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Which means one of three things:

Either way, you’re still here. And honestly? That’s kind of touching. Or terrifying. I haven’t decided.

Every Sunday, I open the floodgates of whatever’s rattling around in my head—usually somewhere between an existential crisis and a rant about the marketing industrial complex, with pit stops at personal overshares, dead media models, and why “attention” is the new “impressions” (but no one knows what either actually means anymore).

Why do I do it? I ask myself that most weekends. Right after I’ve written 2,000 words about supply chain opacity or yelled into the void about holding companies duct-taping their margins together with agency consolidation and denial.

And yet, you keep opening these emails. Clicking. Reading. Sometimes even responding. Which either means I’m making sense—or you’re just in too deep to stop now.

So yeah, welcome back. The coffee’s cold, the takes are hotter than they should be, and at some point, I’ll probably say something that gets me quietly uninvited from someone’s Hamptons panel.

Let’s begin.

Maybe it’s the pain talking. Or maybe it’s the clarity that only comes after Shabbos—when your phone turns back on, your joints are auditioning for Cirque du Soleil, and your inbox is already trying to gaslight you into caring about “Q3 synergy targets.”

Either way, I woke up Sunday and thought: younger me needs a warning label. A proper one. Black bold Helvetica.
Caution: May Enter AdTech Believing It’s a Meritocracy.

At 25, I thought I was joining a revolution. Media democratization. Real-time targeting. Human connection at scale. I was sold a Pixar story—what I got was a Kafka reboot.

So here it is. The advice I wish someone had tattooed on my retinas before I agreed to my first “visionary” RFP.

You think awards mean you made it? That they validate your ideas, your hustle, your brilliant campaign that hit 1.2 billion impressions and somehow still no sales?

Let me tell you how this works.

You pay.
You win.
They invoice.
You post it on LinkedIn like you didn’t just buy your own trophy from the gas station of marketing ego.

I used to win them. Then I stopped spending. And faster than a DSP drops a publisher post-cookiepocalypse, they stopped calling.

Sure, Fast Company named me one of their 10 Most Influential in 2010. And yes, that one was real. That was reach. That was sweat equity. That was the era when LinkedIn still felt like a résumé, not a personality disorder.

But most of the others?
If your trophy arrives with a PayPal receipt, it’s not an honor—it’s a Groupon for credibility.

Some award companies send a “Congratulations!” email and an invoice in the same breath. That’s not prestige. That’s extortion wrapped in a press release and sprinkled with Canva gold foil.

“Synergy” is the sound corporate oxygen makes right before your project dies. It’s what execs say when they don’t know how the product works but do know how to bill 40 hours for a Slack brainstorm.

If a deck says “AI-enhanced ROI engine,” just close the tab and go water a plant. It’ll provide more growth.

If it brags about being “trusted by 500 Fortune 500 brands,” assume 498 of them ran one test campaign in 2017 and churned faster than a vegan at a brisket tasting.

At 25, I thought these phrases meant legitimacy. Maturity. That I was stepping into a space where smart people solved hard problems.

What I didn’t realize is that half of this industry runs on euphemisms and fear-based decision-making, with just enough machine learning to make a mediocre slide deck feel like a TED Talk.

No, seriously.
I didn’t.
You won’t either.
But that’s how you end up giving a “data enrichment partner” the rights to your customer logs, first-party identifiers, and half your soul.

There are platforms out there right now monetizing retargeting ghosts from 2019, because some clause buried in 47 pages of legalese said they could. And if you didn’t catch it? Mazal tov. You just funded their Series C.

I’ve sat through meetings where ad fraud was explained away as “inevitable waste.”
I’ve watched execs high-five over arbitrage margins on traffic from sites so sketchy they’d make a malware pop-up blush.
I’ve seen “independent verification” done by someone’s cousin with a spreadsheet and a Red Bull.

And the worst part?
It still works.
Brands still buy in.
Budgets still move.
Everyone’s pretending the emperor has DMPs.

Even after all the nonsense, the grift, the fake awards and the fraud factories... I still believe in what this industry could be.
Not the pipedream. Not the shiny keynote.
But the small, weird corners of the industry—
Where people build stuff that works.
Where attribution means something.
Where ads don’t feel like digital drive-bys.

That’s why I write. That’s why I dig. That’s why ADOTAT exists—to call BS where needed and to remind people that curiosity and truth still matter.

Lift with your legs. Not your ego.
Don’t chase awards.
Don’t date anyone who uses the word “scale” in casual conversation.
And for the love of all that’s holy—invest in a good heating pad.

But hey…
maybe that’s the plan.

🗣️ Want to roast your younger self too?
Send your “What I’d tell 25-year-old me” confessions.
We’ll feature the boldest (and the most unhinged) next week.

Stay Bold. Stay Curious. And Know More Than You Did Yesterday.