Majority of European Ad Execs Expect Agentic Buying at Scale Within a Year, IAB Europe Finds

More than half of European advertising executives expect AI-powered agentic ad buying to reach operational scale within the next twelve months, according to new research from IAB Europe published on 24 September 2026. The findings, reported by Digiday, draw on responses from 50 ad executives surveyed across 44 European markets during spring and summer 2026.

The headline figure — 58% anticipating agentic buying at operational use or scale within a year — masks a significant divide between organisations of different sizes. According to Digiday's reporting on the research, 86% of respondents at companies with more than 500 staff already run their most advanced agentic systems at a level where people and agents plan, delegate, and execute work together. At smaller companies with 500 staff or fewer, that figure falls to 48%.

Views on the pace of wider adoption also differ sharply. Three in ten respondents (30%) expect AI agents to become a main way of buying and selling ads in some markets, while more than a quarter (28%) anticipate regular use without that level of scale, the research shows.

Broad AI use is already widespread in the sample. Forty-seven of the 50 respondents said their organisations already use AI internally, and 43 use it specifically for marketing. However, 36 of those 47 respondents said their organisation either has no agentic system running day-to-day or operates one that people still direct or plan alongside.

Current agentic deployments are concentrated in lower-stakes workflows. Twenty-two of 29 respondents identified reporting, analysis, and dashboards as the most common AI-supported workflow. Programmatic optimisation came next, capturing 59% of responses. The research found that efficiency is the primary benchmark organisations apply to AI: 68% of those who completed the full survey said their organisations judge AI by efficiency gains.

Spending on AI is increasing. Most respondents said they are allocating more to AI in 2026 than in 2025, and 59% are specifically increasing investment in AI marketing technologies.

Omnicom CFO Phil Angelastro addressed the investment rationale at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia and Technology Conference earlier in September, stating: "There is going to be likely more investment from advertisers because one of the meaningful changes that's been happening in the business — and that will continue to happen with AI — is all of what we do and results are going to be much more clearly and easily measured. Some of them, it's going to be a challenge to measure, but ultimately measurement is going to improve and the more it improves the better it's going to be for us because we're going to be able to prove the return on investment that we deliver to clients."

On the supply side, Digiday noted that major holding companies and publishers are actively developing agent infrastructure. WPP has built and is currently testing its own buyer agent, and Omnicom is doing the same. Publishers CNN and News U.K. are reported to be building sell-side agents. Advertiser Georgia-Pacific has indicated it wants more proof the industry is ready before committing.

Security and privacy rank as the top concerns among respondents wary of broader agentic adoption, with the article noting that industry standards have not yet caught up with the technology.

Not all observers are convinced agentic buying will deliver meaningful change. Ian Maxwell, CEO of ad tech firm Converge Digital, challenged the premise: "I always ask what value is agentic buying bringing?," adding that in his view even a campaign that takes seconds to create from start to finish still faces the same practical delays — such as creative arriving late — as today's processes.