The Attention Economy & PPC

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about where our creative energy actually lives in 2026 — not the theoretical “creative energy” marketers talk about on panels, but the real, lived version inside our tired, overstimulated human brains. And the truth is, mine has been running on fumes. Anxiety has been creeping in, and with it, the kind of mindless media consumption that feels like relief in the moment but leaves you emptier afterward. This post is part personal confession, part professional observation, because the way we show up online as humans is the same energy we bring into the Paid Ads we write. And right now, I’m noticing something important about how easy it is to lose the very thing our work depends on.

Again…I fully admit I have been struggling with anxiety more and more and when I feel this way I tend to increase my media consumption. So let’s call it what it really is - I sit online and scroll and do what the younger generation calls “rot”.

I know fundamentally that isn’t great for me and my brain but I tend to do it regardless because it is “easy”.

However, I have noticed as the days and months have dragged on, I have been feeling worse not better.

So this weekend I went to the store and got a notepad and some nice pens. I also retrieved the book by my bedside table and brought it downstairs and decided I would “rip-off the bandaid” on my scrolling and just read.

Naturally I started to feel better. I read all weekend! I finished an entire book and started a new one.

But I also noticed how loud my urge to pick up my phone and scroll had become. Every time I would finish a chapter I wanted to scroll.

Anytime I had a question this weekend I felt the urge to Google. Anytime I wanted to know something more complex I couldn’t resist asking AI. I just felt lost and this urge to be on my phone at some level.

When I needed motivation, I looked for a podcast to get me though folding a load of laundry, or a motivational podcast to simply make my brain want to workout.

Even right now as I write this post, every time I make a typo or know in my mind that this post isn’t flowing or that I am going to have issues bring this back to PPC I start to think about just pasting the full post into AI and allowing the 2026 technology to solve that issue.

But that right here is the problem. We have easy modes and easy buttons and in that deep desire for connection and to find the perfect amazing clients we have lost ourselves in the process.

As marketers we are tasked with doing more, pushing creative limits, talking to our customers, selling more and more of our products and services.

But as humans we are turning repeatedly to the technology that puts a distance in between what makes us human. And we are fed more online slop and more of the same information on repeat.

I am not writing this post to declare myself an AI purist and to tell you not to use AI. I am definitely not telling you to stop Google’ing anything and everything when you need an answer.

I am an avid user of both AI and Google and the internet as a whole, but I am here to encourage you to look deeply at your actions and understand that you need to nourish your brain just as you would anything else.

We are talking in PPC constantly about having humans in the loop and the need to connect to our customers but are our actions and habits putting us in that position or are we numbing out on the feed because we are being pushed to sell more and be more?

For me, I have noticed it everything has become more of the push and in order to cope I scroll - so today this post is about bringing awareness to this and not allowing my human and creativity to die.

After all we are marketers and that requires a deep fundamental understanding of humans in a way that a machine simply can’t do.

At the end of the day, none of us can write ads that resonate, build campaigns that convert, or understand our customers in any meaningful way if we’re slowly numbing out the parts of ourselves that make us human.

Yes, AI can support us, accelerate us, and expand what’s possible — but it can’t replace the lived experience, emotional texture, and internal clarity that real creativity requires.

If anything, the more automated PPC becomes, the more responsibility we have to protect the parts of our brain that automation can’t replicate. So if you’ve been feeling the same pull toward the feed, the same erosion of attention, the same creative dullness, consider this your reminder: your humanity is not a liability in marketing. It’s the asset. And it’s worth protecting.

Do it for yourself first and then your customer, and I fully believe you will be rewarded with the ideal customers and relationships to build a thriving business.