More than two-thirds of global media spend is now ‘AI-enabled’

More than two-thirds (69.5%) of all worldwide advertising spend this year will be enabled or informed by artificial intelligence (AI) tools, a new report predicts.

GroupM’s latest This Year Next Year forecast calculates that the majority of media investment will involve some form of recommendation algorithm, natural language processing or search optimisation – rising to account for 94.1% of spend by 2029.

“There may be no other industry right now [than advertising] where AI is used more pervasively,” said Kate Scott-Dawkins, GroupM’s Global President, Business Intelligence.

The overwhelming majority of AI-enabled media is currently digital, including channels like search and retail media, as well as digital extensions of traditional media, such as programmatic digital out-of-home and addressable TV advertising. However, it also includes any investment guided by predictive analytics systems.

“The use of AI in advertising has moved up in immediacy in this year’s media trends framework, and it is important for advertisers to be experimenting, learning and developing talent in this space now, not in a year’s time,” the report adds.

As generative AI revolutionises creative processes, it is also likely impact how media budgets are allocated. GroupM predicts that 10.7% of all ad revenue in TV, film, audio, publishing and social media in 2029 will result from the monetisation of machine-generated content (MGC).

GroupM defines MGC as “all AI-generated content by both professional and ‘non-professional’ creators”. Search ad revenue is not included in the calculation.