MTM research underpins IAB UK’s latest State of AI in Advertising report

MTM contributed to new research from IAB UK examining how artificial intelligence is moving digital advertising from automation towards increasingly autonomous systems. 

IAB UK’s latest report, The State of AI in Advertising: Charting the Shift from Automation to Autonomy, brings together consumer research, advertiser and industry surveys, expert interviews and forecasting to assess how generative and agentic AI are changing the advertising ecosystem. 

The findings point to rapid experimentation across the industry. 58% of IAB UK members said they were experimenting with or piloting agentic AI, with a further 16% already scaling agentic systems or operating “agent-first” marketing workflows. At the same time, only 4% considered themselves fully agent-first, highlighting the gap between experimentation and widespread operational adoption. 

The report forecasts that AI-driven advertising spend in the UK could reach approximately £18 billion by 2030, equivalent to around 32% of total digital ad spend. It also identifies trust, transparency, governance and accountability as significant barriers to further adoption, while AI-led changes to search and discovery are already influencing how advertisers structure content and think about visibility. 

The research provides a snapshot of an industry moving quickly towards AI-enabled ways of planning, creating and buying media, while highlighting the questions businesses still need to solve before greater autonomy can scale.