Generative and Agentic AI are coming for media

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Media practices are set for a GenAI revolution, with all multinationals using or planning to use the technology in their media operations.

Nevertheless, caution remains and multinationals remain wary of handing all decision making to AI agents to manage buying and strategy. Over half of brands are using or plan to use agents – 48% in house and 37% via agencies – but 65% believe they will also increase risk even if 92% believe they could unlock efficiencies.

The Impact of GenAI on Media Practices is based on 45 respondents from 37 multinational brands, representing $84 billion in cumulative annual global marketing spend.

For the moment, the report found that media strategy, optimisation and buying are the priority areas. Ninety percent of respondents believe it will enable faster reporting, greater efficiency and require significant upskilling.

Most respondents believe search, display and social will be the most impacted areas and 65% of brands are reviewing or plan to review their SEO approach. There is caution about testing ad placements in AI-powered search engines, however, with on-going concerns about brand misinformation and lack of transparency highlighted as issues in these spaces.

The general consensus, however, is that the impact of GenAI has been positive, with 50% citing expected results in terms of greater productivity, 47% for setting better KPIs and 40% for faster decision making.

The most unexpected results cited by the respondents has been the breaking down of silos between functions, with 14% saying they expected this and a further 14% saying it was unexpected.

What’s holding back faster adoption and a full transformation of media functions is the lack of skilled talent and legal restrictions. The latter challenges are well known and include data protection and privacy, transparency and accountability in tools and over-reliability on external partners’ tools.

“AI is more than just content creation and generation and, as these results highlight, there is significant potential for media operations. However, while GenAI holds promises of significant automation and faster decision-making, there are ongoing concerns around transparency and accountability in tools, and upskilling remains a blocker to widespread scaling and adoption. The WFA’s AI and Media forums will be looking to develop best practice that can help brands unlock AI’s media potential with confidence,” said Stephan Loerke, CEO WFA.