When I was a kid at school, I often felt stupid. Rote memorization was tough. Dates of battles, Kings and Queens just wouldn’t stick. I hated history quizzes. 

Yet I thrived when I went deeper – spending hours immersed in the political, economic, and military context that surrounded these events.

I've learned this is simply how I learn: by understanding the ‘why’ behind the ‘what,’ even if initially I felt slower for it.

It’s still how I am today.

That drive to dig beneath the surface kicked in last week when Mark Read announced his resignation as CEO of WPP, effective late 2025.

WPP recently slipped from #1 to #2 among advertising holding companies, now trailing my former employer, Publicis.

Mark Read, like every leader in our industry, is grappling with AI's explosive growth. WPP pledged to invest $405 million total (2024–2025) in their AI-driven platform, WPP Open.

That may sound like a lot of money. But consider the tech giants’ investments in AI over the next year:

• Amazon: Over $100 billion

• Microsoft: $80 billion

• Google: $75 billion

• Meta: $35-40 billion

These AI investments dwarf the combined revenue of the top seven holding companies. Not their profit, not their EBITDA – their entire annual revenues.

Microsoft is investing almost 200 times what WPP has pledged in 2024-25. And when it comes to AI, money talks.

Here’s the sobering truth: AI is not just the future – it’s already rewriting the rules. Yet even those investing tens of billions and employing tens of thousands of people to build Large Language Models (LLMs) don’t fully understand precisely why or how they work. That’s staggering.

What they do understand?

How to monetize them.

Google, Amazon, Meta, and Microsoft thrive on one simple algorithm: maximizing CPC. Higher CPC means higher stock prices. That’s something we can all grasp clearly.

Whether we’re CEOs, CMOs or junior marketing executives, we ALL have to adapt to this now.