The advertising industry is by common consent a less attractive place to be these days. It has become a place where machines have replaced people, jobs have become soul-less, and data is treated as royalty. And this before AI really gets into its stride.

The advertising itself has deteriorated. Much present-day advertising is simply ineffective; the majority is inefficient and wasteful. Much of it is unaccountable, untrackable, unmeasurable or simply not measured at all.
It abuses the privacy of the public and treats them as ‘product’.

It bombards people with irrelevant and pointless ads.

It enriches criminals through fraud, with half of the ads placed being wasted on bots not humans.

‘Viewability’ is both poor, and poorly defined.
Furthermore, a lot of it harms the environment.

In short, advertising could be said to exist to make the adtechindustry and the big platforms even wealthier.

Consequently, the ad industry is no longer an attractive one for people starting out. Rewards have stagnated since the early 2000s. Many jobs are mundane.