Every Media Plan is a Vote

09 October 2026

A Comment on Richard Brant’s LinkedIn article, by Brian Jacobs, Founder BJ&A, Co-Founder, Advertising: Who Cares?

Richard Brant’s piece on LinkedIn raises a lot of important issues, issues that have been discussed in part in various settings and under various labels. Having them together in one piece, especially when you consider the contributions from both Jon Watts and Jonathan Waite is certainly helpful.

Richard mentions Advertising: Who Cares? (AWC) the movement started in the Spring of 2024 by myself and Nick Manning and which today has about 750 supporters worldwide.

In June 2026 we organised an event, hosted by Prospect called Who Cares Wins? We planned this to be different from most events.

• We did not feature advertising people on stage (we made an honourable exception with Jake Dubbins, Founder of the Conscious Advertising Network).
• We focussed on two topic areas: who pays for content? and what about online safety?
• We went outside the usual conference format in having two hour-long panels. Aside from a scene setting opener, that was the event.
• We went out of our way to attract journalists, lawyers, activists, publishers, TV producers and regulators. We featured on stage an ex-Tory MP, Chair of the DCMS Select Committee, and the CEO of The Molly Rose Foundation.
• We had no sponsors and imposed no restrictions on who said what. We limited attendance to around 80.
• The proceedings were filmed and can be viewed in their entirety for free on our YouTube channel.

I mention all of this as a way of introducing a weakness in Richard’s piece. This is not a fault, and it’s something AWC too has been struggling with.

The question is ‘what to do and who’s going to do it?’.

Advertisers would seem to be the obvious answer, but as CIMM’s Jon Watts alludes to in his piece bringing pressure via ad spending is not in any way practical. At any given moment META alone has some 10 million advertisers. The days of the likes of Procter and Gamble having any sway are long gone.

Indeed, most META advertisers are not from the P&G mould. Most know little of the ad business, have never heard of Binet and Field (I know, outrageous!) and know little and care less about the subjects Richard, and AWC are raising.

Plus (Watts again) there’s the Musk / GARM precedent. Large organisations naturally hate even the possibility of prolonged court cases. Over what? Whether to use X in the schedule? Really?

My own sense, and this is based on running three AWC events and trying to get advertisers to discuss these topics, is that most will quite understandably keep their heads down. Their trade body ISBA has been and is supportive and encouraging, but this is sensitive territory. And the huge bulk of advertisers aren’t ISBA members.

So, if not advertisers, who?

I think the answer lies in raising these issues outside of our bubble. That’s not to exclude the advertising people, of course but we need to engage with regulators, policy influencers, Government, and certain elements of the broader public.

We need to make the case through the right journalists, and media outlets. Our trade bodies are limited by definition; they’re ‘trade bodies’ with multiple stakeholders.

At the same time, we do need to spring clean our own house.

Many of the points in Richard’s piece can be explained by a very poor appreciation of, understanding of and use of research and data. For example, the US audience measurement system has for ever been based around the principle of biggest number wins. Not about reaching the right people. Not about context. Not about business outcomes. Only about size. I know it’s changing, slowly, but old and bad habits die hard.

And if size is all that matters unscrupulous players will do anything to maximise the numbers. They’ll make stuff up, change definitions, prevaricate, confuse and muddy the waters.

These misuses of data (Faker Data?) need to be called out, we need to educate ourselves and our clients on an area of expertise ignored by most for far too long.

This is internal. This is spring cleaning.

On the bigger picture we need to do something, and quickly. To take one extreme, the time to discuss the multiple benefits of a BBC-style model is now, not once the BBC has been cancelled.

As one small step along this path AWC would be happy putting on another mini-event, like the June Prospect gathering. We would need help from the likes of Richard; we need time to attract the very people we need to engage with – people whose knee-jerk reaction is likely going to be to ask what the heck has this to do with you ad guys anyway?

The net is we need to start a public debate and stop talking to ourselves. Who’s up for that?