The U.K. and EU marketer’s guide to the state of AI

From April 2024 to July 2025, the percentage of U.K. advertisers who were using generative AI in their workflows in at least one case rose from 9% to 41%, the Incorporated Society of British Advertisers reported earlier this year. And it’s efficiency that’s driving that rate of adoption — 62% of U.K. advertisers said saving time and money is the main focus of their use of generative AI.

Some of this AI adoption seems to be paying off. Sixty-one percent of senior marketers in the CPG and retail spaces told Epsilon and Censuswide in May that they feel their AI investments are resulting in revenue growth. And all the while, Digiday has been reporting on AI’s growth, from its effect on search and site traffic to exactly how it’s changing the way marketers do their jobs.

What does that look like today? In this report, we’ve gathered essential pieces of Digiday’s reporting in recent months that detail the state of AI and what U.K. and EU marketers need to know — and what is likely coming next in AI’s rapid evolution.

AI is having a major effect on the way marketers are doing their jobs.

Take CPG giant Unilever, for example. As Digiday’s U.K.-based senior marketing reporter Sam Bradley reported, for the last year the company has been working with marketing services firm The Brandtech Group to build up its Beauty AI Studio: a bespoke, in-house operation inside its beauty and wellbeing business.

Now in place across 18 different markets (the U.S. and U.K. among them), the studio is used for paid social, programmatic display inventory and e-commerce assets across brands including Dove Intensive Repair, TRESemme Lamellar Shine and Vaseline Gluta Hya.

“It’s a different way of working. We used to send briefs off and get content back. Now it’s this agile, iterative approach,” Selina Sykes, global vp and head of marketing transformation, beauty and wellbeing, told Digiday in that story. Sykes estimated that, on average, Unilever was using the system to create 400 creative assets per product: “Before, we’d be doing 20 assets per campaign, and now we’re doing hundreds.”

What’s Unilever actually done? The system relies on Pencil Pro, a generative AI tool developed by Brandtech Group. Pencil draws on several large language models (LLMs), as well as API access to Meta and TikTok for effectiveness measurement.

In Unilever’s process, marketers use prompts and their own insights about target audiences to generate images and video based on 3D renders of each product, a practice sometimes referred to as “digital twinning.” Each brand in a given market is assigned a “BrandDNAi” — an AI tool that can retrieve information about brand guidelines and relevant regulations and that provides further limitations to focus the generative process.

Sykes didn’t provide an estimate of the cash savings associated with the production efficiencies, but Unilever will be aiming for double-digit percentage savings on budgets. Per MediaLink, advertisers and agencies that have adopted AI into their processes have cut their creative production spending by 27%.

What does this mean for creative agencies? At one point, Unilever had roughly 3,000 agencies on its global roster. But in 2024 it consolidated much of its beauty and wellness business with British holding company WPP.

Gartner analyst Nicole Greene said advertisers are likely to opt for “hybrid” approaches to AI implementation, using agencies as vanguards of AI rather than jumping into the breach themselves. Major agency groups like WPP and Dentsu have each made AI-enabled production shops key parts of their offerings, emphasizing the capabilities of their respective Hogarth and Tag units.

That arrangement might not hold forever, though. In the long term, agencies might find themselves asked to “hand over” to an in-house unit augmented by AI, Greene said. In that moment, questions over remuneration and the fundamentals of the already precarious agency business model will become critical.

And Bradley reported that ad creatives are becoming more forgiving about the use of generative AI for purposes outside the office walls. Creative agencies used to maintain red lines over AI usage, reserving actual production to people with cameras and clackerboards.

But that’s changed in the last year. Hundreds of brands have now released AI ads made from whole cloth for TV and social media.

“We have seen a shift in client openness to fully AI-developed campaigns,” said Christian Pierre, global chief intelligence officer at Gut. “Generative AI started as an experiment you had to sell in. Today, the client that is not using it feels like they are missing out. It is a 180-degree shift.”

Here’s what some other marketing execs had to say:

“We didn’t know that could be possible — and be convincing.” Craig Miller, chief creative officer at indie agency Schafer Condon Carter, originally greeted the advent of generative AI with mild skepticism. “When I heard about it, my first reaction was [about the] ethical and societal concerns,” Miller previously told Digiday.

That’s shifted with each new advance and demo, though. And while on location in Santiago, Chile, to shoot an ad for the U.S. Blueberry Council earlier this year, Miller enjoyed a minor epiphany. During filming, the spot’s director suggested adding in a bearded dragon character to add a moment of humor. 

“We were on set so obviously there’s not going to be any lizard wranglers,” Miller recalled. Instead, Romanella used Midjourney to design and create the character there and then added it to the footage they’d shot on site. Following client approval, the bearded dragon made it into the final cut.

“That was really a breakthrough for us because we didn’t know that could really be possible and be convincing. And no one’s commented on it,” Miller said.

“Everyone is using it, some more openly than others,” said Gut’s Pierre. At this point, advertisers in certain categories like QSR or food are more likely to be holding back on incorporating AI into their workflows. “I don’t think many people want to see AI food,” said Adam Bodfish, executive creative director at McCann Birmingham.

The aversion might not last forever, though. As the cost savings from AI production become more apparent, legal concerns recede and more creative directors make their peace with the tech, agency execs told Digiday we’ll see more and more AI ads in the wild.

“Now, everyone is using it, some more openly than others, and some [are] willing to explore how far they can go with AI,” Pierre said. “The red line keeps moving.”

Read more of Digiday’s editorial coverage on AI in marketing workflows:

• In AI and data, WPP Media revives a playbook it thinks it can finally win
• When CMOs pay for agents not agencies: S4 Capital’s AI gambit

AI technology isn’t just overhauling the creative and production process. It’s also radically changing how — or if — brands show up in the digital spaces where consumers spend their time.

As U.K.-based executive news editor Seb Joseph put it: “There was a time when landing on the first page of Google meant you were in business. Traffic followed, strategies scaled, and entire models were built on the back of those clicks. That foundation is cracking.”

Zero-click search is driving that crack.

Joseph answered some of the most important questions marketers should be asking about zero-click search:

Why does it matter? This isn’t just a problem for publishers. It’s a bigger issue for anyone who relies on organic traffic. If Google, which still accounts for 86% of search activity in the U.S., behaves more like a destination than a referral source, then it undermines a central pillar of both digital publishing and e-commerce strategies: owning your own organic presence.

For publishers it threatens a key traffic source that fuels ad impressions, subscriptions and affiliate sales. For marketers, especially those leaning on content marketing, it means clawing for dwindling visibility or shifting spend to paid placements just to stay in the game.

Who’s most at risk — and who might benefit? On the brand side, companies with strong first-party data and direct-to-consumer strategies are better insulated. It’s the ones in the middle, who built scale on search without deep audience relationships, that are most exposed.

Is there any way to adapt? Some marketers are moving toward paid media and influencer campaigns to offset visibility loss in search results. Others are investing more into platforms like YouTube and TikTok where discovery still has legs. 

Adaptation is possible but it comes with cost, fragmentation and uncertainty.

So is this the new normal? Barring a major shift — user behavior, regulatory intervention or an unlikely competitive shakeup — yes. For now, publishers and marketers are left playing defense in a game that’s already moved on.

Geert Eichhorn, executive innovation director at Monks, told Bradley that zero-click search is “totally collapsing the user journey.” Specifically, DTC marketers are on the hook. They spend up to 20% of their media budgets on paid search, according to a 2024 industry survey, more than any other paid media channel.

But brands and agency clients aren’t panicking. Mark Barker, co-founder at Craft & Commerce, a media agency that works with several DTC and challenger brands, told Digiday the situation warranted a “yellow” alert rather than red.

Here are some strategies that agencies and brands are taking to tackle zero-click search:

EGC Group: Nicole Penn, chief executive at the indie full service agency that works with a number of DTC firms, said guiding the response to AI search was set to be a “big focus” of EGC’s work in the second half of the year. She said the agency had tried a number of adaptations for clients, including bidding less on “long tail keywords,” search queries which are more likely to prompt an AI Overview to trigger in Google, and more on narrower keyword searches.

EGC Group’s also been “tweaking” the copy its clients run in paid search ads, to ensure it fits the context of a search for a product or service. And for organic search, it’s been focusing on increasing clients’ earned media exposure; due to the weighting that large language models (LLMs) like Google’s Gemini give to information gleaned from media owners and news sites, she said, press coverage of a brand is taking on renewed importance.

Kendra Scott: Kamanasish Kundu, svp and head of digital and e-commerce at the jewelry retailer told Digiday that the brand added 8,000 new pages to its site since last June to induce better organic search performance.

“We are watching the shift from traditional search to AI-driven discovery very closely,” said Kundu. “That changes how we think about visibility conversion, even the role of our website.”

Amex GBT: CMO Alisa Copeman said the business travel brand worked with agency Droga5 London to review its SEO approach. Its paid search budget was held steady while its team decided on an updated approach, she said. “We still maintain a consistent level of investment in the channel. But we are also then wanting to see what else we can be doing, so that we’re not as reliant on it from a performance perspective,” explained Copeman.

Read more of Digiday’s editorial coverage on zero-click search:

• Zero-click search is changing how small brands show up online — and spend
• How brands and retailers are preparing for GEO, ‘the future of SEO’

There’s no doubt that AI will continue to evolve. And with it, so will the ways it affects how marketers do their jobs and talk to their audiences.

New platforms, new regulations, new tools and technology — just like with any new shift in advertising, marketers will have to be ready to adapt to the changes and figure out how best to make AI work for them.

As Nic Brandengerger, CMO at Swiss outdoor brand Mammut, put it: “The role of a marketer in general, it doesn’t matter which level, has always been to roll with the punches.”

Read these stories for insights into what’s next for marketers:

• How AI is rewriting the rules of search and shopping – by the numbers
• In the age of AI, the CMO role gets a corporate makeover
• AI personas promise speed, but safeguards are needed to avoid leading marketers astray
• ‘It’s like Google all over again’: What OpenAI’s Instant Checkout signals about conversational commerce