The industry is undergoing a profound transformation, moving beyond generative AI to the more advanced realm of Agentic AI. This leap introduces systems that not only create content but also autonomously make decisions and execute tasks, redefining how campaigns are conceptualised, managed, and optimised.
Yet, as we embrace automation, it’s vital to maintain a balanced perspective. The most impactful outcomes stem from a synergy between AI’s efficiency and human creativity, ethics, and strategic oversight. This collaboration ensures innovation and responsibility as the industry explores new horizons.
Generative AI has already revolutionised advertising by enabling the rapid creation of high-quality text, images and videos. Tools such as ChatGPT, Dall-E and MidJourney empower creative teams to explore diverse content directions with minimal effort. However, while generative AI excels at producing content, it still relies on heavily on human input for defining prompts, strategic decisions and measuring campaign effectiveness.
Agentic AI represents the next step in this evolution. Beyond generating content, it introduces a new level of autonomy, enabling systems to make decisions, optimise strategies and act without constant human supervision. Imagine an AI that can:
- Adjust bids, reallocate budgets and optimise ad placements in real time.
- Dynamically tailor ads to audience segments based on behavioural insights.
- Monitor performance data and autonomously refine creative elements
and channels. - This shift allows AI not just to assist but to act, reducing manual workloads and increasing campaign effectiveness. However, human insight remains crucial for creativity, ethics and long-term strategy.
Even as the industry transitions to Agentic AI, there are critical areas where human expertise remains irreplaceable:
While AI excels in efficiency and storytelling, the essence of advertising requires emotional intelligence, cultural sensitivity and creativity that only humans can provide. AI generates content; humans create meaning.
Without human intervention, AI can inadvertently reinforce biases present in its training data, leading to unfair targeting or exclusion of certain audience groups. Human oversight ensures:
- Detection and mitigation of biases
- Diverse representation in creative content
- Accountability in decision-making
AI focuses on historical data and short-term metrics, but true strategic thinking involves a broader perspective, long-term brand vision, consumer psychology and cultural shifts, domains where human leadership
is essential.
The future of advertising isn’t about AI replacing humans; it’s about AI empowering them.
To fully leverage the potential of Agentic AI, a balanced approach is crucial, one where AI-driven efficiency complements human-driven creativity and strategy.
- AI handles repetitive tasks such as data analysis and performance tracking.
- Human teams focus on creative storytelling and emotional resonance.
- AI processes vast datasets to uncover audience patterns.
- Humans interpret these insights to inform big-picture decisions and brand positioning.
- AI accelerates content generation and optimisation.
- Human creatives ensure the content aligns with brand voice and cultural relevance.
The shift from generative AI to Agentic AI heralds a powerful evolution in advertising, one filled with potential but also responsibility. Success lies not in choosing between automation and human creativity, but in harmonising the two.
Even as the industry transitions to Agentic AI, there are critical areas where human expertise remains irreplaceable, particularly in a market as diverse and rapidly changing as Saudi Arabia. While AI can streamline content creation, storytelling remains deeply human. The most effective campaigns don’t just capture attention – they connect emotionally.
In Saudi Arabia, where cultural depth and heritage are integral to branding, AI can support, but human creativity will always lead. Agencies are integrating AI tools to enhance creative output while ensuring that narratives reflect the essence of local identity – blending tradition with modernity.
Without human oversight, AI systems can reinforce biases present in their training data, leading to unintentional exclusion or misrepresentation. For brands operating in Saudi Arabia, where diversity and authenticity are crucial, human intervention ensures biases are detected and mitigated, content is inclusive and representative, and decisions are accountable and culturally respectful.
AI can optimise campaigns for short-term performance metrics, but true brand-building requires long-term strategic thinking. Saudi Arabia’s advertising industry is evolving beyond traditional campaigns, focusing on data-driven storytelling and experience-led branding.
The future of Saudi advertising isn’t about replacing human creativity with AI – it’s about empowering teams through technology. By prioritising ethics, strategic vision and creative depth, we can ensure that agentic AI doesn’t just transform advertising but elevates it, making campaigns smarter, more effective and culturally resonant.
The future of advertising isn’t merely automated; it’s empowered.
By Saud Saadoun, General Manager of Bold Creatives, part of The Bold Group
