New Delhi, Feb. 22 -- When WPP Media releases its annual report on the state of the advertising industry, the focus is typically on evolving expenditures. This time, it was somewhere else.

At the media agency network's presentation of This Year Next Year report at its suburban Mumbai office last week, the buzz was all about artificial intelligence (AI), the transformative technology sweeping the world. Not surprising, either. Out of 10 key trends that WPP Media expects to shape Indian advertising, three feature AI-the role of AI agentic ecosystem, the evolution of search advertising, and the use of AI in targeting audiences more precisely.

"We no longer need to learn only how to use AI tools; we become orchestrators," Upali Nag Kumar, p...