When I lived in London, I often looked up at the skyscrapers in the City and wondered what all those thousands of people inside actually did.

They weren’t making cars, building houses or producing anything particularly tangible. Yet entire towers were filled with people earning handsome salaries, collecting bonuses and spending their disposable income on comfortable lives.

Some worked in marketing departments commissioning campaigns and managing agencies. Others were the consumers buying the cars, holidays and countless products those campaigns promoted. The knowledge economy isn’t just generating wealth. It is generating the customers on whom modern advertising depends.

AI is beginning to challenge the economic assumptions underpinning that arrangement. While our industry remains preoccupied with creative production, potentially more consequential changes are emerging at both ends of the advertising transaction.

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The client isn’t who they used to be

Linkedin offers an indication of how marketing departments are changing. In May, an internal memo from its chief marketing and strategy officer, Jessica Jensen, outlined marketing-role reductions, tighter paid-media spending and greater use of AI workflows, against a backdrop of broader cost pressures.

In September, Gartner reported that 18% of marketing leaders surveyed had eliminated certain functional roles through automation, while nearly a third had redesigned existing positions. A separate Gartner survey found........

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