Author: Seb Joseph

Agencies are out in front on AI. Advertisers are not.

That’s the view of agency bosses who spoke to Digiday at Cannes Lions. They said that for most of the clients they work with, they’re still stuck figuring out governance, budget, and whether they even trust what they’re being sold. Nothing new there. Agencies are, after all, meant to be early adopters, guiding clients through every technological contortion. Yet judging by how some executives reacted, it might as well have been fighting talk. Several only agreed to talk if their names were left out, as if they’d said something sacrilegious.

Joe Maglio, CEO Cheil Agency Network, summed it up when he was sharing one of his main takeaways from the week-long event. “The macro AI takeaway: agencies are further along than brands; agencies are the early adopters.”

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Marketers have been trying to game LLM responses to suit their brands since users began turning to AI for search.

In recent months, they’ve become aware that AI search responses aren’t just a user touchpoint that needs attention, but a competitive arena in which they might influence the way their rivals are perceived — and have to guard against their rivals doing the same to them.

Despite the well-publicized issues with AI hallucinations and bias, web users tend to perceive AI results as neutral. When a response supplies positive information about a brand, that works in marketers’ favor. When an AI Overview or ChatGPT response goes in the other direction, it can become a serious problem for a brand.

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