‘Reinvent or Be Replaced,’ Access Holdings Chair Aig-Imoukhuede Warns Advertisers as AI Rewrites Rules

Artificial intelligence is turning traditional advertising services into commodities at “extraordinary speed,” and agencies that fail to reinvent themselves risk being left behind. That was the warning from Aigboje Aig-Imoukhuede, chairman of Access Holdings Plc.

Aig-Imoukhuede urged industry leaders to look past today’s disruption and build the foresight, knowledge and discipline needed to compete in a world where technology is quickly wearing down long-held competitive advantages.

“Frontiers make people nervous because they are where the map you know ends,” he told the National Advertising Conference 2026 in Abuja. “If a frontier is where the map runs out, being ready means being ready to draw a new map.”

He said the next frontier is defined not by geography but by how fast technology is changing.

He traced the industrial revolutions, from mechanisation and electricity to computing and the internet. Advertising, he said, now faces another fundamental shift before it has fully adjusted to the last one.

“Just as people in this room are coming to terms with the disruption brought by the internet, there is another wahala. We have to ask ourselves big questions about what it means for advertising,” Aig-Imoukhuede said.

The internet changed how advertising was distributed and consumed. AI, he argued, goes further: it attacks the economics of the services agencies have always sold.

“Everything you knew and did well, and thought you were beginning to master after the internet’s disruption, is becoming commoditised at an extraordinary speed,” he said.

To show how low the barriers to entry have fallen, he suggested a small team could now build a business covering much of the advertising value chain in a fraction of the usual time and cost.

“I could perhaps create it in three months, with two people: me and someone who understands the technology better than I do.”

Still, Aig-Imoukhuede rejected the idea that the industry is doomed. Instead, he said, technology will change where competitive advantage comes from and who gets the economic rewards.

“I do not think the entire advertising industry is about to be destroyed. What is about to change is who creates value, who captures value and who gets left behind.”

He also pointed to a possible surge in demand as more people see the need to promote their own skills and personal brands. He described how his daughter had to produce a video as part of an application to a highly selective American school. Self-promotion, he suggested, may soon become an essential life skill.

“Just as there was a point when not being able to drive was a problem, not being able to advertise yourself may become a problem,” he said.

His point for practitioners was that some traditional services may lose their premium value, but new markets will open for those ready to recognise them.

Aig-Imoukhuede used his own career to show the value of foresight. He recalled meeting a branding consultant in London’s Covent Garden around 1994, while he was at Guaranty Trust Bank. The consultant predicted that brand would become a key differentiator for African financial institutions.

That conversation, he said, shaped his view of an emerging chance to build a bank with a continental identity. He later identified 1999 to 2007 as a critical window to act, which helped lead him and his partners to pursue the acquisition of a bank.

The lesson, he said, is that lasting advantage often goes to those who recognise change early and act decisively while others are still adjusting to the present.

“Your sector is meant to help clients anticipate what the market will want,” he told practitioners. “To do that for them, you must first do it for yourselves.”