Media agencies have embraced AI agents faster than they have redesigned their teams. At the Digiday Media Buying Summit in Newport Beach, California, leaders from Monks and M&C Saatchi North America described a growing gap between daily AI use and the structures meant to support it.
Fluency is the new baseline
Gila Wilensky, EVP and head of data and media for North America at Monks, said there is now a baseline that everyone is expected to understand. In practice, that means using or developing AI agents to automate planning and media activation. A Digiday survey published in May found just 9% of media agencies were not pursuing agentic AI solutions of some kind.
But the productivity gains are not spreading evenly. Apollo Partners estimates that since generative AI arrived in 2022, tech companies have improved average profit margins, while revenue per worker has risen among U.S. businesses overall. Outside tech, neither measure has improved.
Corner-cutting shows up at every level
In a townhall session held under Chatham House Rules, agency attendees said both junior and senior colleagues use AI to speed through tasks while skipping critical thinking. One attendee said they were surprised to see so much AI-generated content coming from vice presidents and C-suite leaders.
Wilensky argued that training is part of the fix. “If we don’t provide that, things can go off the rails,” she said.
From training hours to AI checkers
Nadja Bellan-White, group CEO of M&C Saatchi North America, said her agency carves out one hour each week on timesheets for training. “A learning agenda has to be operationalized throughout your organization,” she said.
There are already signals that marketers are rethinking roles. Freelance programmatic and strategy consultants have become heavy AI users, and The Wall Street Journal recently reported a rise in companies hiring marketing engineers whose expertise is augmented by AI tools. Agencies are now starting to consider how their own teams should be organized differently.
Early moves agencies are testing include:
- Blocking a standing weekly hour for learning
- Redesigning junior hiring and task allocation
- Giving more powerful AI tools to some roles while controlling access for others
Monks is also reviewing early-career hiring. Wilensky said the agency is not hiring less junior talent, but being more strategic about what that talent does: less spreadsheet assembly, more quality assurance and oversight.
She predicted a full-time role of “AI checkers” could emerge, similar to fact checkers in journalism. At the same time, leaders said creativity and risk-taking remain human work. “AI cannot take risks. That’s always going to be our job,” Wilensky said.
The shift won’t take as long as factory owners took to capture gains from electric light, but agencies still need to move deliberately. The next phase is not just adopting AI—it is reorganizing teams, career paths and training around it.
Source: Digiday
