What the Advertising Industry Needs to Do to Save Itself
The advertising industry has long been obsessed with EBITDA. Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization. It’s the golden metric of profitability. It’s also the metric slowly strangling the future of the business.
While Big Tech pours billions into emerging technologies, unprofitable startups, and visionary founders who haven’t made a dollar yet, the advertising industry continues to buy businesses that look good on paper. High EBITDA, recurring revenue, legacy client lists, and founders with celebrity-like reputations are still the primary acquisition triggers. But that mindset is what’s keeping advertising stuck in the past while technology races toward the future.
Tech doesn’t invest in the present. It invests in possibility. It bets on the long tail: the tools, ideas, and people who might not scale now, but who will define what scale looks like five years from now. Amazon didn’t turn a profit for years. OpenAI was a non-commercial experiment before it became the backbone of the next industrial revolution. YouTube, Instagram, and WhatsApp were all acquired before they made meaningful revenue. But they had vision. They had users. They had future gravity.
Advertising, on the other hand, still shops in the clearance aisle of predictability. It acquires “proven” companies, or in other words: safe, profitable, legacy businesses—many of which were built on models that won’t survive the next five years. Agencies dependent on handshake relationships, media arbitrage, or the charisma of a founding partner are increasingly fragile in a world shifting toward automation, in-housing, and AI-driven efficiency.
We are buying the past when we should be building the future.
The irony? Advertising sells innovation. It helps brands tell stories about transformation, disruption, and agility. But internally, the industry operates like a traditional holding company portfolio, consolidating the old, wringing out efficiencies, and cross-selling as much as possible. This is not a strategy for growth or the future. It’s managed death sentence.
What if instead, the industry invested like a venture capitalist? What if it seeded new models, funded early stage creative platforms, acquired tools that prioritize cultural intelligence, or backed builders developing proprietary AI tuned for creative problem solving? What if it hired not just experienced execs, but actual innovators, people who understand what’s coming because they’re building it?
The real opportunity is not in the EBITDA line. It’s in the people creating new value. Product thinkers. Cultural architects. Systems designers. Tech doesn’t care if you’re profitable yet. The investment thesis only cares if you’re necessary later.
If advertising wants to remain relevant, it has to stop chasing spreadsheets and start betting on sparks. We need to fund people who don’t just optimize what's already working, but imagine what’s next. Because relevance isn’t preserved by revenue, it’s preserved by reinvention.
The ad industry doesn’t need more agencies. It needs more inventors.
And it doesn’t need more EBITDA. It needs more audacity.