By mid-decade, the industry reached an uncomfortable equilibrium.
Everything works -- and nothing works the way it used to.
Budgets flow, campaigns launch, dashboards sparkle with precision metrics, yet most senior marketers admit privately that they can’t prove which 40 percent of their spend creates growth. The problem isn’t intent; it’s infrastructure. Fragmentation, automation, and economic compression have combined to produce a marketplace that is simultaneously more measurable and less certain than at any point in advertising history.
The full report is available below to all free and paid subscribers to Substack individual subscribers athttps://substack.com/@themyersreport. Your support is valued and appreciated. If you believe your company is a corporate subscriber please contactinfo@myersreports.comfor more information and access. For more information on corporate subscriptions visitwww.myersreports.com.
Contents
Chapter 3 - The Market Reality Check: From Compression to Proof
The Compression Cycle
Automation Without Meaning
The Proof Gap
Trust as Currency
The Compression Cycle
The 2025 Myers Report data confirms what many sales leaders already feel: pricing power has been squeezed to its narrowest margin in two decades.
- 74 percent of buyers report “moderate or severe pricing pressure” in linear and CTV negotiations.
- 61 percent cite “proof of performance” as their top renewal criterion -- up 20 points from 2023.
- And yet only 48 percent believe current measurement systems are “clear and comparable.”
This compression has created a paradox: as transparency increases, so does skepticism. Clients can see more data than ever but trust less of it.
Automation Without Meaning
Automation, intended to simplify transactions, has instead multiplied them. AI-powered planning tools ingest oceans of data but often replicate historical bias. Programmatic marketplaces deliver speed at the expense of story. In many organizations, the automation stack has outgrown the strategy that governs it.
GroupM’s Brian Lesser described the tension succinctly: “A hundred percent of media transactions will soon be automated -- but if we don’t teach the machines why a message matters, all we’ll automate is mediocrity.”
Automation must therefore graduate from executional efficiency to strategic empathy -- machines that not only optimize delivery but understand context.
The Proof Gap
Clients no longer debate the need for measurement; they debate whose measurement counts. Each platform tout’s proprietary metrics, each agency claims the cleanest data, and each advertiser is left to reconcile competing truths.
In this climate, proof becomes more than analytics -- it becomes a philosophy of partnership. The most successful sellers approach proof as a shared endeavor: transparent methodology, verifiable outcomes, and open dashboards that demystify value creation.
Proof is no longer a back-office report; it is the product experience itself.
Trust as Currency
Trust equity -- how credible, consistent, and collaborative a partner appears -- now outranks cost efficiency in most Myers Report perception scores. Legacy multi-platform TV brands lead the trust index precisely because they invest in human stewardship: reliable account teams, ethical standards, and creative integrity.
Conversely, digital platforms that rely on self-reporting still struggle to translate algorithmic confidence into human confidence. The winners of the next cycle will be those who engineer transparency into every transaction and treat accountability not as compliance but as competitive advantage. The market’s reality check is ultimately cultural. 2020-2025 was survival. 2026-2030 must be system.
The full 50-page New Rules for Advertising Sales report is available to The Myers Report corporate subscribers and to Substack individual subscribers athttps://substack.com/@themyersreport. Your support is valued and appreciated. If you believe your company is a corporate subscriber please contactinfo@myersreports.comfor more information and access. For more information on corporate subscriptions visitwww.myersreports.com.
COMING NEXT: Chapter 4: The Five Imperatives: Blueprint for the Proof Era
Chapter 1 - Redefining Media Value: The Human + AI Economy of Attention.
Chapter 2 - The 2026 Buyer Mindset: Decoding the New Decision DNA.
Chapter 3 - The Market Reality Check: From Compression to Proof.
Chapter 4 - The Five Imperatives: Blueprint for the Proof Era.
Chapter 5 - Proof Is the New Product: How Trust Became Currency.
Chapter 6 - Systems That Scale: Building the Architecture of Co-Intelligence.
Chapter 7 - Risk & Continuity: Turning Volatility into Value.
Chapter 8 - Category Playbooks: Proof in Practice.
Chapter 10 - The Leadership OS: Building Proof from the Inside Out.
Chapter 11 - Exhibits & Tools: Operationalizing Proof.
Epilogue - The Future Is Proof: What Leadership Looks Like in 2030.