Work is not a spa. When you go to a spa, you pay the spa. The spa doesn’t pay you.” In other words, no one is going to gently massage your career or your company into the future. You either evolve, or you get left behind. AI doesn’t care about your five-year plan. Decentralization isn’t going to wait for you to figure out your data strategy. And your competitors aren’t going to pause their innovation cycle while you sit in another endless meeting about "rethinking digital transformation.”

The people who are winning right now aren’t just the ones making smart bets—they’re the ones willing to admit that the old way isn’t working and move forward anyway. They’re not waiting for a perfect solution or a consensus from a think tank. They’re experimenting, failing fast, and iterating before the rest of the industry has even accepted that the game has changed.

And if you want to keep up? Well, you know where to find the full scoop.

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