Can advertising talk its way to 2030 without fixing what’s broken?

Ask anyone in the advertising world who’s stayed late on a brief, argued over a tagline, or celebrated a campaign win why they chose this industry. Most didn’t join for the money. They joined for the magic.

For the late nights that felt electric instead of exhausting. For the thrill of cracking an idea that made a room go silent. For the belief that words, images, and stories could move people, and sometimes even change behaviour.

Somewhere along the way, that belief began to thin out.

Today, the industry feels heavier. Quieter in spirit, louder in stress. Calendars are packed, but thinking time is scarce. Conversations revolve around scopes, costs, and efficiencies, not curiosity, courage, or craft. People don’t leave because they’ve stopped loving advertising. They leave because advertising stopped loving them back.

This isn’t about nostalgia or romanticising the past. It’s about recognising a truth many inside the business feel but rarely say out loud: something fundamental is breaking.

As 2030 approaches, the question isn’t how fast advertising can adapt to new platforms or technologies. The real question is whether it can still recognise its own soul, and fight to protect it.

The cost of underpriced ideas

At the heart of many industry problems lies an uncomfortable truth, advertising doesn’t price its thinking properly.

Ashish Khazanchi, Managing Partner, Enormous, says, “Chronic underpricing has made advertising less attractive as a career, while simultaneously increasing pressure on those who stay.”

Low retainers, endless scopes, unpaid pitches, and performance-linked expectations have created an ecosystem where people aren’t rewarded for thinking better, only for producing faster.

Khazanchi explains what that does to the work:

“When agencies are paid less, people aren’t encouraged to think better, they’re forced to work harder, faster, and more defensively.”

The fallout is visible everywhere, surface-level insights, safe creativity, and exhausted teams. Prathap Suthan, Managing Partner & CCO, BangInTheMiddle, connects this directly to talent loss and creative decline:

“Low pay and burnout are pushing good people out of the industry.”

This isn’t just a talent issue. It’s a quality issue. An industry that refuses to pay for ideas slowly forgets how to create them.

From partnerships to power imbalances

Advertising was never meant to be a one-sided relationship. Yet somewhere along the way, respect thinned out. 

Warning of the consequences, Suthan says, “If we continue down the current path of eroded trust, unfair practices, talent flight, and short term thinking, we risk losing the soul of this business.”

From unpaid pitches to last-minute scope changes and transactional engagements, agencies are often treated as replaceable execution units. Suthan is clear about what needs to change. He says, “Ethics, fairness, money, creativity, and true partnership must be reclaimed urgently.”

Khazanchi echoes this erosion of mutual respect by pointing to how undervaluation directly impacts ambition:

“Weaker consumer understanding, lower quality output, and a gradual erosion of creative and strategic ambition.”

When trust disappears, so does bravery. And without bravery, advertising becomes noise.

Another fault line running through the industry is how agencies are positioned, and how willingly they’ve accepted that position.

Suthan says,“Agencies have been reduced to execution vendors.”

When agencies stop influencing business thinking and long-term brand direction, they lose relevance, and brands lose perspective.

Aditya Kanthy, President & MD, Omnicom Advertising India, believes this distancing is partly self-inflicted. He says,“I think we are a little bit, uh, we're preoccupied with our own concerns and not enough with our client's concerns.”

True partnership requires deeper involvement, sharper alignment, and shared accountability. Kanthy stresses that this shift can’t be performative.

“We have to care much more deeply about our customers, who, in this case, are our clients, and their success, and we have to align our talent objectives with that priority,” adds Kanthy.

Without this reset, agencies risk being bypassed, by in-house teams, consultants, or platforms that promise speed over substance.

Is short-term thinking flattening brands, and careers?

The industry’s obsession with immediate performance has consequences beyond dashboards.

Suthan warns, “Short term performance obsession is flattening brands.”

When everything is optimised for now, brands lose memory, meaning, and emotional equity. Creativity turns tactical. Storytelling becomes optional.

Khazanchi ties this back to how time and thinking are valued:

“If we want better work, healthier agencies, and sharper thinking, the industry must reset how it values ideas, talent, and time.”

Brand-building takes patience. So do people. Without long-term thinking, advertising forgets why it exists in the first place.

Talent, technology, and the risk of a hollow industry

AI, automation, and platforms aren’t the enemy, but mistaking them for creativity is.

Technology should enable creativity, not lead it.

-Prathap Suthan

He warns that without human-led insight and ethics, the industry could lose its identity altogether:

“By 2030, the industry itself may become unrecognisable, hollowed out by in-house teams, big tech dominance, generic output, and broken client agency relationships.”

Kanthy brings the focus back to people, and how talent must be nurtured with intent, not optics.

“We have to align our talent objectives with priority. And do it in a serious and meaningful way, not just for the headlines, which sometimes we're guilty of.”

An industry that treats talent as expendable will soon find itself replaceable.

Advertising isn’t charity or content farming. And it isn’t a race to the bottom on price and patience.

Suthan says, “Advertising is a business with its own expenses and a fair demand for profits and bottomlines.”

An industry that underpays its thinking will eventually have nothing market moving to say.

-Ashish Khazanchi

The cycle is clear. When ideas are valued, people stay. When people stay, trust grows. When trust grows, creativity flourishes. And when creativity flourishes, the industry grows.

Before 2030, advertising doesn’t need another trend report or toolset. It needs to remember its worth. And demand the respect that comes with it.

Because when agencies are reduced to vendors, when talent feels disposable, when creativity is rushed and underpriced, advertising doesn’t just lose relevance, it loses meaning.

Fixing pricing, trust, ethics, and ambition isn’t about saving agencies. It’s about saving the reason people once stayed late, argued passionately, and believed that what they were making mattered.

If advertising wants a future that’s worth inheriting, it has to start valuing what made it powerful in the first place. Not louder work or faster output, but better thinking, and the people brave enough to do it.