Advertising: Who Cares? with Nick Manning: Power, Models, and the effectiveness 'Doom Loop'
Advertising Who Cares: Power, Models, and the Effectiveness Doom Loop
Advertising funds the modern internet — but the economics are skewed, the models are misaligned, and effectiveness is sliding. Omar Oakes and Nick Manning unpack the Advertising Who Cares event: how platform consolidation reshaped incentives, why agency service models are cracking under AI, what “quality media” should mean in 2025, and the practical steps marketers and agencies can take to rebuild value.
This is a special one-off conversation. If you like it and want to hear more, send a quick note to omar@oomphoomph.com [omar@oomphoomph.com]!
Find out more at advertisingwhocares.org [https://www.advertisingwhocares.org]
Timestamps:
02:05 What “Advertising Who Cares” actually is
06:06 What’s broken: bombardment, automation, declining effectiveness
07:13 Platforms, power, and who really writes the rules
09:49 Concentration, politics, and why ad money underpins it all
12:14 When software engineers set ad logic (and creativity pays the price)
16:45 Client-side fragmentation: the 7Ps and siloed KPIs
20:45 The CMO–CFO disconnect (and why value growth isn’t being proved)
24:48 Agency model stress test: AI vs. “man-hours + margin”
28:18 Escaping the service trap: create/deliver/capture value (for real)
32:20 From self-interest to best-interest partnerships
36:53 Defining quality media (beyond “move spend to TV”)
38:54 Market failure? Why the “spray & pray 1:1” logic persists
40:23 Breaking the doom loop: balanced diets and better comms planning
43:22 LLMs, scraped content, and publisher economics
45:10 Waste, invalid traffic, and why impressions ≠ impact
54:16 Effectiveness decline: memory, emotion, and channel mix
57:52 What’s next for Advertising Who Cares, how to get involved, where to find the work
All content produced, edited and hosted by Omar Oakes (Copyright: Oomph, a registered UK company)
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit omaroakes.substack.com [https://omaroakes.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]
