Digiday+ Research: Agencies punt budget growth expectations to 2027 — while AI worries intensify
Between the war in the Middle East’s potential impact on ad spending and the rapid integration of AI tools across workflows, agencies have a lot on their minds in 2026. Overall, agencies’ top concerns this year are client spending and the effects of AI. Thirty-eight percent of agency professionals anticipated that the biggest challenge the agency industry will face in 2026 is reduced client budget
Between the war in the Middle East’s potential impact on ad spending and the rapid integration of AI tools across workflows, agencies have a lot on their minds in 2026. Overall, agencies’ top concerns this year are client spending and the effects of AI. Thirty-eight percent of agency professionals anticipated that the biggest challenge the agency industry will face in 2026 is reduced client budget