Everything Old.

Credit where due to the late lamented Peter Allen for lyrics that not only show he knew whereof he sang but had a pretty damned good handle on the rhyme and repeat of history.

“Dancin' at your Long Island Jazz Age parties/Waiter, bring us some more Bacardis/We'll order now what they ordered then/'Cause everything old is new again.”

A great case in point: last week’s headline proclaiming that the CTV playahs have decided AI will let them convert small and mid-sized businesses into streaming TV ad clients.

Their argument: the reason SMEs have been locked into social, primarily Facebook, has been the cost of production. Enter AI and exit that problem, stage right. 

Or wrong.

Their inspiration: after taking a close look at how the SME spend on Facebook allowed Meta to belly laugh its way through the boycott of a few years ago, they realized just how much coin was involved.

Trust me, there’s nothing like the scent of stealing another channel’s ad budget to get hungry media executive noses twitching and/or jaws salivating.

Meanwhile, for anyone who spots the big “yeah-but” in all this — the “yeah but” being the zero chance that these zero-cost AI TV ads will have even the faintest whiff of brand-elevating quality, team CTV has a ready answer. 

“Considering that most of the ads you’ll be competing with are either for drugs or car dealerships, who gives a rat’s?”

All of which is vaguely amusing, in a sort of tragi-ironic way, especially if you happen to believe both ends of the AIDA ladder — Attention and Action — greatly benefit when your spots don’t play as just more swill in the crapper.

But here’s the other thing: we’ve danced this dance before.

In fact, local media used to offer cheap schedules (because the audience was mostly insomniacs) with “professional produced” TV spots as the come-on.  Comcast’s Spotlight unit, later Effectv, ditto.

And that brings me to the real takeaway from all this, and not to worry, it’s not going to be the 30th tedious anti-AI rant on your feed this fine morning.

Instead, it's where AI fits into the advertising ecology as neither strategic (the plan to achieve an objective) nor tactical (the actions needed to fulfill the plan). 

Instead, it’s 100% logistics. Resources to support both strategy and tactics. Nuts and bolts.

And why should we care?

Maybe because it allows the real role of AI to snap into focus. 

Maybe because it turns out that AI is neither transformative or paradigm shifting, even as it makes transformations and paradigm shifts possible.

Maybe because, and I say this over Mr. Maslow’s protestations, sometimes a hammer is just a hammer. 

And now ladies and gentlemen, the great Peter Allen, one more time: 

“Don't throw the past away/You might need it some rainy day/Dreams can come true again/When everything old is new again.”