Advertising is still eating up massive budgets, but according to Paul Dyer, it’s delivering less impact than ever.

In a conversation with CEO: Behind the Scenes host David Jepson, the CEO and President of /prompt. explains why performance marketing has reached its limits.

“The expectations and the experience should be exactly the same. That should be frictionless,” Dyer says.

“The companies with the most consistent friction are the companies that also have the highest unaided advertising awareness.”

At /prompt., Dyer works with some of the world’s most recognized brands. He says the industry’s obsession with attribution and short-term performance is costing businesses more than they realize.

“We’re wasting billions,” he explains. “The modern advertising industrial complex is this idea that literally disrupting, interrupting people and forcing them to do something they don’t want to do is the way to build businesses. And we fundamentally disagree with that.”

Dyer points to recent high-profile missteps to illustrate the gap between spend and impact, offering the example of former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s failed run for President of the United States.

“Bloomberg was not a totally unreasonable candidate for President. Instead, he spent US$600 million in a couple of months and crashed out with nothing to show for it,” he notes.

Shifting mindsets

So what does work? Dyer believes it starts with a mindset shift.

“If you embody and embrace this idea of earning loyalty, new customers, earning the right to grow this business from every one of your stakeholders, it will happen,” he says. “You don’t need to buy it.”

He urges brands to invest in removing friction from the customer experience and building loyalty through consistency and relevance rather than sheer volume.

He also reflects on how the rise of personalization has fragmented shared meaning.

“Shared perception is something that’s at odds with personalization and it was historically essentially the purpose of advertising,” he points out, giving the example of the Super Bowl as one of the few remaining events where many people will be watching the same ad at the same time.

The solution, he says, isn’t louder, flashier ads. It’s a return to clarity, value and trust.

Tune into the full episode of CEO: Behind the Scenes to hear Dyer’s no-nonsense take on what’s gone wrong with modern marketing – and how to build something smarter in its place.

Listen to the latest episode of our CEO: Behind the Scenes podcast with Paul Dyer on Amazon, Apple or Spotify.