Does the future of advertising have to be dystopian?

Science fiction has long been, in other words, a reliable outlet for (and barometer of) society’s more pressing current concerns. Just look at a couple of recent Netflix releases: German thriller Cassandra, a cautionary tale concerned with smart homes and artificial intelligence, and the latest series of Black Mirror. In the latter’s first episode, a woman with a brain injury takes a deal for a cloud-based hardware fix to get her back to health, later discovering that she’s become a walking-talking advertising channel as part of the deal. In an apparent dig at the streaming environment that houses the show, she’s offered a solution: a succession of tiered ‘premium’ services to turn off the ads.

So, are advertisers doomed to follow the paths of ‘personalization’ and environmental permeation to these dystopic futures? Or is another world possible? We asked leading strategic and creative thinkers.

Flora Joll, strategy director, Joan London: “One thing that gives Black Mirror so much power is its precise prescience. The recent season’s ad-tiered surgical implants may not quite be part of our daily simulated reality, but it feels like they could be just around the next corner. A very Black Mirror-esque advancement in real life is the introduction of robots delivering groceries to our home – the scope for the concept to be co-opted for sinister purposes feels very wide. What first looks like a jolly convenience with branding opportunities could swiftly become a nightmare from a dystopian film like Judge Dredd. Imagine the darkest possible version of Spotify Wrapped: Starship robots trundling around with screens proclaiming, ‘You’re in the top 1% of cream bun purchasers in the UK!’ ‘Unprecedented quantities of Nair sold in Milton Keynes: good job!’ Personalization should be used responsibly by brands. To paraphrase Jeff Golblum’s Dr Ian Malcon, just because they can doesn’t mean they should. Brands should be open-minded about embracing the future to ensure it doesn’t become dystopian. Imagine tiny digital LED ad vans delivering on your street, able to deliver contextually relevant offers to residents passing by. In South Korea, that’s just around the corner.”

Phil Rowley, head of futures, Omnicom Media Group UK: “When we look back on the 2010s and 2020s, we will reflect on a period of great transition: the change from static imagery in public spaces to animated imagery, the switch from paper to screens. Screens in public have been around for years, but we are seeing more and more appear, from bus stops to payment kiosks. We’re getting closer to the scenarios depicted in the science fiction films of decades prior: the shark holograms of Back To The Future 2 or the moving cartoon imagery on packets of cereal in Minority Report. The future will be a kaleidoscopic mix of surfaces, locations and objects, with the ability to display sophisticated animated messaging across all canvases. From a comms point of view, brands will need to embrace rich, dynamic, adaptable multiformat assets as a default – and rethink where their adverts might appear beyond today’s channels.”

Rob Leeks, digital creative director, Imagination: “With tech advancements like Neuralink, AR spectacles and the speed at which AI generates wholly convincing synthetic worlds, we’re heading into a future where you can choose the level of reality you live with. We humans have got form in this area. Most of us can say we’ve tried to switch off from reality, at least in part, with streamed escapism, doom scrolling, even using the odd tipple here and there to ‘dial the day back.’ The series The Peripheral, set in future London, shows protagonists rub their finger and thumb tips together to dial up or down reality. At maximum augmentation, London looks incredible, but when the illusion is removed, it’s revealed as a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Imagery like that resonates because it feels very plausible. The better devices get at generating an enhanced reality, the less desirable it might be to exist in actual reality.”

Ed Freed, global chief transformation officer, Rapp: “What does dystopia even look like any more? Things that we thought were dystopian, radical, and even impossible a few years ago are now very much possible. AI agents. Robots. Smart glasses with embedded AR tech distorting reality in real time. Yes, Black Mirror’s surgically embedded ad tiered chip seems crazy, but the possibilities truly are endless. As people who live and work in this dystopian big tech world day in day out, we must take responsibility for (and ownership over) the future of this tech. We can see where the puck is heading and we have a hand in where it ends up. If leveraged correctly, these possibilities can be used as a force for good in both small and large ways, not least in healthcare. Rather than using AI to gather data that sits on a dashboard tracking NHS spend, use it for more ethical research around genetic diseases and cures – something Google’s DeepMind is already doing. In fact, considering the ethical implications of such tech could lead to more opportunity in the marketing and ad industries. If AI ends up generating half of all online content, I predict the emergence of a two-tier internet. Paywalled sites and services will have the means to prevent AI from scraping their content and the content of their users, preserving spaces of authentic human creation. Platforms like Substack, Medium and possibly Reddit could capitalize on this trend, offering brands safe spaces to communicate with audiences away from deep fakes, with new avenues to cut through the noise.”

Stephanie Himoff, executive vice-president of global publishers, Teads: “Creative is no longer just art; it’s science too. Advancements in AI and automation are making creativity more data-driven from concept through to execution, optimizing every asset based on performance, audience and context. At the same time, interactivity is reshaping how brands connect with people. AR is leading the charge, transforming passive formats into immersive experiences – think virtual try-ons, interactive 3D environments and real-time customization. For brands, this is a creative reset. It’s an opportunity to reimagine how they show up visually, emotionally and experientially. For media owners, it’s a chance to evolve beyond passive inventory. The shift toward interactivity pushes user experience forward. The entire content environment is elevated, creating more value for everyone. The real dystopia isn’t the technology; it’s giving up control. Brands have more influence than ever over how the future of advertising takes shape. By choosing where media spend goes, brands decide which platforms grow, which standards evolve and which experiences consumers come to expect. It’s time to look beyond closed ecosystems. The open internet is evolving into a high-impact, creatively rich and performance-driven space. And this is how we build a future that’s more open, innovative and less controlled by a select few.”