AI, the Godzilla in the room for advertising

Agency networks like WPP are focusing on the role of AI in shaping ad spends, and their own offerings for advertisers

- Soumya Gupta

Leaders of WPP Media at the annual 'This Year Next Year' report launch discuss the pervasive role of AI.

When WPP Media releases its annual report on the state of the advertising industry, the focus is typically on evolving expenditures. This time, it was somewhere else.

At the media agency network’s presentation of This Year Next Year report at its suburban Mumbai office last week, the buzz was all about artificial intelligence (AI), the transformative technology sweeping the world. Not surprising, either. Out of 10 key trends that WPP Media expects to shape Indian advertising, three feature AI—the role of AI agentic ecosystem, the evolution of search advertising, and the use of AI in targeting audiences more precisely.

"We no longer need to learn only how to use AI tools; we become orchestrators," Upali Nag Kumar, president, strategy of WPP Media said in a press briefing.

The WPP report pointed out that advertising in India has outpaced global markets in 2025, and will retain its momentum this year as well. However, the focus of the conversation never strayed from AI.

"If you look at how things have evolved in the last one year, the tasks we gave an AI agent were far simpler," said Vishal Jacob, president of Choreograph South Asia, WPP Media's data and technology unit. "But in the last 3-4 months, the tasks have become more complex. Which means, one agent will need to work with a couple of agents to fulfil a task. That is what we mean by an agentic ecosystem."

Jacob added that WPP Media has been using agentic ecosystems, including a ‘deep researcher’, to conduct market research and answer complex questions for their clients regarding consumer behaviour and dynamics in a consumer category.