If 2023 was the year agencies experimented with AI, Forrester principal analyst Jay Pattisall believes that in 2024, agencies will put their learnings into practice.

The analyst’s 2024 agency predictions report expects agencies will double down on a years-long shift away from traditional services toward selling productized marketing technology solutions. The largest agencies are already prepared to implement this model, having previously hired technology and engineering talent to build and maintain their audience targeting platforms and data storage assets.

While this sounds very elaborate and fantastical, I’ve seen numerous examples of these being built in the marketplace.

Jay Pattisall, principal analyst, Forrester Research

AI, in its various forms, will be imperative to agencies’ solution-oriented models. Pattisall envisions an impactful year ahead, characterized by AI innovation that decides new business moves; CMOs increasingly relying on cost-effective AI content solutions; and the end of the digital agency, as they either hone their offerings or risk folding into larger, integrated agencies.

“The significance here is that the overall industry has been lurching forward toward its own transformation,” Pattisall told Adweek. “One of the impediments has been the economics of it all, in getting paid for FTEs as opposed to getting paid for the technology.”

Brand-specific AI platforms will decide reviews

Generative AI, as well as predictive AI like machine learning, robotic process automation and experience development, will make up the majority of agencies’ new practice areas. Large agencies will build bespoke AI platforms for their clients, Pattisall said, and these new systems will decide new business moves.

“Each brand [will have] its own bespoke algorithm trained by the presence of a foundational model layered on top of that [algorithm],” Pattisall said.

The analyst refers to these offerings as “brand language models,” and expects the top 10 agencies will collectively spend $50 million erecting partnerships with technology providers like Adobe, Anthropic, AWS, Google, IBM, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia and OpenAI, to support their creations.

“While this sounds very elaborate and fantastical, I’ve seen numerous examples of these being built in the marketplace,” Pattisall said, “This is starting to happen, and it will come to fruition in 2024.”

Agencies ‘shift to solutions’

Encouraged by AI’s cost savings potential, Pattisall believes CMOs will lean on external agencies—especially those equipped to create and scale content faster.

To meet this shifting demand, more media agencies will launch creative practices or introduce partnerships with creative counterparts. Crossmedia and Joan Creative recently announced one such partnership. Every kind of agency, the analyst wrote, will find some way to incorporate AI-based content practices into their organization.

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