There are times when I‘ve sat in on a marketing meeting and come away thinking everybody in the room is working hard and nobody in the room is headed to the same place.

That may sound harsh, but I don’t mean it that way.

In fact, what usually strikes me is the opposite. The people in those meetings are often bright, capable, and fully engaged. They are taking notes. They are throwing out ideas. They are discussing campaigns, email performance, social media, upcoming events, brand updates, website changes, content plans, deadlines and whatever else has landed on the department in the last 48 hours.

We’ve talked about what changed. We’ve talked about where the control went. We’ve talked about how easy it is to mistake platform reporting for the whole truth.

So now the real question is what marketing leaders are supposed to do with all of that.

I’m not anti-AI.
I’m not anti-automation.
And I’m definitely not sitting around wishing we could all go back to 2015.

That world is gone.

If you talk to enough CEOs and CFOs about digital advertising, you’ll hear the same quiet frustration. The reports look good. The metrics are improving. But the business impact feels harder to explain.

That tension didn’t appear because digital advertising stopped working; it appeared because something important changed under the hood. These changes that reshaped how digital advertising operates didn’t happen overnight, and most were introduced with good intentions.

In the ever-evolving world of digital marketing, staying ahead of trends and technologies is crucial. But in 2024, it’s not just the latest algorithm updates or ad formats that businesses need to keep an eye on—it’s the growing wave of data privacy laws. These regulations are changing the way companies collect, store, and use data, which has a significant impact on digital marketing strategies. If you’re not paying attention, your marketing efforts might end up in the crosshairs of regulators, or worse, disconnected from your audience.

Most marketing plans are built around volume. More channels. More content. More campaigns.

And when things aren’t working, the instinct is to double down. Post more often. Launch faster. Push harder. But the problem usually isn’t effort. It’s direction.

The hardest part of strategy isn’t execution. It’s choosing what not to do. Not that audience. Not that idea. Not that trend someone saw on LinkedIn.