Smarter, cheaper, faster: Has AI cut ad production costs by up to 60%?

From concept to campaign, Artificial Intelligence is reshaping how ad agencies operate. Instead of replacing creativity, AI is making the process more efficient. In a market where every rupee spent is under scrutiny, AI is helping marketers do more with less, enabling faster turnarounds, sharper personalization, and novel creative possibilities that were once unthinkable within limited budgets.

While much of the buzz around AI centers on the cost-cutting and job displacement themes, the reality inside agencies paints a more nuanced picture. AI is now unlocking fresh opportunities for talent, streamlining operational bottlenecks, and enabling faster experimentation. Ultimately, it’s about making creativity smarter.

The cost vs value equation
One of the most widely acknowledged benefits of AI in advertising is the drastic reduction in production costs. Campaigns that once required months of planning and hefty production budgets can now be executed in days for a fraction of the cost. e4m reached out to many Indian agencies along with their Creative Directors who reported up to 50-60% cost savings by leveraging generative AI tools across conceptualizing, video production, and regional adaptation. Sanjeev Jasani, former COO at Cheil India, solidified that data by saying, “What previously cost ₹20-25 lakh for a television commercial can now be produced with similar quality at about ₹4-5 lakh, with multiple vernacular variations created instantly.”

But the real profit lies not just in cutting costs but in reallocating time and talent. Mrityunjay Kumar, Co-founder of Mashrise, emphasizes the shift in focus, saying, “Tailored AI tools help reduce the time spent on repetitive or low-lift tasks, things like initial copy drafts or reference gathering. Instead of replacing the creative process, they help us spend more time refining it. So, it’s less about cost-cutting and more about working smarter without compromising on craft.”

New possibilities by combining forces
AI is also creating new job categories within the agency ecosystem. Roles like Prompt Engineers, AI Trainers, and Creative Technologists are no longer fringe experiments, but fast-becoming integral to how agencies function. Anil Shankar, Managing Partner at Starcom India, notes how these roles amplify human creativity, saying, “We are continuously investing in making AI a mainstream skill. Our hands-on training platform, ‘Marcel,’ empowers teams across disciplines – from media to strategy – to embed AI into everyday work. AI may drive efficiencies, but its real strength lies in unlocking imagination at scale – across relevancy, language, visuals, and other factors. The industry is moving beyond dashboards to dynamic, predictive canvases, and agencies that can blend human judgment with machine intelligence won’t just lead campaigns – they’ll lead the future of marketing to drive business impact.”

Beyond upskilling, this integration is also about transforming the way teams approach creativity. Whether it's using AI to test dozens of ad variations before picking the final direction, or embedding generative tools into live pitch workflows, agencies are learning to work with machines, not against them.

However, some industry voices argue that the emergence of new roles may be overstated. Sahil Shah, President at Dentsu Creative Isobar, offers a pragmatic counterpoint, saying, “We’re seeing some new roles emerge, especially on the tech backend side: people who are building AI tools, managing systems, training models, or fine-tuning outputs. But outside of that, not really. With agentic AI becoming more accessible, prompting has become as intuitive as having a conversation. The real shift is not in new jobs, but in how every role in the agency ecosystem evolves. Everyone – copywriters, strategists, designers, editors – needs to integrate Gen AI into their core craft to stay ahead.”

This evolving nature of roles, where strategists are also prompt engineers, and copywriters are also model trainers, reflects a future where AI skills are layered onto existing functions, rather than siloed into new departments.

Lessons from the global playground
Global media and advertising agency networks are already embedding AI into their core workflows. For example, WPP’s global partnership with NVIDIA is a key example of this integration, where real-time 3D content creation pipelines powered by their customised generative AI tool ‘Omniverse’ are now being deployed for faster and more immersive brand storytelling. Marketing leader WPP is helping The Coca-Cola Company and Ford to accelerate iteration on creative campaigns at a global scale with NVIDIA NIM (Networking Infrastructure Management) microservices, USD Search, and USD Code.

Similarly, as Shankar mentioned, Publicis Groupe’s ‘Marcel’ is enabling its 80,000+ employees worldwide to harness AI for everything from competitive intelligence to pitch deck generation. Smaller independent agencies aren’t far behind either. Agencies like Daydream in the US and ZOO Group in Australia are utilizing AI tools to conduct real-time ad testing, generate voice synthesis for multilingual campaigns, and automate lower-funnel creatives at scale. These are allowing their human teams to focus on brand-level storytelling and experience design.

According to a 2025 McKinsey report on ‘the state of AI and how organizations are rewiring to capture value,’ over 78% of respondents said that their organizations use AI in at least one business function, which is an increase from the 72% in early 2024 and 55% a year earlier. Findings in the report also indicate that 13% of respondents say their organizations have hired AI compliance specialists, and 6% have hired AI ethics specialists. Respondents at larger companies are more likely than their peers at smaller organizations to report hiring a broad range of AI-related roles. Prompt Engineering roles are booming on LinkedIn, ranging from junior to staff level at companies like Accenture and Tech Mahindra. For instance, Aijura Kshiar works as a Prompt Engineer at NVIDIA Bengaluru, refining and optimizing the way NVIDIA’s AI models respond to user inputs. However, Kshiar isn’t the only isolated example; several others are working in tech companies as well as advertising agencies that have integrated AI into their workflow successfully.

Skill, not just scale
The next wave of change will not be defined by how fast agencies adopt AI tools, but by how well they train people to use them. Agencies that balance technological adoption with human upskilling are poised to lead, dishing out purpose-driven and emotionally resonant campaigns that stand out in a cluttered market. As India continues to emerge as a high-opportunity market for AI-assisted content, the agencies that blend machine intelligence with human intuition will define the next era of brand storytelling.