By common consent advertising needs to get its mojo back.

• Advertising (particularly online advertising) is unpopular with the public, who are bombarded by excessive, irrelevant and unappealing copy. 

• Advertising as a whole is less effective than it once was for advertisers.

  Agencies are under pressure to deliver more and more work for less and less in fees. The business model is old and no longer fit for purpose.

  
  Trust between agencies and their clients has declined, driven by a lack of transparency and an increasing practice within the largest agencies to make up revenue and margin shortfalls by fees from media vendors.

  Much online advertising is never seen by those at whom it's directed; fraudulent sites are unknowingly funded out of advertising budgets. 

  
  Ads increasingly finish up on inappropriate sites (such as pornography or sites promoting violence), placed there by systems operating automatically with little or no human involvement. Nobody, except criminal enterprises, benefits from this.

  
  There are big questions over data privacy and the user safety of even the largest platforms.

  Advertising no longer funds high quality media as it used to.

  The advertising industry is a less attractive one for its people and is finding it hard to appeal to potential young recruits.
  
  The problems are well-documented but the solutions are much less obvious. We believe there is little point rehashing the problems, we think it more constructive to search for innovative, pragmatic solutions. We believe these will come from an open discussion around the issues; we think we are all too quick to brush the industry's ills under the nearest carpet, to pretend they don't exist, or to believe the latest technological fad.

In 2025, ‘Advertising: Who Cares?’ will collect and amplify the best and most recent thinking around the world to show how a better way is possible. Because we believe that everything is connected, our focus is on the following core topics, each with its own workstream, led by an industry expert and 'staffed' from our supporter base:

• Business models

• Commercial creativity

• Communications planning

• Trading, transparency and trust

• Measurement and accountability

• Adtech and data

• Recruitment and well-being

• Funding high quality media

• Industry relationships and collaboration

We encourage everyone who cares about the industry to come together to contribute to better advertising and a better advertising industry. You can join our growing supporter base from the site, for free.