What Agency Leaders Are Telling Brands About AI, and What It Means for Higher Ed

The agencies winning right now haven’t handed their work to AI. They’re using AI to help experienced people make better decisions, faster. That was the clearest message from MiQ’s Indie Circle in Chicago this week, a gathering built for leaders of independent agencies.

As Senior Director of Brand Awareness Marketing at EducationDynamics (EDDY), I was invited to attend as a member of MiQ’s Indie Circle advisory council. The room included an industry analyst, an agency CEO, and a former Fortune 500 marketer, all speaking candidly about what clients now expect from their partners. Their conversation was about agencies, but every point comes back to the institutions those agencies serve. Here’s what I think matters most for higher education marketers, and how it shapes the way we work at EDDY.

AI-supported, not AI-driven

Brian Wieser, founder of the advertising research and strategy firm Madison & Wall, is one of the most closely followed forecasters of the ad economy. His view: the prediction a few years ago that AI would replace agencies was overstated. What actually happened is that agencies became more tactical, and the industry kept growing. Madison & Wall raised its 2026 U.S. advertising forecast to 10.2% growth this spring, including political spend.

Wieser noted that independent agencies are growing too, at roughly 2% according to his read, and the reason matters. That growth is AI-supported, not AI-driven. The tools help teams organize data, spot planning opportunities, and see every metric in one place. A person still decides what to do with it.

He also pointed out how different budget management looks compared to ten years ago. Spend is watched and adjusted weekly, across more channels, with more signals. That pace is exactly where AI earns its keep, and exactly where human oversight keeps it honest.

There is a direct line between share of investment and share of market.

This is the line that I wrote down twice. For institutions weighing whether to hold or cut awareness spend, that is worth sitting with. Brands that stay visible keep their place in the consideration set; brands that go quiet hand it to someone else.

At EDDY, this is how we run awareness for higher education. AI helps our team read performance across every channel, every week. Our strategists decide what to change and why. And because visibility drives market share, we help institutions plan for consistent presence instead of stop-and-start bursts that hand ground to competitors.

Connected strategy works best

The client-side perspective came from Jill Kelly, North America CEO of the media agency Assembly, and Norm de Greve, who led marketing at General Motors and CVS Health before that. Both have hired and managed agencies at scale, and both said agencies are usually the first to see where the market is heading.

One theme they returned to was how much stronger the work gets when media and creative are planned together. As organizations add partners and specialized teams, it’s easy for the message and the media plan to develop on separate tracks. Keeping them connected helps the right story reach the right people.

In higher education, many teams own a piece of the work: brand, enrollment marketing, campus communications, and outside partners. That’s natural, and it’s also where a shared plan adds the most value. The strongest results we see come when audience, message, and channel are considered together from the start.

That’s why EDDY builds awareness plans with the full picture in view: who an institution needs to reach, what will resonate with them, and where they’ll see it. Every part of the work moves in the same direction.

Focus on the measures that matter

Another theme was focus. With so much data available, it’s tempting to track everything, and the panel noted that campaigns perform best when a small set of clear KPIs guides the work. A focused scorecard makes it easier to optimize and to see what’s working.

This is especially true for awareness in higher education. Enrollment is always the goal that matters most, and every institution rightly wants to know how media contributes to starts. Awareness supports that goal by doing a specific job earlier in the funnel, so it helps to measure it on the signals that show that job is getting done.

A simple way to structure it is a clear measure for each stage, agreed on together:

The panel also talked about aligning budget with goals. Different objectives carry different cost expectations, and planning them together from the start helps every dollar work toward the right outcome. That’s where a true partner earns its place: working alongside you on how you’ll reach the numbers, not just reporting them.

At EDDY, we agree on stage-specific measures with every partner before a campaign launches, then review them together as results come in. Awareness is judged on awareness, and every dollar stays tied to the enrollment goals behind it.

What clients now count as good agency work

AI has changed what clients expect from their partners. The panel kept returning to these things.

Show me how AI can help my ROI. Clients don’t want AI for its own sake. They want to know how it improves results and how it makes everyday processes faster. Workflow came up again and again as the biggest near-term win, inside agencies, inside client teams, and in the handoffs between them.

Bring the innovation to me. Clients expect their agency to be on the forefront: testing new tools, new channels, and new ways to scale market share before they have to ask.

Help me get more from what I already have. Many organizations are building in-house capabilities and investing in new tools. The best agency partners complement that work, helping teams get full value from their technology and data.

Underneath all is the same condition: AI only helps when people with real expertise are steering it and checking its work.

This is where EDDY stands apart. We bring the testing and new ideas to our partners, helping them get more from the tools and data they already have.

Why EDDY partners are already ahead

None of this was new to us. The standards these leaders described are the ones EDDY has built its higher education practice around.

• Human-led, AI-supported. We use AI to organize performance data, surface planning opportunities, and speed up the work. Every recommendation still comes from a strategist who knows your institution and your students.
• Fewer, clearer KPIs. We set the right measure for each stage of the funnel, so awareness is judged on awareness, and enrollment goals stay connected to the investment behind them.
• Share of voice, protected. Because share of investment and share of market move together, we help partners make the case for staying visible, and we’re candid about what a cut would likely cost.
• Connected strategy. Our work in higher education keeps audience, message, and channel in one plan, so every piece of the work pulls in the same direction.

AI is changing the work. It hasn’t changed what makes a partner worth having: experienced people who understand your goals, tell you the truth, and bring you what’s next before you have to ask.

That’s the partnership EDDY offers every institution we work with. If you’re rethinking how your institution builds awareness in an AI-shaped market, let’s talk.