By Alex Panousis

I’ve worked in media long enough to see it rise, fall and contort into something unrecognizable. And today, I’m worried. 

We’ve stripped the art from the science.

We’ve prized efficiency over effectiveness.

We’ve handed over judgment to machines.

The rise of programmatic reshaped the entire media industry. What started as a promise of automation and targeting became an obsession with cheap reach and measurable outcomes. Global advertisers ran pitches where the primary KPI was cost. Not attention. Not outcomes. Not even growth. Just cost. 

And when cost becomes the primary lever, you shouldn’t be surprised when the work gets worse. 

You get what you pay for.

Teams are hired for scale, not skill. The dream team shows up for the pitch. The day-to-day team runs the business. It’s not that they aren’t capable. It’s that they’ve been trained to operate tools, not challenge strategy. 

And so media got dull. 

I came up in an era when media mattered. I joined media from creative and marketing roles. At the time, we were inspired to think. We studied the work. We trained teams to build campaigns that created culture, not clutter. We believed great media ideas deserved the same care as the creative. 

Planners used to be strategists. Now they are aggregators. Today, job descriptions prioritize Excel proficiency over cultural literacy. AI writes the media plan before the planner gets to think.

I recently spoke with a planner who told me her day was spent “setting up the bones of a plan” by reviewing tool outputs. Data is important, but it needs interpretation. It should be challenged, not accepted blindly.

The recent work from Peter Field, Heather Dansie and Lumen CEO Mike Follett (presented at Media, Marketing & Effectiveness in Toronto earlier this month, and elsewhere) proves what many of us already know: attention drives results. High-attention channels like video and premium news brands outperform low-attention environments. But ad dollars continue to flow to the bottom of the funnel because it’s easier, faster, cheaper.

At the Future of Media conference in the U.K. in September, Follett said: “My suggestion to media planners is: do your f*ing job.”

Harsh, yes. And it’s not just on planners. It’s on all of us. We all let this happen. We’ve systematized media to the point where thinking is optional. We need more of us to ask the hard questions.

Here’s the truth: AI can write a plan, but only humans can write a great one. 

Media needs fewer operators and more thinkers. Fewer dashboards and more discussion. Fewer impressions and more impact.

We need strategists who understand business problems, cultural context and how media can make a brand matter. Anthropologists, economists, creatives and contrarians. Not spreadsheet jockeys trained to optimize to a benchmark. We need more teachers that can train on building solutions vs impressions.

The future of media isn’t tools. It’s talent. And until we value and inspire that again, media will stay dull.

Alex Panousis is former CEO of several of Canada’s largest media agencies. With over 20 years’ experience helping brands create more effective advertising, she now serves as a board director and advises startups and brands on growth and strategy.