The ad industry world of 2030: Three things we need to get right now

Opinion | Future of Talent and Leadership Week in Focus

The ad industry of 2030 is being built now. If we want to avoid Taco Bell’ing the future, we need to start asking some uncomfortable questions so everyone has a place, Lianre Robinson writes.

It’s October 2026, and I’m not sure where the year went. The months have disappeared faster than a bar of milk caramel sea salt Tony’s Chocolonely in my hand. We started this decade with a global pandemic. Now we’re more than two-thirds of the way through, and the same fundamental challenges still hold our industry back: who gets in, who gets on, and who stays.

2030 might still sound futuristic. But in reality, we’re building it now.  If you remember the cult classic 90s film Demolition Man, set in 2032, where every restaurant is a Taco Bell because it was the only chain to survive the franchise wars! (Or Pizza Hut, if you saw the international version). No disrespect to Taco Bell, but a future where only one kind of player makes it through isn’t one anyone should want. 

If variety is the spice of life, diversity is the spice of our industry.

AI is changing how work gets done, agency structures are becoming flatter, entry-level roles are under pressure, and the skills businesses need are shifting.

Change itself isn’t bad. But we don’t often ask these questions when we talk about our industry’s future: who gets to be part of it? And are we inadvertently Taco Bell’ing the future?

Because if we aren’t careful, we could end up with an industry that is more efficient and technologically advanced, but less diverse, less accessible and less representative of the people and audiences it’s supposed to understand.

So, as we look towards this future, there are three things we must get right now.

Short cut, long loss

AI might make some parts of agency life faster and more efficient. But if that efficiency means stripping back junior and entry-level roles, we need to ask a fairly obvious question: where does the next generation come from?

Junior roles aren’t simply a way of getting a PowerPoint built or a spreadsheet updated. They’re where people learn how an agency works, make mistakes, ask questions and develop a point of view.

They’re also where future leaders come from.

If those first steps into the industry start disappearing, we risk creating a much narrower route in, where people are expected to arrive already equipped with the experience previous generations had the opportunity to develop.

And there’s a representation question here too. 

If women and young people are disproportionately affected by a shrinking entry-level talent pool, we risk making the industry less diverse before people have even had the chance to progress.

The irony is that we’re entering a period where different perspectives and ways of thinking could be more valuable than ever. So if AI is creating shortcuts, let’s not press the wrong one and delete the talent pipeline.

Will the real  2030 leaders please stand up?

The industry of 2030 is unlikely to look much like the industry of 2010.

Teams will be flatter, some traditional roles will disappear, new skills will emerge, and AI will take on more tasks that once required large teams.

So, what does leadership actually look like in that environment? And, perhaps more importantly, who do we recognise as having leadership potential?

For a long time, we’ve had a fairly narrow idea of what a leader looks like. Confidence, visibility and being comfortable putting yourself forward have often been mistaken for leadership potential.

A changing landscape needs a new definition of leadership, one built on curiosity, collaboration, adaptability, and the ability to ask better questions and bring different perspectives together. Otherwise, the industry will change but the people we choose to lead it won’t.

Representation needs to survive the transformation

Representation can sometimes be treated as an HR issue: a percentage on a dashboard, a target in a report, a number we check once a year. But representation isn’t simply about who works in an agency. It changes the work. Who is in the room influences which questions get asked, whose experiences are understood and what ideas make it through the process.

That becomes even more important as AI plays a greater role in how work is developed and decisions are made. We need to think carefully about who is building the systems, setting the parameters and deciding what good looks like. 

Another question: who is disappearing?

What happens to women returning from career breaks? And when organisations restructure and rewrite job descriptions, are we inadvertently creating new barriers to progression?

Then there’s pay. If we’re redesigning the workforce, we need to make sure we aren’t quietly rebuilding the same inequalities in a different form. New roles and new job titles shouldn’t become an excuse to lose sight of equal pay. 

Build the future deliberately

The ad agency world of 2030  will be the result of thousands of decisions made between now and then: who we hire, who we develop, who gets promoted and who gets a seat at the table when the industry changes.

AI will undoubtedly change the shape of our agencies. But technology doesn’t decide what those agencies look like. We do.

We have three years to shape the end of this decade. That’s not a huge amount of time, so let’s start now and make sure there’s a place in it for everyone.

Lianre Robinson is an WACL Campaigning committee member and CEO of The Marketing Academy Foundation.