AI is Resetting the Agency Market – Faster than Most Realize

Over the past two years, AI has moved from experimentation to infrastructure across the marketing and creative industries. But the pace of that shift is being widely underestimated. 

What many still describe as a productivity aid, is rapidly becoming a structural force: reshaping how agencies deploy talent, price work, protect margins, and scale expertise. In our view, AI is not evolving incrementally. It is resetting the market, at a speed I have not seen in more than twenty-five years. 

In conversations with agency leaders, investors, and strategic buyers, one pattern is increasingly clear: there is a growing disconnect between perception and reality. Many operators believe they are making solid progress with AI. In practice, the gap between leaders and laggards is widening at unprecedented rates.

What Agencies Believe vs What Buyers Expect

To understand where the market truly stands, Evros Group conducted parallel surveys of independent agency leaders and strategic buyers. The contrast is striking. 

Agency leaders largely see AI as helpful but constrained in assisting with complex work. Progress is often framed in terms of usage: who is experimenting, which tools are being adopted, where efficiency gains are showing up. 

Buyers assume baseline adoption and focus not on whether agencies use AI tools, but how quickly firms are closing the gap between experimentation and execution; between individual usage and institutional capability. 

From a buyer’s perspective, maturity is not about whether AI is present in workflows. It is about whether AI has been embedded into the operating model in ways that are durable, scalable, and defensible.

Agencies that remain at mid-maturity increasingly face scrutiny, while those showing momentum toward institutional readiness are being rewarded. In diligence, what matters is not whether an agency uses AI, but whether it can reliably produce outcomes at scale. Governance, documentation, training coverage, measurement, and commercialization all factor into how risk and value are assessed.

To agency leaders navigating this moment, our belief is simple: the opportunity is still real, but it will not remain open indefinitely. Firms that treat AI as an operating shift, not a side experiment, will define the next era of independent agencies. Those that wait will find the market has already moved on.

Our 2026 AI Adoption Report is designed to clarify where the buyer bar now sits, how it is being applied in practice, and what agencies must demonstrate over the next 12 months as expectations continue to rise.

You can download the full report here to explore the findings, data, and implications in detail.