The Adtech Innovations Actually Making Agency Life Easier

The promises adtech makes are grand and numerous, but sometimes it can be hard to tell what genuinely makes a positive difference on the ground. Teams want efficiency, optimisation, revolution, whether that comes from the technology itself or creatives being allowed to flourish without getting bogged down in the admin which the tech can now take care of. Whether you want simplicity or innovation, or even to push the limits beyond what was previously possible, there appears to be a tool to solve every problem.

But where exactly are these developments most useful? Are there limits or drawbacks to what they can do? What could future adtech innovations look like? LBB’s Cathy Meyer-Funnell asked several leading figures in creative and media to tell us what they think.

Efficiency

One word that keeps cropping up is efficiency. Features that have become incorporated into workspaces to accelerate workflow, elevate quality and reduce cost are key, as M+C Saatchi Europe and Middle East CEO Scott Feasey explains. He tells LBB, “Midjourney has transformed how quickly ideas can be visualised, turning early thinking into something tangible far sooner. Veo3 and Kling are helping teams move from static into motion and film more seamlessly, while Topaz and Astra ensure what’s created holds up across formats and in real-world use. Used well, these tools enable agencies to operate with greater efficiency and cost discipline. AI won’t replace agencies, but agencies that use AI effectively will replace those that don’t.”

“We only develop custom solutions when a problem truly demands it. That balance avoids unnecessary complexity, keeps teams focused on what matters, and ensures AI enhances creativity rather than overwhelming it.”

Even the most commonplace tools are in danger of being overlooked in favour of the latest shiny development, when in reality they have become so indispensable and embedded it’s hard to picture working without them. This is the case for Simon Levitt, Imagination’s global creative technology director, who makes an impassioned case for Google Workspace. “I have flirted with other tools, with newer email providers such as Superhuman, with productivity tools like Notion. Some are good. Some are very good. But at an agency level, the real pain usually comes from fragmentation”, he elaborates.
“Having everything in one place, not scattered across different ecosystems that are difficult to log into, difficult to share with, ‘can you access this doc?’ ‘can you see my chat?’. No no no. Don’t do it. For you personally, you might like x or y. For your business, it needs one overarching tool everyone can use.”

Simplicity is king for Mediaplus UK head of commercial partnerships Matt Wilke, as he says, “Evorra is one of those rare pieces of adtech that makes things simpler rather than more complicated. Its real value lies in turning complex audience, geographic and behavioural data into something genuinely usable for our behavioural planning approach. Instead of creating another layer of dashboards and noise, it helps us move more clearly from insight to action. In practice, that means less time trying to connect fragmented signals and more time building smarter audiences, making better planning decisions, and activating with greater confidence. In a category full of big claims, that kind of practical usefulness stands out.”

Streamlining is key, as Mussashi Shintaku, creative director at LOLA New York points out: “I don’t rely on just one tool anymore, what I can’t live without now is an AI platform like Higgsfield, which bring multiple AI models together in one place, make it much easier to experiment with new tools as soon as they’re released.” C3 and Tomorrow Group ECD Tao Thomsen also lauds ClaudeCode for “fulfilling the promise of frictionless automation by gluing together systems that didn’t speak together. In 2026, the most interesting tooling isn’t the bricks. It’s the mortar.”

​Cheil UK CEO Chris Camacho also highlights how this simplified process is improving agency output. “Agencies embedding AI across research, creative and media are seeing the biggest operational gains. Not because the tools are revolutionary in isolation, but because they compress the entire cycle from insight to execution to optimisation. The real benefit is simple: less operational drag, faster learning cycles and more time for strategic thinking.”

Francis Kuttivelil, head of technology at M+C Saatchi Performance, tells LBB, “Ad ops is a critical function but historically involves a significant amount of manual work which includes validating campaign briefs, implementing them across platforms, and checking everything again to ensure it follows best practice. Previously that process took our teams around two hours per campaign. By integrating AI into our ad ops workflow, we’ve reduced that by more than 80%, returning hundreds of hours every week to our teams. Those hours are now spent on optimisation, strategy and performance rather than manual execution. What looks like operational efficiency quickly becomes client effectiveness, because our teams have more time to focus on helping brands grow.” The results speak for themselves: “Using AI-enabled production workflows we helped one client take three master films and scale them into over 170 locally relevant video assets across multiple cities and use cases. Despite the scale, the work remained cohesive and locally relevant. The campaign delivered an 11% uplift in brand searches and a 31% increase in unaided ad recall which proved that an AI scaled creative can still be distinctive when the right tools are in place.”

AI remains at the core of tech currently improving the working lives of creatives, even if it is not actually creating the work itself. “The biggest shift at our agency is pushing past the static deck - and the greatest tool powering that is our AI code editors”, says Nat Wilkes, creative technologist atTBWA\Chiat\Day LA. “We’ve effectively superpowered our team, turning what would be months-long builds into rapid prototypes delivered in days. Instead of deck presentations, we now put functional, interactive ideas directly into clients’ hands, leading to an expanded canvas of non-traditional campaigns our clients wouldn’t normally venture into.”

​Katsche Platz, lead creative technologist (agentic AI) at Plan.Net Studios has moved past tools to actual AI co-workers. He explains, “[I use] Serviceplan Agents for research, strategy, and data visualisation. The interaction is dead simple: I forward emails, share OneDrive folders, or drop a WhatsApp voice note. They remember everything and coordinate between themselves.”

This may sound a little sci-fi, but at T&P senior creative technologist Stuart Foy tells LBB that using Codex has allowed him to spend more time being creative and less time dealing with the mechanics of his role. He says, “The headline use is prototyping: a rough idea becomes an interactive demo I can share-screen in a meeting. Clients get it immediately when they can see something working. Everyday tasks like batch converting videos and images no longer require complicated commands, saving me time and headspace.”

It’s important not to get too overenthusiastic, or the phrase ‘too many cooks’ starts to spring to mind. Rachna Dhall-Haasnoot, creative partner at Superson, highlights her concerns regarding the proliferation of adtech tools: “In creative work, very few support the full workflow end to end; most just splinter the process, create more updates and quietly kill thinking time. At Superson, we’ve been fairly ruthless about decluttering and sticking to what genuinely helps research, collaboration and momentum. Google Workspace, especially with Gemini, comes closest to bringing it all together. I pair that with Adobe CS, Figma, Miro for shared ideation, and WhatsApp for quick, human decisions. Beyond that, restraint is a very underrated operating principle.”

Yet it is possible to adopt this principle while still championing “simple yet powerful” innovations. Managing director and creative partner at Superson APAC Antti Toivonen describs his two favourites. “The first is an AI workflow that has reduced pitch time from days and weeks to hours. Given how long and expensive pitches used to be, the impact is massive. It’s a proprietary system we built in-house. The second is a new wave of node-based AI tools for visual storytelling, such as Freepik and Weavy. They are game-changers for creating storyflows and lightweight outputs. They enable collaboration and iteration in co-creation sprints.”

David Coffey, creative director at THINKHOUSE Ireland, shares his love for the AI audio app ElevenLabs, “It’s invaluable for fast, reliable speech-to-text transcription. Its voice changer tool lets us mock up radio and video voiceovers for proof-of-concept work. The audio isolation and cleanup tools help rescue rough recordings. What once took hours can now be done in minutes, significantly speeding up ideation and iteration. It’s a simple tool, but it removes friction at key stages of the creative process, making day-to-day work faster and more flexible.”

Creativity

Many of these adtech innovations are heavily reliant on AI, as it continues to strengthen and improve its capabilities. But this does not necessarily indicate a threat to creativity; on the contrary there is scope for AI to be harnessed and used in harmony with human craft to create elevated work.

Some in the industry believe that AI is shaping up to be stronger as a creative aide than an administrative tool. ARK Agency creative partner Edward Usher says, “What’s more useful is the way AI is beginning to be used as a creative medium in and of itself, rather than a shortcut or cost saver. It’s leading to new kinds of campaigns that would have been impossible five years ago. Has it made agency life easier? Yes, in some ways, not in others. But it’s definitely making it more interesting.”

Adtech, specifically AI, has become part of the toolkit used by creatives to produce fresh and groundbreaking work. Motion designer Tiago Silva explains, “As a creative, whose focus is on art direction and animation, my daily workflow is shaped by a range of tools and programs that support both conceptual thinking and execution. I don’t rely on a single platform, whether it be the Adobe programs like After Effects or drawing tools like Procreate. There are so many tools out there and they all have their own benefits. Recently, AI has become part of that toolkit, not as a replacement for creativity, but as a supporting tool. AI tools like Firefly, allow me to quickly translate rough concepts, test directions, and explore possibilities before committing time to craft. While I’m mindful of its limitations, I see AI as a practical tool for sharpening ideas and accelerating early-stage thinking.”

Rob Maguire, ECD at The Public House, heralds the balance of merging AI specificity with a human viewpoint. He says, “AI is great at rendering THINGS, but the ability to render a FEELING is still beyond its reach. Which is relevant, because the things we regularly put into pitch-decks are called moodboards, not thingboards. Enter Flim.ai, an AI-powered search engine that’ll supercharge your moodboards with beautifully evocative and highly specific reference images trawled from a seemingly infinite database of movies, shows, music-videos, and ads. If it’s been captured on film, they have a shot of it – one that’s been crafted by a DOP.”

AI generated ideas are designed to be made of averages so they make the perfect benchmark for mediocrity, according to Biborg creative lead Thomas Purbeck. He explains, “If Gemini or ChatGPT can bring me 10 activation ideas in 30 seconds, it helps me get the ball rolling by giving me something woeful to ignore. It’s helped me to empower the very human creative team we have at the agency by drawing attention to its creative limitations and trusting in the magic of their unique brains. AI is a tool, not a genius. And if we can’t strive to be more creative than it, we’re in a spot of bother.”

Data

The love for adtech data tools is real. Ideas + Outcomes group chair and ECD Gellan Watt says, “I recommend Day1Data everywhere I go because they tell you what is actually driving growth. The best MMM and attribution business in the business. MUST HAVE tech and data modelling. I use them on some of my own clients, which says more than any testimonial could. They help businesses understand the real impact of marketing, optimise budgets, cut waste and make smarter commercial decisions. In plain English, they turn data into confidence.”

​McCann’s global chief solutions architect Tina Allan praises how the Flywheel Retail Insights Engine breaks down buyer intelligence on a granular level. “It helps move us from signals to truth – powering smarter commerce, sharper creative, and more meaningful connections that drive impact”, she says.

At Momentum they have built their own AI tool, Xtimator, powered by Omni AI (with a human in the loop) to act as their very own production expert, turning their innovative ideas into a feasible reality. Chief experience design officer David Chamberlain tells LBB, “By using Xtimator to pull from our own past production data, we can establish material costs and build-logic before a single bid request is sent. It has turned a week of back-and-forth into a few clicks, keeping the focus on the creative vision rather than the logistics. Xtimator serves as a safety net for our best ideas, ensuring ideas make it from render-to-reality.”

​Ardmore Group head of strategy Ed Henderson hails GWI and Fifty5Blue for their ability to act as a customer survey across a wide range of attitudinal and behavioural topics, providing accurate data-driven evidence to support big strategic decisions and even bigger ideas. Head of eCommerce and performance marketing Andrew McCombe picks Motion as his go-to adtech for offering AI-powered creative analytics at a level of detail previously out of reach. VP of client strategy at DAC Robert Cooney praises Streamlit for its data capabilities – a Python framework that lets you turn data scripts into clean, interactive web apps without needing to touch code.

​Lynne Deason, head of creative excellence at Kantar, tells LBB, “We’re entering a new era of creative intelligence designed to fuel brand growth. For advertisers, agencies and media owners, the sheer volume of content being produced can make learning feel overwhelming, even impossible. What AI does well is remove those barriers. With Kantar's LINKAI solution, teams can bring signal and decision intelligence directly into creative and media workflows, looking across hundreds or even thousands of ads quickly and cost‑effectively. The real value is that it doesn’t just show what’s working, but why. Better decisions get made and creative evaluation as scale drives continuous learning to elevate creative effectiveness.”

The Future

Some of the most awe-inspiring adtech innovations are pushing the boundaries of what was previously thought to be possible. Felix Kessel, ECD at Boundless, detailes his love for the power of Shinola, “AI platforms and LLMs now let us explore, iterate and prototype at a scale we once couldn’t imagine. Films, visuals and entire worlds can be tested, refined and crafted after the idea exists, not before. The real shift is this: technology isn’t replacing creativity. It’s liberating ideas that once would just never have a chance of seeing the light.”

But is there a reason to be concerned about the prevalence of adtech? It’s certainly not a completely positive picture, as Germán Rivera can attest to. The ECD at Burns points out, “A few tools have actually made a big difference for us and those are the ones that are pretty straightforward: image generation (ChatGPT, Midjourney) and voice AI like ElevenLabs. That said, it’s not all upside. AI is only faster up to a point. As soon as you need precision, it can get frustrating fast. Trying to fix a small detail in a generated image can take longer than just opening Photoshop and doing it properly. You end up going in circles while the tool changes things you didn’t ask for and ignores the one thing you care about.

“So yeah, AI is making parts of agency life easier. The danger is when people try to force it to do everything.”

Meanwhile tools that could revolutionise the way creatives and agencies work are still being built. Lucinda Gosling, strategy partner at 20(SOMETHING), says, “Right now, I'm creating onboarding tools and formats for our network of freelance strategists that actually reflect how 20(SOMETHING) approaches strategy. Not generic templates lifted from an agency handbook. Thinking frameworks that are codified, machine-readable, and built around how we work at 20(SOMETHING).

“The insight driving it? Strategy as protocol – if you can't clearly explain your process, you can't scale it. And if AI can't read your outputs, you're leaving efficiency on the table. The best tool is the one you build for yourself. Everything else is someone else's solution to someone else's problem.”