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The Spark Report:
From Activity to Advantage
2026
The real picture of AI in agencies
89% of your team are saving time with AI every week. Find out why most of that value is disappearing – and what the agencies pulling ahead are doing differently.
The efficiency is real. The return on it, for most agencies, is not.
Your team is using AI. 89% of agency staff are recovering up to ten hours a week. The time is being saved. And for most agencies, it’s disappearing straight back into emails, meetings, and doing more of the same, faster.
83% of your people will tell you they’re capable AI users. Our data shows only 15% are operating at the level that actually shifts how an agency works and competes. The majority have plateaued at competent prompting – and the ceiling is organisational, not individual.
That gap has a commercial dimension. Acquirers and investors are evaluating AI maturity as a valuation factor. Clients are making formal governance a procurement baseline. And the divide between your most and least active AI users is now wider than the gap between one agency and another.
None of this is a reason to panic. It’s a reason to act.
AI in Agencies: From Activity to Advantage
The Spark Report · Edition 4
confident with AI
operationalising it
What we found
83% of agency staff say they're confident using AI. But only 15% of agencies are building it into how they actually operate. Confidence and capability look similar from the outside – they're not the same thing.
Is individual confidence masking organisational inaction? When everyone feels like they "get it" but the business hasn't changed, whose job is it to close the gap?
More than half of AI usage is happening with no formal governance – no whitelisted tools, no data handling training, no policy. Staff are innovating alone, carrying the agency's legal and IP exposure.
Your team is almost certainly using AI on client work right now. If there's no governance, who's carrying that risk? What happens when a client asks?
Around 70% of agencies are still at the Experimentation stage – individual prompting, no shared context, no strategy. The jump to Adoption requires leadership decisions, not better prompts.
If most agencies are in the same place, where's the competitive advantage – being first, or embedding it properly even if you're slower to start?
Where does your organisation sit?
Our research found ~70% of agencies at Experimentation. How does that compare?
Where agencies are today
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The Spark Report: AI in Agencies – From Activity to Advantage.
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Six dimensions. One clear picture.
The Spark Report maps AI adoption using the Spark AI Maturity Model – the same framework we use with 70+ agency clients to build their roadmap forward. The question isn’t whether your agency is using AI. You are. The question is whether you’re building something lasting from it.
Part 1: The state of AI in agencies
Productivity: where the time is going, and why it keeps disappearing
Governance: why 52% of AI activity is still informal, and the risk that creates
Confidence:the gap between what people say and what the data shows
Organisational adoption: the two-speed workforce problem, and how to close it
Commercial model: how AI in creative generation went from 20% to 47% in six months
Environmental responsibility:what the evidence actually shows, and what leadership should be saying
Part 2: Moving forward
A 90-day plan from fragmented experimentation to structured AI capability
Seven AI use cases agencies are deploying right now, with an entry point and an advanced build for each
Case studies from Omne, mark-making*, Not Actual Size, and Tuncarp
A practical guide to making the case to your board
What the data shows
89% of agency staff are saving time with AI - some as much as 10 hours a week.
52% of AI activity is still informal – no governance, no guardrails.
83% report themselves as capable AI users, yet only 15% are operating at that level
75% of agencies haven’t updated client contracts to reflect AI usage
47% of agency tasks now use AI in content and creative generation – up from 20% in six months.
13% raised environmental concerns about AI unprompted in our surveys
This research is also available as a tailored presentation, delivered in-house or virtually by experts who deeply understand the creative agency and AI landscape. The presentation bridges macro trends with actionable strategies designed to empower your team and support your business to remain competitive in a world with AI.
Want to understand how it can drive results for your agency?
Proven results for creative teams
After working with Spark AI:
9.7/10
Average course rating
100%
Agency Leaders would recommend Spark AI
100%
Felt more confident
4/5
Felt more or much more optimistic (nobody felt less!)