For her final column of the year, Shirley Marschall takes in everything that occured in the world of AI and ad tech in 2026, and concludes that we might really need a break...

Our feelings for you haven’t changed, AI. But after everything that happened, we just need a little space. This (admittedly slightly tweaked) Pluribus quote wraps up 2025 quite neatly.

AI is great, did you say? Sorry, nodded off for a second. Because honestly, who isn’t a bit bored by the very mention of the term 'AI' at this point?

Feeling guilty? Don’t. That’s what a year long spiral of fear-mongering, overhype, and vapourware does to you. And we’ve come a long, long way this year. All the way from getting excited about 'talking' to computers, to AI-generated action figures, to endless debates about the em dash.

Meanwhile, new GenAI models keep being spat out one after another. Each one, of course, a game changer, the smartest, beating the previous and competing models by far. All while you can’t shake the feeling that all these tools and apps simply turned users into millions of unpaid product testers. Because even if an app doesn’t take off, the feedback still trains the algorithm.

And mental health? Understandably dented, after the end of the world, jobs, creativity, and civilisation were declared (repeatedly) to be over. In the job-loss debate alone we went full circle: AI will kill all jobs, to no, it won’t, to actually… who knows.

And ad tech? Everything now has 'AI' slapped on it. Some of it legit, most of it noise. Leaving us feeling like horses running full-speed just to keep up with all the industry updates. And Anastasia Skliarenko captured this feeling perfectly:

“We blink once - a new protocol emerges.

We blink twice - someone calls it ‘the future of programmatic’.

We blink three times - and we’re already negotiating adoption timelines…”

But you don’t really need a recap. You’ve been there, lived it, felt it and heard 'The Architects of AI' and their many enthusiastic minions echoing their conflicting narratives. You ran, stumbled, tried to keep up and struggled to make sense of it all…

A bit like a panic attack though, which is brutal in the very moment, the intensity eventually fizzles out because the body and brain simply can’t hold that level of tension forever… At some point, you’re forced to relax. 

And somewhere between the feeling of missing a trend while stepping out for a second touching grass and not quite being able to figure out what’s up or what’s not down, something shifted. Is it AI fatigue or just your survival instinct? No idea. But things quietly turned from panic to Que Sera, Sera; Whatever Will Be, Will Be.

ChatGPT-whatever-version, Gemini-something integration, Sora-Disney-slopification… you see the headlines, you shrug, you move on, you don’t really care anymore. And there it is: that warm, liberating feeling of being ready to let go, ready to fall behind. Like hot tea on a dark winter day, it spreads through your system. 

You relax, your heartbeat slows and you realise: if AI ends up being anything like the internet or mobile in its transformative form, how would 'falling behind' even work? It’s not as if someone born today won’t know how to use the internet simply because it pre-dated them. Email? Over 50 years old yet here we are, all still using it. Same with cars. Same with everything that mattered.

In 2011 Adam Gopnik’s New Yorker piece divided internet thinkers into three groups: Never-Betters (digital utopians), Better-Nevers (wishing it never happened), and Ever-Wasers, who believe that every modern moment feels like this, thrilling for some, chilling for others, but never truly unprecedented.

Most in advertising and ad tech probably fall into the Ever-Waser camp. Yes, it’s intense. Yes, it’s full of change. And yes, we like it. But so was every other major shift before it.

Except… if you swap 'internet' for 'AI,' it feels like we need a fourth bucket: The Ever-Waser O.D. Because ultimately, the dose makes the poison. And in 2025, the AI revolution was a chaotic explosion of tools, frameworks, and competing philosophies; or, the year the Ever-Wasers nearly overdosed.

Lucky us, this year is almost over and with it the Q4 madness (and not a minute too soon). No better time to relax, detox and get over this AI hangover than the holidays. Time to close your eyes, digest it all or maybe just binge watch holiday movies and forget about it all instead. At least for a bit.

And after a year of hot and spicy, what can we wish for in 2026? Maybe a bit more vanilla…

Yeah, not going to happen. Off to 2026, the year of AI agents, maybe quantum computing, or at least the first data centre in space. But you know what? That really sounds a lot like a next-year problem.

On that positive note: Happy holidays and cheers to a calmer, saner, beautifully boring New Year.

And that’s a wrap for 2025… my last column of the year! Enjoy the holidays, get some rest. And in the unlikely event that you get bored, or, if you have ideas and topics on your mind for 2026 (yes, even if it’s about AI), come find me on LinkedIn. I’ll be overthinking and writing…