Brands and Agencies Move Beyond AI Hype to Operational Reality
Three years after ChatGPT launched, companies like WPP and Yum Brands have stopped debating whether to use artificial intelligence and started figuring out how to deploy it at scale. The shift from experimentation to systematic implementation was on display at the Interactive Advertising Bureau's Public Policy & Legal Summit this week in Washington.
WPP, one of the world's largest ad holding companies, centralized its AI efforts across creative, production and media teams through its WPP Open initiative. The strategy paid off: the agency group moved from isolated AI pilots to coordinated use across the organization.
"The tools have been out there for a few years," said Michael Palmer, vice president and transformation lead in North America at WPP Media. "As an organization, we can finally leverage them in a coordinated and even manner across the board, and that muscle has been the real story."
WPP consolidated AI governance at the holding company level rather than spreading it across subsidiaries, recognizing that the capital costs and expertise required are too high for individual operating companies to manage independently. Other major agencies are following the same pattern.
Where AI Actually Works
AI is delivering results in expected areas: shaping creative concepts, building media plans, and compressing timelines from days to hours. But the technology has clear limits.
Large language models and transformer-based systems cannot produce anything entirely novel. "A lot of the tools from the last two or three years have made mediocrity cheap, but they have actually made excellence much more prized," Palmer said.
Back-office roles have been the first casualty. Media planners and accountants who once filled office floors are disappearing as AI automates routine tasks. That trend will accelerate as more sophisticated autonomous systems emerge.
Yet agencies still need people. AI-powered systems require "humans in the loop" to control and contextualize outputs. WPP is restructuring around what it calls "operational pain point experts" - employees who understand workflow bottlenecks and can direct AI tools to solve real problems.
How Yum Brands Built Its AI Factory
Yum Brands, parent company of Taco Bell, KFC, and Pizza Hut, has spent recent years building what it calls an "AI factory" by combining first-party customer data with AI systems across the organization.
Nicholas Godlove, global privacy counsel at Yum Brands, emphasized the importance of getting stakeholders aligned early. The company set up a formalized committee that included legal, technology and business leaders - not just legal saying no.
"It needs to be a conversation to get these things in place, much more than a lot of member relationships and a lot of technology," Godlove said. "It is a conversation about, 'Where can I do? When can I do it? What are the guardrails?'"
Yum sees opportunities across loyalty programs, menu screens and drive-thru ordering. For Gen Z customers who avoid phone calls and traditional websites, autonomous AI agents could handle customer interactions. But Godlove flagged the risks: business, reputational, technical and legal exposure all increase with more autonomous systems.
Training data presents practical challenges too. Teaching an AI model to understand Taco Bell menu items like "chalupa" or "quesarito" requires significant effort and data.
The Next Phase: Autonomous Agents
The industry is moving toward agentic AI - fully autonomous systems that operate with minimal human supervision. WPP launched an Agent Hub this year and is running pilots with publishing partners.
Palmer suggested the advertising industry may eventually target ads to AI agents themselves, not just humans. "Maybe in five years, maybe 10, we might be advertising to agents," he said. "As a brand, you may have to start placing agent-targeted advertising."
This shift raises new governance questions. When parts of a company operate autonomously, what does corporate control actually mean? Godlove pointed to the risk of "semi-intelligent, semi-rogue actors" with data access and decision-making authority.
Implementation strategies differ by employee age. Gen Z workers are leading AI adoption at WPP, though some of the most effective users are Gen X employees who already understand existing workflows and pain points. To protect client data, WPP requires employees to use internal AI tools rather than public services like ChatGPT.
"We've gotten quite strict about that," Palmer said. "We didn't want to stop the experimentation or its use, but we basically paid a substantial amount of money to get those tools. We want to make sure everybody is using the proper tooling."
Learn more about how organizations are integrating AI Agents & Automation into their operations, or explore strategies for AI for Marketing across your organization.
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