Asia’s top agencies bet on AI to drive smarter media in APAC

At ATS Singapore 2025 last week, Asia ad agency chiefs tackled a question that’s growing louder across the region: How do you deliver real outcomes in a market where clients want proof, not promises, of AI’s impact?

For Arshan Saha, WPP Media’s CEO of Singapore and Malaysia, the path forward is clear: “Our strategy is simple. It’s just AI. That’s it.”

“[For years the industry has] talked about automation, accessibility, efficiency. What we’re talking about now is moving from the rise of AI to AI being a feature to AI now becoming an operating system.”

The shift is reshaping workflows. Agencies are moving beyond manual reporting toward predictive planning and campaign optimization. It’s also redefining industry expectations, with clients increasingly asking for evidence that AI can drive integrated, effective business outcomes.

But it doesn’t mean human talent will be left behind: “Our focus really is upskilling talent, enabling talent, so that they’re able to move away from hands on keyboards to be able to drive this operating system effectively,” Saha said.

More than smoke and mirrors

In a world shaped by economic and geopolitical volatility, clients want what Saha calls the “proof in the pudding” when it comes to AI’s business value.

“Clients are asking us, ‘How do you get more effective? How do you get more integrated?’” Saha said. “Within that … commercial models have started changing, and that has come through much more [in the form of] derived performance metrics than [metrics] tied to sales.”

In short, clients want AI to see AI in action — not theory. Beyond the smoke and mirrors of the hype cycle, they’re asking for proof it drives real business outcomes.

Saha described how this translates to day-to-day effectiveness: “Let AI make better decisions in terms of planning. … Let it make better optimization decisions.”

“[For] measurement analytics, don’t just look at visualization from the point of view of a dashboard — take measurement in terms of analytics that translate into predictive planning.”

Culture over chaos

For Ian Loon, Publicis Groupe’s Singapore CEO of media and digital, managing transformation effectively comes down to providing clarity about the changes being introduced and ensuring a cohesive culture.

“It’s a hot mess out there, right? There’s a lot of new jargon, new tech being introduced to all of us. The first important thing is to bring clarity,” Loon said.

“For agencies, human capital is [highly] prized and valued. What we need are people who are all aligned with the same vision, the same goals.”

A recent IAB global study found that the advertising industry still has a long way to go. Only 30% of agencies, brands and publishers have fully integrated AI across the media campaign lifecycle, according to the report.

Nearly two-thirds cited data quality, data protection and fragmentation across different tools as the top barriers to AI adoption. Job security, contrary to popular belief, was found to be a concern for only 37% of respondents.

What’s next?

Looking ahead, Loon sees agencies moving beyond selling AI-enabled services to partnering with clients to build bespoke systems embedded with their own business rules, values and ethics.

Signs of a shift are already emerging. WPP has developed an AI content engine that allows brands to produce personalized, brand-safe creative at scale. Publicis Groupe, meanwhile, has upped its AI game with the launch of CoreAI and a pledge to invest €300 million in AI over the next three years.

Saha predicts that 2025 will be a tipping point for scalable, predictive, privacy-conscious targeting — and a noticeable shift in how talent within agencies spend their time.

“For the first time, data — whether it’s ID-based or signal-based — can now be formed into models that are scalable, that cut across not just the dimensions of silos but even walled gardens, which then are able to give us [predictions] of exactly who our consumer is.”

“For talent, that means looking at a system and going: Wow, my life has just become much better. I don’t need to do any more manual reports. I no longer need to set up campaigns manually — a lot of this has finally automated itself. It’s empowering people.”