- Ninety-one percent of U.S. promoting agencies are either currently using (61%) generative artificial intelligence (AI) or exploring use cases (30%) for the tech, outpacing other groups including marketing organizations and the overall business population, per a recent Forrester report.
- Large agencies are further along the generative AI adoption path, with 78% of respondents at agencies with greater than 201 employees saying they leverage the tech in comparison with only 53% of small agencies, or those with lower than 50 employees.
- More than half of respondents expect generative AI to have significant or very significant impact on key features of their agency’s ecosystem in the subsequent two years, though concerns remain around legal liabilities, copyright infringement, data privacy and security.
Generative AI has moved from the theoretical to the sensible in 2024, in response to Forrester’s recent report, titled “The State of Generative AI Inside U.S. Agencies 2024.” More than three-quarters of respondents said generative AI is a disruption for his or her agency. Twenty-nine percent of respondents said it’s a significant disruption that can change their business perpetually.
Right now, most of that disruption is going on at creative agencies. Some 69% of respondents at creative agencies reported they currently use the buzzy tech. However, 57% of respondents at media agencies said their agency has begun using generative AI, and that percentage will likely rise as teams work out recent ways to leverage the tech’s speed, insights and innovation.
The latest report from Forrester is derived from a joint survey with the American Association of Advertising Agencies (4A’s) fielded during April and May. Respondents were decision makers with titles of vp or above at U.S. agencies.
Respondents identified 4 key areas of an agency’s ecosystem where generative AI could have significant or very significant impact: how an agency creates content (76%), the agency marketplace (71%), how consumers interact with the work created by an agency (69%) and what content an agency produces for clients (62%).
One predominant area by which agency executives are hoping to derive value from AI is productivity. Around of the respondents using (54%) and exploring (46%) generative AI indicated they were trying to the technology to enhance the speed and quantity of creative ideation and production. Indeed, 74% of respondents at agencies using the tech said aiding creative ideation and brainstorming is a high or critical priority. Nearly half (49%) said that generating assets for dynamic creative optimization is a high or critical priority.
Agencies are also using generative AI to summarize audience insights and media reporting, with 59% of respondents using the tool to prioritize organizing consumer audience data sets into insights and 49% using it to summarize marketing performance results. Many are also using it to enhance internal workflows and improve productivity, reminiscent of creating consumer profiles and personas, analyzing competitors and transcribing and summarizing calls and presentations.
Despite widespread adoption, barriers remain. Chief amongst them are legal concerns, reminiscent of IP ownership, attribution, copyright infringement and delineation of liability. Ninety-four percent of respondents exploring and 83% of respondents using generative AI indicated these issues were challenges. Other concerns include data privacy and security, governance and risk, reliability, accuracy and bias. Notably, worker resistance can also be expected to be a barrier to adoption.
“This human obstacle stands aside from the others because worker concerns exist entirely throughout the agency but are irrationally unpredictable and pertain to employees’ emotional safety,” in response to the report. “Employee resistance or lack of AI expertise stands able to undermine agencies’ value, product, and technology investments in addition to a decade of agency business model transformation.”
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