The Coming Flood of AI Ads—and Why the Smartest Brands and Retailers Will Talk Less, Not More

Read Time: 5 minutes

A few years ago, marketers loved to repeat a number that sounded terrifying enough to be true: the average person sees 10,000 ads a day. The math never quite worked, and the figure has been widely challenged—often tracing back to squishy definitions of “exposure” and a chain of citations that leads to marketing blogs more than measurement.

But here’s the twist: even if the statistic is flimsy, the feeling is real—and artificial intelligence is about to make that feeling worse.

The new sales pitch floating around the creative economy is simple: make more ads, faster, cheaper, forever. Agency founder PJ Ace captured the zeitgeist on X after an OpenAI Sora update, arguing that brands will need to produce creative at a pace that would have been unthinkable in the old “one big spot per quarter” world. Another AI video shop founder told a tech podcast his company is being asked for as many as 1,500 videos a month from a single client—a number that sounds less like marketing and more like an industrial process.

Local media sellers and local ad agencies should recognize what this is: a volume war. And volume wars are great for platforms, terrible for brands, and confusing for consumers.

The problem isn’t AI. It’s the sameness.

AI can be brilliant at iteration—taking a message, slicing it into variants, resizing it for formats, translating it, A/B testing it into submission. What it struggles with is the hard part: originality that feels earned, not generated; human texture that doesn’t look like a default filter.

That gap has started showing up publicly. McDonald’s Netherlands recently pulled an AI-generated holiday ad after backlash that it felt eerie and emotionally off. Coca-Cola’s AI holiday work has also drawn criticism for visible “glitches” and uncanny moments that distract from the brand’s intended warmth.

None of this proves AI “doesn’t work.” It proves something more useful for anyone selling local campaigns: when everyone can generate content, content stops being the differentiator.

Differentiation returns to what it always was: taste, timing, restraint, and the ability to make people care.

Enter the “STFU” strategy—without the quiet part

The most practical idea in your source material is also the least polite: the STFU Brand Strategy, a marketing approach that emphasizes being more strategic in how and when a brand communicates with its audience, rather than overwhelming them with constant content. It is not about literal silence, but about prioritizing quality and meaningful engagement over sheer volume, aiming to create work or experiences that are genuinely shared by real people.

In plain English: be more intentional about when you show up, what you say, and why anyone would pass it along. The goal isn’t to win the week with 300 variations. It’s to win the conversation with one idea people actually remember.

Ad agency leader Leo Premutico put it bluntly: “There’s no way that volume is the answer,” warning that an ecosystem where AI trains on AI-generated output can snowball into a swamp of indistinguishable work.

That warning lands especially hard at the local level, where most advertisers aren’t trying to be clever. They’re trying to be chosen—by a homeowner, a patient, a diner, a car buyer, a donor—often in a narrow radius, with a finite budget, in a market where everybody is yelling.

What this means in the trenches: a playbook for local sellers and agencies

If you sell local media (or buy it), AI “ad slop” is actually an opportunity—because it makes trust and craft more valuable, not less. Here’s how to turn that into strategy (and billable work).

1) Sell a cadence, not a content factory.
Local advertisers don’t need 1,500 videos a month. They need a repeatable system: a signature offer structure, a recognizable voice, and a predictable rhythm. Think: one strong monthly theme + weekly rotations + channel-specific cutdowns. AI can help produce assets, but the cadence is the product.

2) Build “scarcity moments” inside always-on media.
Local media is already good at frequency. The mistake is making every impression feel identical. Create tentpoles: seasonal drops, community sponsorships, “one-night-only” events, limited-time partnerships, live remotes, newsletter takeovers. In a noisy market, anticipation is oxygen.

3) Make the human the asset—on purpose.
Consumers increasingly detect the “AI sheen.” So put real people at the center: the service manager, the chef, the nurse, the founder, the customer. A local brand’s advantage is that it can be specific—a street, a school, a team, a neighborhood problem solved. That specificity is the antidote to generic creative.

4) Shift creative from “ads” to “things worth repeating.”
The strongest local campaigns don’t look like ads. They look like: a community challenge, a charity partnership, a behind-the-scenes series, a short “myth vs fact” segment, a weekly bargain list people forward, a scoreboard sponsor that becomes a ritual. If your creative cannot be described without saying “ad,” it’s probably going to blend in.

5) Measure what volume can’t buy: memory.
AI makes clicks cheaper. It doesn’t automatically make brands more mentally available. Your pitch—especially to the budget-conscious local client—should include proof points around: brand recall, search lift, direct traffic, store visits, inbound calls, and “share of conversation” in the community. In a slop era, memory is ROI.

The local-market twist: your advantage is the algorithm can’t fake “here”

The platforms will gladly sell advertisers infinite versions of the same message. What they can’t sell is belonging.

Local publishers, broadcasters, and agencies can—because you still control the scarce inventory that matters: trust, context, community attention, and real-world presence.

So yes, use AI. Use it to storyboard faster, test headlines, resize creative, generate variations, speed post-production. But don’t let it turn your strategy into a treadmill.

In 2026, the brands that stand out won’t be the ones who talk the most.

They’ll be the ones who say fewer things—better—at the moments people are most likely to care.

Source: https://www.fastcompany.com/91458172/ai-advertising-slop-is-on-the-rise-the-cure-the-stfu-brand-strateg