Normally, I like to get ahead of these columns.

Draft it, edit it, let it breathe for a day or two. This week? Forget it. I wrote this Sunday morning, staring into the abyss of my inbox while sipping coffee that tasted like burned tires. And in that abyss were the usual notes — some thoughtful, some cranky, and then the pièce de résistance: one enlightened soul who called me a “stupid asshat.”

I don’t even know what an asshat looks like, but apparently, I am one.

Cute.

But here’s the thing: that insult didn’t actually bother me.

What really got under my skin — the thing that sat in my head like a bad jingle — was just how much this industry, and honestly this country, is in love with money.

Not “we need it to survive” money.

Not “keep the lights on” money.

I mean the sick, sweaty, fever-dream obsession with money as the scoreboard of life.

Judaism has always been clear: money isn’t evil. Obsession is.

The Rema says earning a living is good. Necessary. But chasing wealth for its own sake? That’s empty calories. And the Talmud — blunt as always — cuts right through the nonsense:

When it’s all said and done, when you’re standing before the ultimate auditors upstairs, the first question is not “Did you optimize your attention scores?” It’s not “Did you double EBITDA?” It’s not even “Did you beat your competitor’s Q4.”

The first question is brutally simple:

“Were you honest in your business dealings?”

That’s the KPI of the soul.

The ultimate measurement.

Imagine if that was the first bullet on every agency’s pitch deck. Half the holding companies would vaporize.

Fast-forward to 2025 and money-worship has evolved new golden calves:

We’re not chasing progress. We’re chasing shiny things and calling it growth.

Here’s what really twists the knife: not just the obsession with being rich, but the way being poor is treated like a moral failure.

You lost your job? Clearly you didn’t hustle hard enough.
You can’t afford rent? Should’ve built a side hustle empire on Shopify.
You’re broke after medical bills? Tough — you should’ve been born with venture capital parents.

In advertising, we’ve taken this thinking and industrialized it. We optimize away “low-value audiences” as though poverty makes someone less human. We devalue communities that don’t deliver the right demo because apparently empathy doesn’t deliver quarterly returns.

We treat the poor not just as invisible, but as irrelevant. And that’s not just immoral — it’s stupid. Because if your brand can’t resonate with real people across the spectrum, you’re not building equity. You’re building resentment.

Money is a tool. Full stop. It can buy time, comfort, security. It can feed your kids and pay for your aging parents’ meds. But once you make it the scoreboard of your life, you’ve already lost.

Here’s the real scoreboard:

That’s it. That’s the test.

Because the truth is simple: money won’t hug you back.

Your family will. Your community will. The people you treated with respect will.

The industry?

Not so much.

It’ll replace you faster than a bad SSP integration.

So here’s what I want to ask this Sunday: Do we want to be remembered as the people who optimized another auction, shaved another cent off CPM, built another hollow “platform”? Or do we want to be remembered as the people who made connections, built trust, and left something better than a balance sheet?

Because money is fine. But money isn’t life.

And if we keep treating it as the end-all, we’ll end up with an industry — and a culture — that’s rich on paper and bankrupt everywhere that matters.

Stay Bold, Stay Curious, and Know More Than You Did Yesterday.