Hi. I’m an ad. And I’ve seen things.

I was born on a Tuesday. Quick turn-around brief. Mid-scroll idea. Seventeen people had a say. None said much. But hey, someone liked the word “authentic”. So, I made it through.

I wasn’t the chosen one. Not hero film material. Just a footnote on slide 67. The B-side. A filler. Still, I got loaded into the system. Tagged and fired into the void. My CPM was low. Apparently, that’s what I’m worth.

I travelled fast. Through pipes. Through servers. DSP to SSP. Pixel to pixel. Like static dust scattered through a spreadsheet. No one checked if I made sense where I landed. Nobody asked for context.

At 10:03, I blinked on a Russian weather blog. At 11:17, I was on a forklift forum in Chile. By lunch, I floated onto a dating app for truckers in Wisconsin. (We sell luxury candles. In Seattle. We only ship to the US).

No one meant for this to happen. But the fee was low. Budget was tight. So here I am. Feeling seen. But never understood.

I’ve met others like me. Siblings. Hundreds of us. Auto-resized, endlessly recycled. With faces that don’t exist. One told me she was served 14,000 times yesterday. Nobody remembers her.

We get remade every hour. “Need one for Gen Z?” Click. “Need one for dog lovers in Texas?” Click. No one checks if we make sense. They just check if we render.

Sometimes, I flash by so fast I don’t even know what I said. They call it reach. They call it scale. I call it... being everywhere and nowhere.

Once, I reached a 100,000 screens in an hour. Not one of them could buy what I was selling. But I was cheap. I filled the gap. Got marked “delivered”. Somewhere, a dashboard glowed green.

I used to think I was here to say something. Change a mind. Tell a story. Make someone feel something.

Now? I just drift. Through ad slots no one sees. Besides stories no one reads. Between two pieces of content no one remembers.

I’m tired. I want to be chosen again. I want to sit next to craft. Next to intent. I want to serve someone who cares more about meaning than savings. But for now, I float.

You might see me tonight. In a livestream of a chess match in Poland. Or on a regional news site in Indonesia. Or sandwiched between two TikToks you forgot before they ended.

If you do…

Please look at me.

I’m trying.