Dive brief:
- According to a recent report from Forrester, 91% of US advertising agencies are currently using (61%) generative artificial intelligence (AI) or exploring use cases (30%) for this technology, outperforming other groups, including marketing organizations and the general business population.
- Larger agencies are further along the path to generative AI adoption, with 78% of respondents at agencies with more than 201 employees saying they are leveraging the technology, compared to just 53% of smaller or larger agencies. less than 50 employees.
- More than half of respondents expect generative AI to have a significant or very significant impact on key aspects of their agency’s ecosystem over the next two years, although concerns remain about liabilities legal, copyright infringement, privacy and data security.
Dive overview:
Generative AI has moved from theory to practice in 2024, according to Forrester’s recent report, “The State of Generative AI in U.S. Agencies 2024.” More than three-quarters of respondents said generative AI is disruptive to their agency. Twenty-nine percent of respondents said it is a major disruption that will forever change their business.
Right now, most of this disruption is happening at creative agencies. Some 69% of creative agency respondents said they are currently using the trendy technology. However, 57% of media agency respondents said their agency has started using generative AI, and this percentage will likely increase as teams find new ways to leverage speed, insights and innovation of technology.
Forrester’s latest report comes from a survey conducted in collaboration with the American Association of Advertising Agencies (4A’s) in April and May. Respondents were decision-makers with titles of vice president or above in U.S. agencies.
Respondents identified four key areas of an agency’s ecosystem where generative AI will have a significant or very significant impact: how an agency creates content (76%), the agency’s market (71%), how consumers interact with the work an agency creates (69%), and what content an agency produces for its clients (62%).
One of the main areas where agency leaders hope to benefit from AI is productivity. About 54% of respondents using (54%) and exploring (46%) generative AI indicated they are looking to the technology to improve the speed and quantity of creative ideation and production. In fact, 74% of respondents at agencies using this technology said that helping with creative ideation and brainstorming was a high or critical priority. Nearly half (49%) said 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 also use it to increase internal workflows and improve productivity, such as creating consumer profiles and personas, analyzing competitors, and transcribing and summarizing calls and presentations.
Despite widespread adoption, obstacles remain. The primary concerns relate to legal issues, such as intellectual property ownership, attribution, copyright infringement, and delineation of liability. Ninety-four percent of respondents exploring and 83% of those using generative AI reported these issues as challenges. Other concerns include data privacy and security, governance and risk, reliability, accuracy and bias. Notably, employee resistance is also expected to be a barrier to adoption.
“This human barrier stands out from others because employee concerns exist entirely within the agency but are irrationally unpredictable and concern the emotional safety of employees,” according to the report. “Employee resistance or lack of AI expertise has the potential to jeopardize agency value, products and technology investments, as well as the decade-long transformation of the agency business model. »
