Ep 32. AI Won't Grow the Ad Pie — But It Will Decide Who Gets a Bigger Slice, with Brian Wieser, Madison and Wall

Time Magazine started selling sponsored FAQ sections to AI crawlers — and Perplexity shut it down, threatened to lower their quality score, and called it a trust issue. Publishers are wondering whether to block AI crawlers entirely. OpenAI quietly filed for its IPO while churning through senior executives. Anthropic is proactively watermarking Claude outputs ahead of the EU AI Act. And Mark Zuckerberg published a sprawling manifesto about open source AI that Shiv summarized with AI because nobody has time for that. This week, Shiv and Myles sit down with Brian Wieser — CEO of Madison and Wall, a former equity research analyst, agency veteran, and the person Frienemies called "the industry's most widely respected marketing analyst." Brian brings a level of analytical rigor to the AI and advertising conversation that cuts through the hype in ways most guests simply can't — and this episode is full of moments where he says the quiet part loud. Brian breaks down why AI will neither grow nor shrink the advertising pie — and why that's actually the most honest and interesting answer you can give. He explains the three real mechanisms through which AI could shift ad spending: changes in competitive intensity, creative destruction, and broader economic tailwinds. He also takes direct aim at Sam Altman's claim that AI can eliminate 95% of what agencies do — and dismantles it with data. Agency revenues are not decelerating. The budget is the budget. And one of his clients at Madison and Wall refused to buy a banner ad because the sponsored post lives in the LLM forever. Which, as Brian puts it, is fascinating. They also get into why media planning line items are quietly shifting from TV and audio to Google, Meta, and Amazon — and what that means for everyone who isn't one of those three — why agencies arbitraging AI tokens is really just the Wall Street research bundling model with a new coat of paint, and why Meta doesn't actually care about advertising even though it funds everything they do. Ready to level up your AI skills? Join the U of Digital AI Accelerator. Enrollment now open for September | Sponsored by Bliss, a DSP by T-Mobile Ad Solutions 20% off now | https://uof.digital/ai/accelerator/ New episodes every two weeks. Get your AI Edge here.