Gone are the days when advertising’s sole concern was making people aware of your brand or message.

The process and pitches that began in low-lit boardrooms filled with impassioned executives introducing concepts with ‘picture this…’, as arms gesticulated in front of a flipchart. A hallmark of the Mad Men era, no doubt. Yet the mechanism was tried and true: position either the brand, product or message as inherently memorable. Distinctive. Recognisable. Ideally at the point of purchase.

Advertising was – and indeed still is – about being worthy of our attention. How it reaches people. How it’s noticed. And if that visibility carries through to a sale – or click – then it’s a ‘job well done’.

A job that today has become infinitely more complex. If the primary concern was once earning attention in its purest form, then the advertising challenge of our times is earning belief. Belief in what we’re seeing – and what we’re hearing – for the message to achieve any modicum of trust in the longer term.

Trust is now harder earned. Without it, awareness becomes a vapid pursuit. A campaign may achieve a million impressions, but what good is that reach and visibility if nobody is quite sure whether it’s real or fake? Whether that photograph or video is just a little bit suspect?

Advertising in the AI era means we collectively have more capacity than ever to create – content with a capital-C – flooding our channels with countless permutations that are often borne out of a single prompt. More content. Faster content. Language leftover from an era when ‘move fast and break things’ was the golden rule shining over Silicon Valley.

Yet abundance is not without its shortfalls. Specifically, when anyone can make something look plausible, trust becomes the first casualty. To the extent that the Edelman Trust Barometer has been in slow decline across the board for the past 20 years. In fact, this year’s Reuters Institute Digital News Report puts overall trust in news across its surveyed markets at just 37%, while in the UK, only 31% say they trust most news most of the time.

Ireland remains comparatively more trusting at 42%, but that figure is still down on 2025 (51%). Perhaps more telling is that, when it comes to online content, 71% in Ireland now say they are concerned about distinguishing what is false and what is real – the deepfakes from the hard truths.

None of this began with generative AI. Surveys like Edelman show trust was teetering long before ChatGPT entered the equation. Still, social’s infrastructure and its ability to amplify misinformation and the resulting polarisation between people has been the cracks in our relationship with what we read, watch and share online. Left unchecked, the web risks becoming a hall of mirrors when even the most routine glance at your nearest screen – be that a Chat query or a scroll through socials – becomes an exercise in separating fact from fiction.

AI presents an opportunity to reset, rather than repeat the missteps of social and its siloed infrastructure. Instead of rushing for scroll-stopping content, authenticity is the new currency of advertising. Being known, yes, but being known as real. As a tangible presence deserving of people’s trust. It is the one resource that’s fast become part of what effective brand awareness looks like in the age of automation.

In this context, provenance may soon become an asset in much the same way that design, tone of voice and customer experience already are. Trust then becomes something that must be designed into communications at the outset, rather than being assumed as a given.  

Audiences won’t be long calling it out, either. And none are more discerning than Gen Z. Of all generations, they are the ones found to be the most alert to AI slop and general bogus content. A crucial time, too. Against a backdrop of four global elections – Brazil, Israel, Serbia and the US – taking place in the space of a fortnight, the question of who, and what, we believe online is one with far-reaching consequences.

Perhaps, then, artificial intelligence and all its many evolving features offer advertising something unexpected: not simply another revolution in how content is produced, but the opportunity to rebuild a connection between brand and audience.

The Mad Men era and its attention economy was built on being noticed first and foremost. For decades, advertising practically placed visibility above all else – how to make the most noise and stand out from the crowd. However, when content is virtually limitless as it is today, trust then becomes the most valuable brand asset of all. An asset that can’t be generated in the blink of an eye. As pure as New York snow.

There is an old word – apricity – for describing the warmth of the sun on a winter’s day. There are few feelings like that restorative sense of presence. Maybe that’s what we need more of in this new-age advertising, when genuine ingenuity is not only golden, but it gives us something to truly believe in.