IPA Director General Questions What Kind of Industry We Want to Build with AI

The advertising industry needs to move beyond experimentation with AI and confront bigger questions around agency economics, talent and creative distinctiveness, according to IPA director general Paul Bainsfair.

“The questions facing our industry are no longer whether AI will change advertising or how quickly,” says Paul in the September edition of the IPA AI Magazine. “That much is already happening. Instead, the more pressing questions are about what kind of industry we want to build with it.”

The latest edition brings together agency leaders to explore AI’s impact on commercial models, intellectual property, junior talent, workplace culture and client relationships. It argues that, as access to AI technology becomes increasingly widespread, the technology alone is unlikely to provide a sustainable competitive advantage.

Agency economics is one of the clearest pressure points. Writing in the magazine, dentsu Northern Europe CFO Rob Baldwin says the agency is already seeing “an expectation from procurement teams that ‘AI efficiencies’ be reflected as fee reductions”.

Rob argues that this risks casting agencies as an “efficiency” partner rather than one focused on outcomes and effectiveness, and says the bigger economic question is how the industry chooses to value the capabilities AI creates.

Also contributing to the magazine, Mediaplus UK managing director Liz Duff argues that agencies should pass on genuine savings where AI reduces production and execution costs.

“Margin, in our view, should sit where scarcity still genuinely exists: in strategic judgement, negotiation and accountability, the things AI doesn’t do for us,” she writes.

The edition also asks whether widespread use of the same generative AI models risks making advertising increasingly homogeneous.

WPP chief AI officer Dr Daniel Hulme tells the magazine that AI can “spin up a thousand renditions of an idea in a minute”, but cannot determine which is genuinely original. House of Communication UK client services director, creative, content and production Freddie Campbell similarly argues that, with every agency now able to access the same models, judgement becomes the differentiator.

“Access was never the differentiator, and it still isn’t,” Freddie writes. “AI will happily generate a hundred competent, on-brief, forgettable options. It won’t tell you which one is actually right for that brand, in that category, at that moment.”

For Bainsfair, the arguments across the edition point to the same conclusion.

“Competitive advantage will not come from AI alone,” he affirms. “The industry’s most enduring strengths remain firmly intact: distinctive thinking, building trusted relationships, strategic insight and creative ambition.”

The September edition of the IPA AI Magazine also covers responsible AI adoption, intellectual property and disclosure, cultural barriers to adoption and the impact of AI on the development of junior talent. You can read the edition in full here.