From technology to customer service, manufacturing to retail, it seems that no industry is immune from the effects of artificial intelligence (AI). Many of those effects are positive, but when it comes to the implications for employees, AI represents an increasing and intense threat, as is becoming particularly clear to advertising creatives. 

When Meta announced a new suite of AI tools, planned for release by the end of 2026, it promised that companies could leverage these tools to automate their entire advertising process, from ad creation to placement. Similar tools reportedly are being developed by other tech and retail giants too, including Google and Amazon. Although Meta also claimed that it believed its tools could be integrated into advertising agencies’ existing workflows, industry leaders anticipate that such adoption will result in substantial workforce reductions. 

Such predictions have a firm basis in reality: Kering (the parent company of Gucci, Saint Laurent, and Bottega Veneta, among other luxury brands) recently released an advertising campaign created completely by AI. Meanwhile, LVMH (which owns Louis Vuitton and Dior) identified generative AI tools as critical to its current and future strategy. L’Oréal also has entered into an agreement with Nvidia, to gain access to its graphics processing capabilities, such that the tech firm will create a dedicated AI system to support the brand’s in-house ad creation. 

Such efforts appear likely to shift the balance of power in the business-to-business relationships between brands and advertising agencies. Most advertising work currently is conducted by four large firms: WPP, based in the United Kingdom; Publicis Groupe, based in France; and Omnicom and IPG, both based in the United States. Notably, the share prices for all four agencies fell in the aftermath of Meta’s announcement. 

But these firms are powerful in their own right, unlikely to give up their position without a fight. Seemingly to consolidate its position, Omnicom has entered into an effort to acquire IPG. The merger of the third and fourth largest advertising firms in the world would establish a conglomerate earning total revenues of almost $25 billion and controlling the operations of a slate of smaller holdings, including Omnicom’s BBDO, DDB, and TBWA agencies, together with IPG’s FCB, Mediabrands, McCann, and Mullen Lowe. At the same time, the agencies are developing their own AI systems and tools. In particular, Omnicom noted some experimentation with AI-enabled language translations, to help it revise and adapt its advertising campaigns to accommodate global markets. 

Thus, even if advertising agencies and their brand clients can find a balanced use of AI that works for and benefits both of them, the implications for individual employees appear pretty dismal. If generative AI can develop campaigns, translate them into any language, assess their performance, and so forth, all the people once employed to perform these tasks become redundant. The huge creative teams that previously dedicated their abilities to coming up with the most clever ways to enhance consumer engagement might transform into just one or two executives, plugging details into an AI system. Everyone else might just be out of luck.

Discussion Questions

1. Why might luxury brands be particularly prone to experiment with generative AI advertising campaigns? 
2. Can AI completely replace the role of creative employees of traditional advertising agencies, in your estimation? 
3. Which famous advertising campaigns would have been hard to generate using only AI?

Sources:Patrick Coffee, “Tech Giants’ New AI Ad Tools Threaten Big Agencies,” The Wall Street Journal, June 12, 2025; “Ad Giants Omnicom and IPG in Advanced Merger Talks: Report,” Storyboard18, December 9, 2024; Matty Merritt, “2 of the Biggest Ad Agencies Are Becoming 1, to Compete in the AI Era,” Morning Brew, December 10, 2024.