Who is putting it to work

The current users fall into distinct operating models:

• Global brands: Coca-Cola, Lexus, Mars/Pedigree, Cadbury, Virgin Voyages, Etsy, Heinz. They tend to use AI within brand-controlled systems, personalized distribution, or high-visibility experiments.
• Agencies: Rethink, The&Partnership, Wavemaker, Ogilvy, VML, Colenso BBDO, and Native Foreign use AI as creative material, personalization infrastructure, or production acceleration.
• Production and creative studios: Nexus Studios, Silverside AI, and specialist AI/video studios use models for previsualization, controlled image/video generation, and post.
• Platforms: Google, Meta, TikTok, Amazon, Spotify, Adobe, and CRM vendors are integrating generation with delivery and measurement, making “AI in advertising” part of the ad-buying interface itself.
• Small teams and creators: They gain access to storyboards, product scenes, multilingual versions, transcription, captioning, and content calendars that previously required more specialized staff.
• Nonprofits and public-interest work: Pedigree Adoptable demonstrates a strong use case where the model’s value is operational visibility for real subjects. Public-service and political campaigns require higher scrutiny because deception, targeting, and public-interest content can cause direct harm.

The key distinction is not the size of the user. It is whether the organization has an accountable creative owner, a data/rights boundary, and a process for seeing the actual asset that audiences receive.