AI is now standard across marketing agencies — but its impact remains constrained. Forrester’s “The State Of AI Inside US Marketing Agencies, 2026” finds that CMOs must shift their AI ambitions toward creativity, differentiation, and growth to unlock real value.

CMOs are racing to lead the enterprise AI agenda, but most agencies remain stuck optimizing for scale, not intelligence. As AI shifts marketing’s role from campaign execution to growth leadership, agencies’ production-heavy models, productivity-led AI investments, and labor-based economics increasingly work against CMO outcomes. Agencies must pivot from scaled execution to intelligence, guidance, and change leadership that help CMOs integrate AI into strategy, operations, and culture. Agencies that evolve into change agents are best positioned to support marketing’s AI moment. This report helps CMOs and agencies navigate this inflection point, redefine partnership, and capture value in the AI era.

New Forrester and 4As research shows that agencies are prioritizing ecosystems that connect data, creative, media, and commerce at scale, with Google emerging as the leading partner. As marketing moves from isolated tools to integrated operating systems, the ability to orchestrate end-to-end workflows is becoming the new competitive edge.

The brands pulling ahead aren’t optimizing brand, customer, and employee experience in isolation — they’re aligning them into a system that drives measurable growth. Forrester’s 2026 global Total Experience Score and research show that when promise, delivery, and the people behind both move in sync, companies build strong, sustainable momentum.

Every tech cycle needs a good funeral: a villain to bury and a hero to crown. In genAI’s version of the story, kill advertising (again) and Google (search) is dead. The plot is tidy: GenAI replaces searching, ads become obsolete, and the web finally escapes the “attention tax.” It’s a satisfying story. Clean. Moral. Wrong. […]

A Love Story Older Than Television The tension between CMOs and advertising agencies didn’t start with AI, procurement, or any media disruption. And history makes one thing clear: Agencies only gain power when CMOs don’t — or can’t — fully exercise theirs. It’s embedded in the very origin of the advertising agency itself. To understand […]

As AI absorbs execution at scale, creativity returns to its highest value. The brands that win will automate production while doubling down on insight, narrative, and the judgment that protects meaning.

Forrester uniquely covers the entire marketing ecosystem and its underlying business. 2026 heralds a monumental shift in marketing and advertising, surpassing the decades-long “digital” transformation. AI will upend commercial models, reshape brand expectations from partners, and demand new measures of efficient growth. CMOs face the herculean task of rewiring the marketing function. Martech leaders must […]

As every brand races to deploy the same AI tools, the differentiating factors will be the people using those tools and the experiences they create. Our 2026 CX events will equip you to build experiences that win trust and lasting loyalty.

It’s a new media agency landscape. The last six months have witnessed more change in media agencies than what’s occurred over the last six years.