Is AI Killing Advertising? & Scott’s Best Financial Decision

Scott Galloway breaks down how AI is impacting the marketing industry, explains why choosing the right partner may be the most important financial decision you’ll ever make, and shares his approach to raising independent kids. Want to be featured in a future episode? Send a voice recording to [email protected], or drop your question in the r/ScottGalloway subreddit. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Flowing ad budget on metrics that look great till the CFO sees them? That's bull spend. And marketers are calling it out in Dashboard Confessions.

• 0:09Speaker 01

  I remember telling my boss, "It'll be good for the brand," when leads were slow. Yeah, it wasn't.

• 0:17Speaker 00

  Cut the bull spend. LinkedIn lets you target by company, job title, and more. Advertise on LinkedIn. Spend $250 on your first campaign and get a $250 credit. Go to LinkedIn.com/campaign. Terms and conditions apply.

• 0:31Speaker 02

  Low energy, unfocused, foggy? You might be dehydrated. Gatorade Zero Powders have been scientifically designed to help improve hydration balance in the body. With a clinically proven electrolyte blend and no artificial colors or flavors. Great tasting hydration, no matter where you're going. Shop now online or at retailers nationwide. Gatorade: Hydrates Better Than Water. Is it in you? Symptoms noted are signs of mild to moderate dehydration. Consult a healthcare professional if symptoms persist.

• 1:01Speaker 03

  This episode is brought to you by Michelob Ultra. Good times mean competitions between you and your friends, like seeing who can throw some pigskin the farthest or rush the field the fastest. Winner gets an Ultra. Because it's not just a superior-like beer, it's also giving fans superior access to their favorite sporting events. Superior is worth playing for. Visit MichelobUltra.com/SuperiorAccess to enter. Enjoy responsibly. Copyright 2026 Anheuser-Busch InBev Michelob Ultra Beer, St. Louis, Missouri.

• 1:36Scott Galloway?

  Welcome to Office Hours at Prop G. This is the part of the show where we answer your questions about business, big tech, entrepreneurship, and whatever else is on your mind. If you'd like to submit a question for next time, you can send a voice recording to officehoursatpropgmedia.com. Again, that's officehoursatpropgmedia.com. Or post your question on the Scott Galloway subreddit, and we just might feature it in our next episode. Question number one. Our first question comes from Michael on LinkedIn. Michael says, "AI is one of the key drivers behind the recent collapse and irrelevance of the advertising agency industry. What will happen to the whole marketing domain then?"

• 2:09Scott Galloway?

  Okay. Could you be a little broader in your questions? All right. What's happening in the agency world? WPP, one of the world's largest holding companies, announced a major plan to cut a half a billion pounds in costs by 2028, driven by restructuring and integrating AI tools, and is aiming to return the company to growth by 2027. The new center's share price to its levels since 1998. Think about that. 28 years later, Omnicom's $9 billion merger with Interpublic Group will result in about 4,000 job cuts, which accounts for around 3% of the company's combined headcount. And then in 2025, total ad agency employment in the UK dropped over 14%, with the under

• 2:50Scott Galloway?

  25 workforce shrinking nearly 19%, driven in part by AI automating roles and reducing demand for entry-level work. So the industry's navigated platform transitions before: print, broadcast, digital and mobile. Let's bring this back to me. I've been able to reinvent myself and get out of shitty businesses before they got terribly shitty. I started, in my second year of business school, I started a brand strategy firm called Profit. And my basic thesis was, I read something from my brand strategy professor, David Acker, that the only sustainable advantage was the intangible associations of developing these brand codes and then using this incredibly cheap medium called broadcast advertising

• 3:30Scott Galloway?

  to hammer home these brand associations of maternal love, or European grace, or sex, or American toughness, and that that was how you created a rational margin. And from 1945 to the introduction of Google, whether it was P&G, or Nike, or General Motors, they basically, the, kind of the algorithm for above-market shareholder value was a mediocre product with amazing brand values. All that changed with Google, and that is, all of a sudden, your ability to find, instead of deferring to the brand as a weapon of mass diligence, You could type using your social graph, using Google and search, using different

• 4:13Scott Galloway?

  digital properties between... I always used to stay at the trip at the Four Seasons or the Ritz Carlton when I traveled. Why? Because someone else was paying. I was traveling for clients or speaking gigs, and they always deliver an eight out of 10. And then, once there was TripAdvisor and Instagram and Facebook and Google, I now found that, oh, wait, when I'm in Berlin, I want to stay at the So House because it has the best gym. When I'm in London, I want to be at Chiltern Firehouse because it has the coolest bar with the hottest people. You know, I basically, I want to be the Beverly's Hotel because it has the polo lounge where, you know, I can establish eye contact with a lovely Russian lady. That's not true. Anyways, I could find what worked for me, and I no longer needed

• 4:55Scott Galloway?

  to defer to the institutional brand and that a series of smaller brands, or that basically product innovation broke through. That if you had an amazing product, like a 10x better product, people would learn about it without the benefit of advertising. The majority of the companies have added tens of billions of dollars in shareholder value over the last 30 years have one thing in common, and that is they spend a disproportionately low percentage of their gross proceeds on advertising because they just have, they pour all their money into product innovation because digital kind of unlocked this incredible era of product innovation. Tesla spent no money on advertising because it had an individual who created a massive amount of awareness, and you could tune up the car over the wirelessly. You

• 5:40Scott Galloway?

  know, Google, Instagram, they're 10x better products. So there has been an era moving from brand to innovation, and it's mostly been driven by these direct response mediums that have incredible technology, that are automated, that don't require a person to show up and talk about brand codes wearing black, and then enter into this exceptionally inefficient, expensive ecosystem where they, they take millions of photographs and pay Annie Leibowitz a quarter of a million dollars for a shoot of Kate Moss to find a moment in time and then run an ad for... Tom Ford in Vogue magazine that costs $180,000 that is relevant to 2% of the market. And Google basically said, we can target people now to teenagers who just got driver's licenses

• 6:25Scott Galloway?

  in New York, if you're Geico in New York. Anyways, these companies are now in just full-blown structural decline, which means they're going to have to cut costs and consolidate and merge. But you're going to see the next kind of step change down is going to be when these AI companies launch advertising and they're already beginning to experiment with advertising formats. Conversational AI systems, including ChatGPT, have started introducing sponsored responses and paid placements in certain contexts. That's going to be really fucking strange when your AI, which knows your history, starts serving you ads. And the best ads at the Super Bowl, hands down, I think we're anthropic, mocking the idea of ChatGPT going into ads. Those ads were just,

• 7:06Scott Galloway?

  oh my God, they were outstanding. In sum, I just want to relate this to, so AI is another tool that will continue to kick the shit out of traditional masters of the universe from the last century, and that is the ad agency guys. So let's bring this back to me. Best consulting gig I ever had was right out of business school. Again, I'm Warren Hellman of Hellman and Friedman. I met him, we hit it off, and he said, I've got a great assignment. I'm going to pay you for two years to come to the board meetings of Levi Strauss and Company. At the time, it was the most valuable private company in the world. Everyone at Levi's thought advertising was just it. Like, the right ad campaign could change everything for them because they had an okay denim product and they wrapped it in amazing grand codes. It cost them eight bucks to produce these

• 7:50Scott Galloway?

  things and they sold them for 38 bucks at JCPenney's and 150 bucks in Germany. And I'm not exaggerating. I haven't seen an ad man or an ad woman in a board meeting in 20 years. No one gives a shit what they think. They literally, Don Draper has been drawn and quartered.

• 8:10Scott Galloway?

  And so the advice is kind of the following. These are just shitty places to invest and work. Now, having said that, if you're over, say, the age of 40, 45, and you already have good momentum there and you have clients that like you, you are always going to need people to interpret changes in marketing and advertising and AI for clients who are willing to spend their company's money to help them navigate an ecosystem which is increasingly complex. But every year, their business gets smaller and smaller and shittier and shittier. So you're over the age of 40 or 45 and you're doing well, fine. But if you are under the age of 40 and you have a chance to get out of the fucking, get on the helicopter out of Saigon. Because traditional kind of image-based, broadcast-driven advertising,

• 8:56Scott Galloway?

  oh my God, that's a shitty business. And it's like going to work for cable news right now. So what happens to the whole domain of traditional marketing? Pain. Thanks for the question. Question number two also comes from LinkedIn. Noah Frank asks, what is the most underrated financial decision you made that had nothing to do with investing?

• 9:21Scott Galloway?

  Easy. I married a competent partner. I married someone who's a decent person who's competent. I have a lot of friends who are

• 9:33Scott Galloway?

  men and women who don't have a competent partner. And it means they have two jobs, which means they can't be very good. You know, don't half-ass two things, whole-ass one thing. You end up half-assing two things if your partner, if your husband or your wife isn't competent. You're managing the relationship, you're managing the household. So building something with someone who's competent and loving and understanding and makes you feel good about yourself. And manages the parts of your life well, the home well.

• 10:11Scott Galloway?

  Who brings in their own money and is smart. I mean, one plus one equals three. The majority of very, very wealthy people are married and have a competent partner. And my dad always made good money.

• 10:25Scott Galloway?

  And it goes the other way. You want to be a good partner as well. My dad always made good money. He was talented. He ended up, at the age of 60, ended up broke without a pot to piss in because he got married and divorced four times. Which, so it goes both ways. One, you, the most important decision you will make financially, and in terms of your own psychological well-being, hands down, is finding the right partner. And what I don't like is all this shit that's especially on TikTok telling women that, you know, he doesn't open your door, he's out of there. Like, find red flags and everything. Well, that's not helpful either. But the question is, all right, how do you select a good partner if that's the most important thing? And I think most people would probably say, okay, that makes sense. One, it's sex and affection.

• 11:10Scott Galloway?

  You're saying, I choose you. I think it's really important. And I think you constantly need to reaffirm that and work on it and express physical desire. I think, let me say it, I think women want to be wanted. And I think sex brings peace and harmony to a relationship and says, I choose you. Two values. I think it's important that you're generous and very open with each other about things like religion as it relates to your kids, how close you want to live with your family, and that you're generous with each other around those things. And then the third is, I was jokingly saying, never let a woman be cold or hungry, Pajminas and power bars at all times. The biggest blowups I've had in my relationships have been when someone didn't have lunch. They skipped lunch. Watch out.

• 11:57Scott Galloway?

  Ugh, where am I going with this? Anyways, picking the right partner. And then also, so how do you pick the right partner? Volume. What do I mean by that? Get out. Yeah, it's great to sit at home and eat an edible and hang out with your dog and watch Netflix. No, fucking get out. Find friends. Go out. Be friendly. Somebody asks you out for a coffee and it's not like sparks right away. Okay, go to a second coffee. You might find that you, over time, you're really into, start to get more into him or into her. Get out, meet friends, express romantic interest, be bold, approach strangers. Put yourself in, in situations where the serendipity of, you know, meeting somebody. Be bold, be brave. How did I find the mother of my children?

• 12:40Scott Galloway?

  I saw a woman I was attracted to at the hotel pool, the Raleigh Hotel. I went out to get my, I promised myself I was going to speak to her before I left. I didn't, I went out to get my car and I'm like, fuck. And I grabbed a, I told the valet guy to hold on to my car and I went back in and I rolled up and said, hi, my name's Scott, where are you guys from? And I don't know, 18 months later, our first son's middle name is Raleigh. My point is, it's easy to say, okay, you're going to get it. Partner is the most important financial decision, right? You probably like, if you're not nodding your head, okay, you don't get it. It is the most important decision. Uh, the most important decision, I think you can sort of control. Two, all right, great, how do I find a great partner?

• 13:22Scott Galloway?

  Putting yourself out there, going out, being kind, level, if you're a man, leveling up. Level up for God's sakes. Young men need to level up because young women are leveling up. And it's only natural and understandable that their standards are going up as they would if you were fucking leveling up the way women are leveling up. Anyways, oh, where am I going with this? Most important decision, financial, emotionally, psychologically, who you decide to build a life with? How do you find the right partner? You get out, you level up yourself, you make yourself more attractive, you develop resilience, and you put yourself in a ton of situations where you could meet somebody. Thanks for the question. We'll be right back after a quick break.

• 14:12Scott Galloway?

  Support for the show comes from Nutraful, the number one dermatologist recommended hair growth supplement brand used by over one and a half million people. With age comes knowledge, patience, and for some, hair loss. Didn't say it was all good things. And for those who want to do something about it, there's Nutraful. Nutraful has formulas built for men at different life stages. They have Nutraful Men for guys age 18 to 49, plus the new Nutraful Men 50 and older. That's the first product of its kind specifically for men over 50. You can now address the key root causes of thinning wherever you are in life. Grow visibly thicker, fuller hair in just three to six months. Start Nutraful today and make the hat optional. Visit nutraful.com and enter promo code PROP G for $10 off your first month's subscription and free shipping.

• 14:57Scott Galloway?

  Find out why Nutraful is the best-selling hair growth supplement brand at nutraful.com, spelled N-U-T-R-A-F-O-L dot com, promo code PROP G. That's nutraful.com promo code PROP G.

• 15:15Scott Galloway?

  Support for the show comes from Upwork. Trying to scale your business? At some point, you're probably going to hit a point where you need some help. Sometimes the best way to break through that is bringing in the right talent at the right time. Upwork can help. Upwork is a one-stop platform where you can find, hire, and pay expert freelancers across more than 125 categories. Whether you need specialized skills for a single project or extra support to keep up with demand, it's easy to connect with experienced professionals, review their work, and find the right fit. You can move faster without taking on the commitment of full-time hires. And for businesses that need the very best talent, Upwork Business Plus provides access to the top 1% of freelancers on the platform. AI-powered matching connects you with qualified candidates in under six hours, cutting down the time spent searching.

• 15:59Scott Galloway?

  Upwork also takes care of contracts, payments, and other administrative tasks, so you can spend less time managing logistics and more time focused on what's next. Visit upwork.com/propg right now and post your job for free. That's upwork.com/propg to connect with top talent ready to help your business grow. That's U-P-W-O-R-K dot com slash propg. Upwork.com/propg.

• 16:26Scott Galloway?

  Support for the show comes from Vanta. As AI adoption grows, so does your company's security risks and requirements. New frameworks, audits, and vendors keep piling on, but your team isn't getting any bigger. Most compliance tools promise automation, but you're really stuck doing all the work by hand, chasing screenshots, validating controls, and playing catch-up when audit season comes around again. Vanta works differently. The regentech trust platform is built to scale with you, not slow you down. With over 1,400 automated tests across 400-plus integrations, Vanta collects evidence and monitors your controls year-round, cutting your audit prep by 82%. Plus, you can access the Vanta agent everywhere you work, whether your team is in Vanta every day or living in tools including Claude or Cursor. Want proof?

• 17:11Scott Galloway?

  Over 16,000 fast-growing companies like Ramp, Ryder, and Harvey save time and resources while scaling fast with Vanta. Learn more at vanta.com/profg and get $1,000 off. That's spelled V-A-N-T-A dot com slash prof G for $1,000 off.

• 17:35Scott Galloway?

  Welcome back. Question number three.

• 17:37Speaker 05

  Hey, Scott. My wife and I both inherited reasonable amounts of money from our families. We worked our asses off, managed it well, and now we're sitting on significant wealth that we need to tell our 21- and 24-year-old kids about. Our goal is to give them the freedom to do the work that they love without financial pressure, but our fear is that we don't want to create spoiled brats who think that finding themselves is a career. How do my wife and I thread this needle? And what's the script for "you never have to worry about money, but if you stop working, I will haunt you from the grave"? I need the Galloway playbook here on how to avoid raising waiters.

• 18:21Speaker 05

  You know, people who just wait around for their inheritance instead of building something with their lives. Looking forward to your advice.

• 18:29Scott Galloway?

  So this is what you call a good problem. And but it's going to be a problem because there's going to be a ton of generational wealth transfer over the next.

• 18:37Scott Galloway?

  10, 20, 30, 50 years. So I love these member clubs because my Arrested Adolescence Tour continues unfettered. I'm in the midst of a midlife crisis. That's the bad news. The good news is I think I'm going to get through it in about 30 or 40 years, but part of that manifestation is I join all these members' clubs, mostly in New York, but there's some here in London. And London actually invented them, but it's been affected in New York. And I like going to a place where I know I'm going to get in. It's going to have like a curated group of people. Hello douchebag. That's right. Daddy, first word douche, second word bag, whatever. I'm just leaning into it. And one of the members' clubs I go to is Casa Cipriani downtown in New York. And I went there with some friends, three of

• 19:21Scott Galloway?

  us, a couple, mostly appetizers, a few drinks, 700 bucks. And I met the GM and I said, I said, who could, I see all these young people here, people in their 20s and 30s, who can afford this? And he said, well, one, none of the women are paying for anything. And two, most of the men here, it's not their credit card, it's their parents' credit card, and it's a lot of trust fund kids from New Jersey. And it just struck me that I wonder if about a third of the people in New York, their parents are putting them through Manhattan. There's just going to be so much inherited wealth. Now, this is a good problem. I technically share this problem. I have some economic security that

• 20:01Scott Galloway?

  I hope and trust at some point my kids will have access to. The way I think about it is the following. One, a lot of it isn't up to you in the sense that you'd like to think that, we like to think as parents that we are engineers, that all of our behavior will mold this, this block of clay into a wonderful person. And if we're not careful and we chisel off the arm, that we raise assholes. Yeah, some of that, I can see that. But what we don't recognize is that a lot of it is in the batter. First Lady Obama, who I think gives great parenting advice, said that they come to you. And there were more, more than being engineers, were shepherds.

• 20:44Scott Galloway?

  And that is, we choose the, the fields they graze on, we point them in the right direction, but they kind of come to you. And as evidenced by an approach to money, I have one kid who I bought a cashmere hoodie for that was 240 pounds and he liked it. And then he saw the price tag and said, this is too expensive. And I said, well, I bought it. I can afford it. Don't worry about it. Wen returned it and credited my credit card because he just was uncomfortable with me spending that much money on him on a, a cashmere hoodie. Whereas I have another, another one of my kids is, you know, we just found out, is spending a hundred pounds a day on Deliveroo and Uber. So a lot of it is in the batter. Now, having said that, my approach, I think about this a lot. And that is, how do you not raise assholes or spoiled kids?

• 21:29Scott Galloway?

  And the Warren Buffett adage is really a good one. And that is, you want to give your kids enough money so they can do anything, but not enough money so they can do nothing. The way I approach it is the following, and I learned this from Morgan Housel, and I like this a lot. I am going to scale up or scale down my kid's life with my money or lack thereof. What do I mean by that? If my kid goes to college and wants to be a high school math teacher, I'm going to scale his life up. If he gets up every morning and decides he wants to teach math to high school kids and he lives a good honorable life, I'm going to give him enough money to buy a house and have a nice life. And I'm going to make sure that he doesn't have the economic stress of most teachers.

• 22:13Scott Galloway?

  Is that a total, you know, nice to have moment of privilege? Yeah. And I've worked hard and that's one of the things I will do for my kids. If they're doing something worthwhile, that's good for society and they're trying hard and they're good citizens, and they don't have the money to live the kind of life, you know, live in a city, I'm, I'm, I want them to live nice lives. I, I deserve that. I've worked for it. I want it for them. If my kid... Is rolling around in a Range Rover and not doing a whole lot and starting and stopping shit and constantly and maybe still living at home or just spending more than he's making and not doing much of anything, I am going to try and cut them off. So I'm

• 22:55Scott Galloway?

  going to scale up or scale down based on their activity. So, you know, I will, in terms of what I leave my kids, I'm probably going to leave them enough money to make sure that they have a home and can afford education. But I'm not, you know, I'm hoping to be around a while. But basically, my attitude is if you have the benefit of money, scale up or scale down. I don't think letting them know they have money means they're going to wait around for you to die. I just don't, I don't, I don't think that's going to happen. But this is, again, the mother of all good problems. But would I, you know, they also, they, it's not what you tell them, it's what you show them. I don't know if I sent a good

• 23:38Scott Galloway?

  or bad message. I spend a shit ton of money, but at the same time, I don't have a car. I give a lot of money away. I think I model good financial behavior on a lot of levels and probably not on other levels. I do. Anyways, enough of that. My kind of only, and I have not figured this out, my sort of lesson here, advice would be scale up or scale down based on their behavior and the way they equip themselves in terms of their, the professional commitment and the lives that they lead. Thanks so much for the question. That's all for this episode. If you'd like to submit a question, please email a voice recording to [email protected]. Again, that's [email protected]. Or if you prefer to ask on Reddit, just post your question on the Scott Galloway subreddit

• 24:23Scott Galloway?

  and we just might feature it in an upcoming episode. This episode was produced by Jennifer Sanchez and Laura Janer. Kami Rieck is our social producer. Brad Williams is our editor. Andrew Burrows is our technical director. Thank you for listening to the Prop G Pod from Prop G Media.

• 24:48Speaker 06

  When you shop pickup at Kroger, you can expect the savings you love and fresh groceries selected just for you. Our associates are committed to getting every detail right, carefully handpicking your items, checking for quality and freshness, and packing your order with care. Because bringing you fresh, quality groceries is what we do best. And right now, enjoy $20 off your first online order of $75 or more. Restrictions apply. See site for details. Kroger. Fresh for everyone.

• 25:19Speaker 07

  Booking.com is the easiest way from a day surrounded by noise

• 25:31Speaker 07

  to a stay

• 25:34Speaker 07

  surrounded by nature.

• 25:38Speaker 07

  That's nice.

• 25:41Speaker 07

  Go on, book it. It's easy. Booking.com. Booking dot yeah.

• 25:48Speaker 08

  Close your eyes, exhale, feel your body relax, and let go of whatever you're carrying today.

• 25:56Speaker 09

  Well, I'm letting go of the worry that I wouldn't get my new contacts in time for this class. I got them delivered free from 1-800-CONTACTS. Oh my gosh, they're so fast.

• 26:04Speaker 08

  And breathe.

• 26:05Speaker 09

  Oh, sorry. I almost couldn't breathe when I saw the discount they gave me on my first order. Oh, sorry. Namaste.

• 26:13Speaker 08

  Visit 1-800-CONTACTS.com today to save on your first order.