NAC 2026 Agency Forum: Unless We Reinvent Ourselves, We Risk Irrelevance, Panel Warns
The agency sector must urgently reinvent its business model or risk being bypassed by clients who are increasingly equipped to do the work themselves, a panel of industry leaders warned at the ongoing 2026 National Advertising Conference (NAC) in Abuja.
Speaking on the theme “Is the agency sector ready for the next frontier?”, the panel comprising Emeka Okeke, Group Managing Director of MediaFuse Dentsu; Lanre Ashaolu, Managing Director of Four Pulley Ltd; and Oluwaseyi Layade, COO of Leo Burnett Lagos delivered the assessment of an industry whose traditional value chain is increasingly being hollowed out by automation and shifting client expectations.
The session, held on the main conference floor at the Abuja Continental Hotel, followed a day of discussions that had already set an uneasy tone where Access Holdings Chairman Aigboje Aig-Imoukhuede had used his opening fireside chat to argue that clients no longer buy advertisements but value, challenging agencies to prove their worth beyond execution.
Okeke, the panel’s most articulate voice, argued that artificial intelligence will not replace agency jobs. The greater threat, he said, is that marketing managers who learn to use AI effectively will find fewer reasons to retain an agency at all. The traditional agency offering like campaign development, content production, media buying, asset creation is becoming cheaper and faster to execute in-house, and clients are gaining access to tools that were once the exclusive preserve of agencies. Unless the sector reinvents itself quickly, he warned, it risks becoming a dinosaur.
Okeke argued that agencies must move from selling execution to selling scale and qualitative audience data. Global platforms like Google, Meta, TikTok, offer mass reach, but agencies possess proximity to Nigerian consumers, behavioral insight and the ability to package that intelligence into platforms of their own. The missing ingredient, he said, is the right data bridge and the technical infrastructure to turn audience data into a product clients will pay for.
That ambition, the panel acknowledged, cannot be realised by agencies acting alone. Partnerships with commerce players, telecommunications companies and a new generation of technical talent are essential. Telcos, it was noted, sit on vast troves of consumer data that are currently used for little more than SMS blasts…an enormous wasted asset. Agencies that can forge meaningful partnerships with these data holders, and with the coders and Gen Z talent who understand how to activate that data, will be positioned to compete.
Ashaolu whose Four Pulley Ltd was a platinum partner of this year’s conference offered a counterweight to the panel’s digital anxiety. While digital channels are increasingly eating into traditional media budgets, he maintained that out-of-home advertising will always remain relevant. His argument rested on the irreplaceable qualities of physical presence and contextual relevance and the fact that OOH reaches audiences in the real world, at scale, in ways that algorithmic targeting cannot fully replicate.
Layade brought a creative-agency perspective to the discussion where her concern was the gap between visibility and genuine engagement, the risk that brands mistake reach for resonance, treating creators and platforms as distribution channels rather than creative partners. If agencies are to justify their fees in an automated landscape, the argument went, they must show the kind of impact that platforms cannot.
Though the panel did not reach a consensus on whether the agency sector is ready for the next frontier or not, the weight of the discussion showed that readiness is not about adopting AI tools but renegotiating the agency’s role entirely. The old bargain where agencies execute, and clients pay is breaking down. What replaces it, the panel suggested, must be built on data ownership, strategic partnership and creative value that cannot be automated.
