AI Becomes Standard in Agency Workflows, with Near Full Industry Adoption

Survey from Basis Technologies Reveals Growing Marketer Confidence in AI, Shaping the Future of Digital Advertising and Investment Plans

Basis Technologies, the industry’s leading advertising automation platform, announced annual survey results revealing AI is almost at full industry adoption, with 98% of agencies leveraging the technology in their workflows. Additionally, generative AI use at agencies has skyrocketed, with nearly 40% of respondents saying they use it every day as part of their workflows. By comparison, in 2023, a Basis survey revealed that less than 10% of advertising professionals used AI daily and 33% said that they didn’t use it at all.

Agency leaders cited the top reasons for using AI were for ideation brainstorming (86%) and research purposes (72%). Additionally, 76% of senior agency leaders said they plan to increase their AI investment over the next 12 months, with 77% actively seeking out technology to help automate or streamline processes. Basis’ study was completed in March 2025 by more than 170 senior respondents at North American/Global agencies. To download the full 2025 Advertising Agency Report, please visit https://basis.com/reports/2025-advertising-agency-report.

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“In the early days of AI, we knew it was going to be a transformative technology, but the speed of scale from experimental usage to full agency adoption is astounding,” said Katie McAdams, chief marketing officer at Basis Technologies. “However, there are numerous areas within agencies where it has not yet taken full root, like data optimization, ad iteration or media buying — all of which AI is naturally suited to help streamline. I believe the full impact of AI on our industry has yet to be realized or understood.”

Additional findings include:

The State of Agency Work

• More than half of agency leaders said their organization’s 2024 revenue was up from the year prior, while around one-quarter said numbers were down. Another 22% said revenues were flat.
• More than 40% of respondents reported that their agencies have conducted layoffs within the last 12 months, a slight increase from 2024 (36%).
• Just over half of agency professionals (55%) are open to looking for a new job within the next 12 months, compared to 56% of all US workers. However, just 19% of respondents said they were somewhat or very likely to go job hunting in the year ahead.
• A growing majority of agency professionals (61%) believe that digital advertising has gotten harder over the last two years, up slightly year-over-year.

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Agency Challenges

• Inefficient processes are the greatest challenge agencies report facing (56%), followed closely by rising costs (43%), shrinking profits (43%), and siloed/disconnected systems (42%).
• With advertisers confronting the growing threats of AI-generated misinformation, hate speech and rolled-back content moderation efforts on social media platforms, 85% of agency professionals believe brand safety risks are greater today than they were at this time last year, with nearly two-thirds of all respondents (64%) believing they are significantly higher.
• More than half of respondents (51%) said their current adtech/martech stack consists of eight or more tools, with 40% juggling 10+ tools to manage their clients’ campaigns. Last year, just 17% of full-service and media agencies said they were managing 10+ tools.

Basis Technologies provides advertising software with an integrated suite of modular applications for planning, operations, and more across programmatic, publisher-direct, search, and social channels.