7.5% of US ad agency jobs will be lost to AI by 2030

The report suggests positions that already involve a high degree of repetition, accounting and bookkeeping roles, proofreaders and copyeditors, and technical writers are most at risk of replacement.

Meanwhile, demand for creative, management, PR and data science roles will likely grow among agencies – though, without increasing the size of the overall advertising workforce beyond pre-pandemic levels.

“The increased presence of automation and generative AI as part of agency workflows and marketing deliverables will yield a future of smaller yet more capable agencies,” write Jay Pattissall and Michael O’Grady, the Forrester analysts behind the report.

AI efficiencies

Forrester’s study follows suggestions from industry leaders that the development of generative AI may weaken, or sever, the link between agency business growth and staff headcount.

Brady Brim-DeForest, one of the co-founders of digital agency Media.Monks, told analysts on a recent earnings call that AI would drive "tremendous efficiencies" in terms of the ability to do more with less headcount and that it would change the agency’s “cost model pretty foundationally”.

However, Isabel Perry, vice-president of emerging tech, Dept – which has also launched its own AI offering - wasn't as pessimistic about the technology replacing the industry’s workforce. Instead, she suggested that most shops will still need to differentiate themselves through their creative expertise. And that means hiring people.

“Modern agencies are in a position to see a huge acceleration of growth from AI-enabled work and turnkey solutions – whether that's product innovation, media optimization, or creative workflow disruption – and can therefore expect to create not displace jobs,” she says.

“What this report shows is that traditional agencies and production companies will see a reduction in headcount. However, modern agencies that help clients across the full digital journey are already automating many production processes, and are well-placed to specialize in creative, strategy, and technical skills – which Forrester correctly identifies as areas that will see headcount growth. Creativity will remain the most fierce battleground within advertising.“

The Dutch agency network expects 90% of its revenue to come from turnkey AI solutions or AI-enabled work by 2025.

“When it comes to brands, the volume of content they create and curate will grow exponentially over the coming years through AI,“ Perry adds. “Curating and distributing this content will become more complex. At Dept, we believe that agencies that are strategic partners across the full journey will be an essential part of a brand’s ecosystem to tackle this scale and complexity, and will therefore see substantial growth in jobs.“

Following the adoption of AI tools in the media buying process, and tentative experiments with creative automation, agencies across the global advertising industry have been adopting and implementing generative AI tools with gusto since the debut of ChatGPT in late 2022.

Pattisall and O’Grady say that adoption will both displace staff and enhance the productivity of the roles that remain.

“Some agency roles will be positively impacted by AI and automation while others will be negatively impacted, resulting in an overall workforce reduction,” they write. While they predict that 33,000 US jobs will disappear from the agency sector over the next decade, they suggest that “the share of agency jobs in management, public relations, creative roles, market research, software (including web and digital interface designers) and data science will grow.”

The report predicts that almost one-third of agency positions would be at further risk from automation – and that losses will accelerate sharply from 2025 onwards, once legal and regulatory concerns surrounding the use of generative AI are more settled.