Agencies Say AI Is Wrecking Client Briefs and Flooding Workflows

Agency buyers at Digiday's fall Media Buying Summit in Newport Beach, Calif., said last week that AI is simultaneously straining client relations and degrading everyday work product — with one executive reporting an 18-page, AI-written client brief the client itself did not understand.

The candid comments came from two agency-only townhall sessions held under Chatham House rules, which guarantee anonymity in exchange for frankness. Their verdict on AI's office impact was blunt: "AI just ramps up the level of crap."

What is AI doing to client briefs?

Buyers said brief quality has collapsed, and they blame generative tools. "It's like pontificating on a sentence structure that makes it 10 pages long instead of a sentence," one attendee said. "And less is more when it comes to a brief."

Another attendee described meetings where every slide was clearly AI-generated: "You've provided the bare minimum information and it just spit these out — you didn't even look at them. It kind of has that uncanny valley feeling — they think this makes sense, but it doesn't make sense."

The problem reaches the C-suite, buyers said. "I've actually been surprised by how much AI content [there is at] a higher strategy level … places like the VPs and the C-suite," one noted. "I know they know how to do these things. I don't think they want to take the time to do it."

One agency now writes briefs for its clients outright: "They give us their things and we say we're just going to write this for you, and we write it. They're like, 'This is great.'"

The 18-page brief stood out as a cautionary tale. "We went back to the client [and said] 'Half of this stuff is not doable,'" the attendee said. "It was 18 pages long."

One buyer urged leaders to train staff to pick up the phone instead of trading increasingly bloated emails — "if you've got a super long email with 50 em dashes in it, maybe call the person back."

How should agencies deploy AI?

One executive framed a strategic fork: automate everything and cut humans, or use AI to make experts more efficient. "If I was working at an organization that's going for full automation and limiting humans, I would be scared," they said.

Another told staff to refresh their resumes every six months and quit if they stop learning — warning that without upskilling, "an AI bot spends $10 million versus $10,000 in a DSP."

What did the principal media debate settle?

Digiday launched a new franchise at the summit, The Case For and Against, around Stagwell's purchase of Freestar. Forrester vp and senior agency analyst Jay Pattisall argued principal media is "here, it's not going anywhere… so if you're going to do it, do it well," calling it a "win-win-win" for margin-squeezed agencies, publishers and flexibility-seeking clients.

Crossmedia CEO Kamran Asghar countered: "We'll never get to outcome-based pricing in our industry as long as principal media exists." He urged financial-sector-style separation of trading and advisory: "Where there's murkiness, there's money to be made."

By the numbers

Disney's U.K. arm surveyed 1,100 streaming users with eye-tracking and brand-lift studies. Emotionally connected viewers showed 2.5 times better detailed ad recall than unengaged viewers, 4 times higher purchase intent, and rewatchers served multiple ads delivered 4.7 times better recall.

Q3 earnings split the holdcos: WPP Media grew 0.3% in Q3 after a 5.6% decline a year earlier, but sits down 3.6% year-to-date. S4 Capital's Q3 revenue fell 9.5% (down 6.3% YTD). Stagwell grew 10% in Q3 and 8% YTD, driven by digital transformation and its marketing cloud.

Stagwell CEO Mark Penn said: "Change is being driven by technological revolution, not by economic devolution … we're up 23% in digital transformation. We're up 100% in the marketing cloud. If you project out growth in those two segments for the next two years, we become a fundamentally revalued company."

Account moves: WPP Media won Transport for London; DentsuX won Kingfisher's B&Q and Screwfix media business in the U.K. and Ireland. VaynerMedia named Anita Munro APAC managing director from WPP Media; Crossmedia hired Stefanie Wolf from iProspect as head of new business; CMI Media Group promoted Sargi Mann to chief strategy officer; Schafer Condon Carter hired Cara Wetters as chief media officer.

The townhall consensus suggests AI's next test at agencies is not capability but hygiene — clearer briefs, human follow-ups, and staff trained to catch what the machines spend.