At ATS Singapore last week, Omnicom-owned PHD’s APAC president, Eileen Ooi, estimated AI is currently delivering “about 10% to 20%” productivity gains across the agency’s automation of insights and reporting, while stating the industry still has significant hurdles to overcome around AI adoption. Ooi said agentic capabilities are now integrated throughout Omnicom’s Omni platform, but when asked whether the organization had reached a gold standard in AI adoption, she replied, “Hand to heart, no. … We’re at a pivoting stage.” She challenged the idea that agentic AI might simply replace human decision-making, calling it “the biggest myth that we really have to break.” Ganga Chirravuri, president of product and solution development at Dentsu, argued that “the definition of AI itself is fairly bastardized right now,” noting that generative AI represents the latest evolution rather than a new capability. Ooi also argued the industry is overlooking the cost of deploying AI at scale, stating, “Tech cost has always been absorbed by [the] agency. … I think we now need to have a conversation more openly with our clients around the fact that tech does cost money to the organization,” adding that “there is a need to have a conversation around blended costs now.”