Sign in with Google
Agencies are leading the way in AI adoption, and brands stand to benefit. Paul Limbrey, Google VP of global and agency partnerships, shares how brands can rely on the capabilities of their specialized partners to accelerate innovation across the advertising industry.
In today’s dynamic marketing landscape, AI is no longer a futuristic concept; it’s a present imperative. What’s becoming increasingly clear is that advertising agencies are leading the charge in AI adoption, often outpacing in-house marketing teams.
How do we know? With Boston Consulting Group (BCG), we interviewed more than 800 agency specialists about their AI initiatives. On average, agencies are 35% more advanced than advertisers across a broad swath of marketing use cases, from measurement and insights to creative and content.1
But marketers aren’t taking full advantage of the opportunity, yet. Only 42% of advertisers say that their agency partners have helped educate them about AI marketing solutions.2 To fully benefit, make sure you are working with partners — agencies, strategic consultants, tech providers, and systems integrators — that have the AI skills to help you build for the future: your AI-marketing partner ecosystem.
From a conversation guide to a range of illustrative examples, here’s everything you need to know to maximize ROI through AI and strategic agency partnerships.
The power of the partner ecosystem
So, for brands diving into AI, the first big question is how to get the right solutions. Do you build something new from scratch, buy an existing product from a specialized firm, or team up with a tech company that’s got a bunch of ready-to-use tools? At Google, we’re all about helping agencies get innovative with AI, which in turn helps brands build their own AI marketing dream teams.
It seems like everyone’s on the same page too. In three years, 87% of leading holding companies say they will offer bespoke cross-agency teams for clients. Sixty-eight percent already do.3
Globally, leading agencies report new business growth 1.6X higher than their peers at earlier stages in the last 12 months; efficiency gains 2.6X higher than their peers at earlier stages in the last 12 months; and profitability growth 1.1X higher than their peers at earlier stages in the last 12 months.4
Let’s explore how real brands and agencies drive growth, efficiency, and profitability through AI adoption and their codeveloped AI solutions.
Smarter measurement and ROI analysis
In general, agencies are better equipped than brands’ in-house marketing teams to use AI for measurement use cases like synthesizing results and conducting marketing mix modeling. On average, agencies are 57% more advanced in using AI for campaign measurement than their advertiser counterparts.5
- Interpublic: Through its multimarket Interact platform, Interpublic created a holistic data visualization module for Google experiments, allowing advertiser teams to easily analyze data and get AI-generated recommendations. More than 70 brands launched, graduated, and promoted experiments directly from the console, leading to more than 30% conversion uplift for their campaigns.
The upshot? By layering AI-generated insights over their data, marketers can more easily use that data. But to do this, they need access to teams with AI expertise. On average, agencies are 20% more advanced than advertisers in using AI to generate new consumer insights.6
- Jellyfish: Take this example from Jellyfish. Built on Google Cloud and powered by Gemini, the agency’s Share of Model platform equips marketers with AI-driven insights. The platform analyzes LLM responses to questions about product categories, for example, overlapping these insights with Google Ads data to help marketers optimize their Performance Max and broad match strategies.
Personalized and efficient media buying
To achieve the dream of reaching the right person with the right message at the right time, turn to your partner ecosystem. Agencies are 22% more advanced than advertisers in using AI to reach audiences, from defining segments to personalizing campaigns.7
- Omnicom Media Group (OMG): The agency deploys AI-powered bidding strategies fueled by expansive sources: proprietary Omni data, sales data, and partner data. One of OMG’s largest clients used the Omni Bid Agent to optimize for offline sales. The result? A significant lift in return on ad spend (ROAS) across ad formats, including a 107% increase in display ROAS, a 567% increase in video ROAS, and a 153% increase in YouTube ROAS.
Agencies are also better equipped to address demand across platforms and channels, giving their teams time back to spend on strategy.
- Dentsu: Dentsu’s multimarket Pipes platform streamlines campaign operations and improves cross-channel performance. This has made it possible for Dentsu’s client teams to reinvest an additional 11% of their time every week into strategic work that helps deliver on their clients’ business objectives.
AI-powered creative strategy and execution
Leading agencies are using AI to develop, personalize, and analyze creative assets. That goes for the whole workflow. On average, agencies are 59% more advanced than advertisers in using AI for creative strategy.8
And AI-powered creative testing is becoming critical for top-tier agencies: 69% of leading agencies have scaled AI for creative performance, such as identifying trends in top-performing assets. Only 28% of early-stage adopters have done the same.9
The most competitive agencies tend to have integrated creative and media tools that optimize activations by automatically selecting the best assets for specific audiences.
- Monks: The marketing and technology services provider used AI to personalize video assets based on user preferences. As a result, more people shared them: Monks reported 20% to 25% improvement in engagement rates.
- Making Science: The agency’s agentic AI platform, ad-machina, automates asset generation and optimizes creative with insights backed by data, unlocking scale through unprecedented relevance. By automating 80% of tasks and boosting conversions by 30%, the platform maximizes performance.
To uplevel your position no matter where you are on your AI journey, engage your agency early and often.
Through carefully chosen agency partnerships, you can ensure longevity and even growth, benefiting from your combined years of AI integration, specialized talent, and openness to innovation.
