Which AI trends should an independent agency follow so it doesn’t fall behind? The one that matters most isn’t a particular tool but a shift in scale. AI makes execution cheaper and moves value towards research, strategy and coordination between specialisms. That’s why independents are joining forces. The good news is that scale is no longer measured in headcount alone.
October has sent two clear signals from Spain. According to El Publicista, Jungle has created Jungle Design Industries, bringing four firms under one structure: Move (branding), Redbility (digital design and user experience), Lúcid (industrial and service design) and Invisible (strategy, research and futures). Together they employ 100 people across Madrid, Barcelona and the Basque Country, and turned over €12m in 2025. Days earlier, the same outlet reported that SAMY was buying US agency Get Engaged to accelerate its expansion in the United States. (Disclosure: SAMY is a Defy client.)
Two very different deals, one shared logic: pool capabilities to compete with those who have more. The interesting part is the role AI plays in that logic, and what it means for agencies that don’t want to merge, or can’t.
Why are independent agencies joining forces?
Three reasons keep coming up. The first is breadth: big clients want fewer suppliers and more integration. According to El Publicista, the firms in the new group work for brands such as BBVA, Inditex, CaixaBank, Iberdrola, Repsol, Telefónica and Moeve. With clients like that, four separate firms carry less weight than one firm with four disciplines.
The second is measurement. The article cites the Spain Design Index 2026: 52.6% of Spanish companies have no indicators to assess design’s impact on their results, in a market worth more than €1bn a year. Whoever can prove results holds a huge advantage.
The third is AI. Jungle says it plainly: artificial intelligence is transforming working processes and cutting execution times, which makes research, strategic decisions and the coordination of specialisms matter more. Jaime Bisbal, who heads the new group, puts it this way: design “has stopped being a specialism” and become “a strategic lever that influences how companies innovate”.
Is AI the cause or the excuse?
There’s a comfortable way to read all this: AI changes everything, so merging is inevitable. That’s technological determinism, the idea that technology on its own dictates how companies and society organise themselves. It’s partly right. When production gets cheaper, value moves elsewhere and structures rearrange themselves.
But technology pushes; it doesn’t decide. AI doesn’t force anyone to merge. It forces one question: where does your value sit now? If it sits in execution, you have a margin problem. If it sits in understanding people better than anyone else, AI is a multiplier.
That’s why today’s chaos has a way out. Agencies that connect their data with what they know about people find clarity: which services to keep, which to automate, who to partner with. Those that simply pile up tools pile up noise.
What “scale” means when execution gets cheaper
For decades, scale meant headcount. More people, more offices, more accounts. The holding groups added another layer: millions invested in analytics, data and AI, which they then sell to clients as an advantage. Against that, a 40-person independent didn’t stand much of a chance.
Now scale is starting to mean something else: shared intelligence. A common layer of data on audiences, competitors and creative that every discipline can tap into. There are three ways to get that layer, and none of them is free.
| Route | What you gain | What you risk | What AI brings |
|---|---|---|---|
| Merge with other independents, like Jungle Design Industries | Breadth of services and the size to handle big accounts | Months of integration, overlaps and culture clashes | A shared research base that connects specialisms |
| Join a group with capital behind it, as Get Engaged did with SAMY | Global reach, technology and talent, according to its CEO, Alex Dermer | Autonomy, and growth targets you no longer set | The group’s shared technology |
| Stay independent and rely on platforms that already exist | Autonomy, focus and speed of decision | Dependence on suppliers, and the discipline to adopt properly | Holding-group analytical capability without the development cost |
Which AI trends should independent agencies be watching?
Forget the lists of fifty tools. For an independent, these are the five trends that move margin and win accounts:
- Agents for repetitive delivery. Monthly reports, competitor audits, budget tracking, resizing assets. It’s the work that eats the most hours and makes the least difference. SAMY, for example, cut its performance reporting from three days of work to one with Defy Agents.
- Data you query by conversation. The team asks the data questions as it would a colleague, from the assistant it already uses, instead of learning yet another dashboard.
- Traceable conclusions. Insights that can be checked against the real posts behind them. When the client asks “where does this come from?”, the answer is one click away.
- Creative assessed before spend. Scoring a piece’s click likelihood before paying for media changes the conversation about results.
- Measuring impact. That 52.6% of companies with no indicators for design is an opportunity for any independent that can prove what it contributes.
How to decide your route in five steps
- Audit where the hours go. For a month, separate execution time from thinking time. The ratio will tell you how much margin is at stake.
- List what clients ask for that you don’t have. Are you short of disciplines and people, or of data and tools? They’re different problems with different solutions.
- Decide what to build, what to buy and what to use as a service. Developing and maintaining your own data and AI stack is exactly the cost independents can’t afford. That’s where Defy’s proposition sits: the same analytical and AI capability as the holding groups, without the cost of building it or the burden of maintaining it. You can see how it fits together in the Defy platform.
- Pilot it on one account for a quarter. Measure hours freed up, quality of deliverables and the client’s reaction.
- Only then look at mergers or alliances. With data from your own operation you’ll know what you’re genuinely missing, and you won’t buy size to paper over a tooling problem.
What doesn’t change
Consolidation will carry on. There will be more deals like Jungle’s and more acquisitions like SAMY’s. But the underlying reason isn’t that AI makes people unnecessary. It’s that AI exposes who brings judgement and who only brings hours.
Independents have always competed on the same things: closeness, craft and the nerve to tell the client what they don’t want to hear. AI replaces none of that. It takes the timesheets, the monthly reports and the hand-built competitor audits off people’s desks, so talent can get on with the work that wins accounts.
