The biggest gap between potential and reality rests in finished products. In the spring, Mediaocean found that nearly 6 in 10 advertising professionals thought the greatest potential for genAI was in copywriting. Half a year later, barely more than a quarter of advertising professionals said they were using genAI for that. Similarly, there was a 23-percentage-point gap between how many advertisers saw potential in genAI as an image generator and how many advertisers are currently using it for that purpose, the fourth-largest gap in Mediaocean’s survey.

Data analysis is an early winner

• Analysis and research are early use cases. While there is still a big gap between perceived potential and reality, data analysis and market research are where the gap is smallest. More than a third of respondents to the Mediaocean survey said they were using genAI for each of those.
• Democratized access to insights and information rapidly speeds things up. As advertising has gotten more digital, it has created expectations around measurement and analysis that are sometimes difficult to meet in the face of ever-growing output, especially at small agencies or within in-house teams. While genAI’s results still need to be checked, it is already doing a lot to close that gap at both enterprise and small agencies, as well as among brands’ in-house operations.