Agencies are adding AI provisions to client contracts one clause at a time. Rather than reopening Master Service Agreements wholesale, they append addendums and individual clauses when a client asks for a seat inside an agency’s proprietary AI tool, requests specific AI language in the agreement, or when a new AI-powered tool goes to work on a single project. Four agency executives described the same piecemeal approach in September 2026, and none said they were ready to overhaul their MSAs.
At Mile Marker, the tweaks cover metadata management, ownership of the intellectual property in AI-generated content, and transparency about which tools were used. “We are not yet to the point where we’re creating appendix A or B specifically to spell out agentified execution,” said president and CEO Scott Shamberg. “We are at the point now where we are just simply working that into existing MSAs.” Go Fish Digital has added clauses on brand safety and data protection; president David Dweck said the agency does not typically charge for its proprietary tech. Clients are asking how their data is stored and used inside the walled gardens those proprietary tools create, and want human oversight, indemnity, tool disclosure and IP terms written down. “Ultimately, people want disclosure. They want to know what tools are being used,” said Keri Bruce, partner and head of the advertising group at Reed Smith.
Agencies have charged by the hour for a century. AI tools cut the hours a job takes, so agencies are selling proprietary generative tools and edging toward a software-as-a-service model without having settled how to price it. Dweck is not sold. “We’d rather stay with what’s familiar and how advertisers are paying agencies for a century versus trying to change the game up by trying to be a SaaS company,” he said. Brian Yamada, global chief innovation officer at VML, said the industry cannot standardize contract language until it agrees on an AI cost structure. “The market is changing so quickly that at least my advice is to make sure you’re building some flexibility into that, to re-examine,” he said.
Read more at Digiday.
EDITOR’S NOTE — DELETE BEFORE PUBLISHING.
The clip’s sentence about the four execs reads “None of the four agency execs Digiday spoke with, however, say they’re not ready to overhaul their MSAs” — a double negative that contradicts the rest of the piece. Read as “none are ready to overhaul”; worth a glance at the live article.
Go Fish Digital’s “over the past six months” converted to “in the six months to September 2026” against the September 10 dateline.
Crispin and Freddy Dabaghi were cut — their piecemeal-addendum point is the same one Shamberg makes with a quote. Say the word if you want Crispin named.