Why artificial intelligence is steadily finding its place in agency land

"Talent and technology are the keys to unlocking our future in this industry-- finding ways for tech to come in and do a better job than people can in roles people have traditionally done," said MDC Partners global president Julia Hammond in explaining AI's value to her holding company. "The challenge with that is it's completely contradictory to the agency model, which has been built around people, so there's been a reluctance to build out AI and machine learning. We're actively pursuing it, in how we resource, how we scale and how we serve clients." Progress is being made elsewhere to find a happy middle ground. Last week, GroupM agency Wavemaker went public with its AI-driven media planning tool, Maximize, which the company claims is generating plans faster and more effectively than human planning teams alone. "It's a question of complexity of the problem solved.