The advertising business has always had a complicated relationship with the future. It is where the money will be, clients promise, just as soon as the present calms down a bit.

That dynamic is playing out with particular clarity in 2026, according to a survey of 62 agency professionals conducted by Digiday+ Research in the fourth quarter of 2025. The findings suggest that agencies have pushed their expectations for meaningful budget growth to 2027 — a date that has the convenient quality of not being now.

Rob Davis, president and chief marketing officer at Novus, said he has heard a new refrain in recent pitches: budgets for 2026 are modest, but 2027 allocations are already projected to be 50 percent higher. "I had never seen that before," Mr. Davis said.

Scott Shamberg, president and chief executive of Mile Marker, said he had encountered the same phenomenon. "I'm interpreting that as, 'I know the budget for next year is not exactly what you would want, but the next year, I swear, is going to be huge,'" Mr. Shamberg said.

(Clients have been swearing about next year for as long as there have been clients.)

Reduced client spending remains a top concern, cited by 38 percent of respondents, though that figure is down from 47 percent in 2025. What has risen to match it is anxiety about artificial intelligence, also selected by 38 percent. The external effects of new AI tools account for most of that worry, at 29 percent, with internal workforce concerns trailing at 9 percent.

The holding companies — WPP, Publicis, Omnicom, Havas and Dentsu among them — have spent considerable energy describing their AI strategies on earnings calls, though to ears on the client side, the descriptions have begun to blur together. Jay Wilson, a vice president analyst at Gartner, put it plainly: "The honeymoon around AI and agencies is essentially over."

A year ago, Mr. Wilson said, agencies promised AI would deliver cost efficiencies. Chief marketing officers asked if that meant lower fees. The answer was not quite yet. It still is.

Original story published in Digiday: "Digiday+ Research: Agencies punt budget growth expectations to 2027 -- while AI worries intensify"