Abstract
The UK advertising and marketing sector is undergoing rapid transformation driven by Generative AI (GenAI), automation and accelerated digital change. This shift presents significant opportunities for growth, but also exposes widening skill gaps that threaten productivity, competitiveness, and creative originality. Evidence shows that future success will depend on hybrid capabilities that blend strong human-centric skills with digital and AI-related competencies.
Key Findings
Future Skills in Demand: Analysis of Kingston University’s regular Future Skills surveys of over 2000 UK business leaders highlights that creativity, problem-solving, communication skills, digital skills and critical thinking are seen by employers across all sectors and sizes as vital future skills. Digital skills have seen the largest increase in importance, reflecting AI’s growing impact.
Current Skills Gaps: Employers report widespread shortages in digital skills, alongside concerns that graduates are not adequately prepared for AI-enabled workplaces. Creativity and communication also emerge as areas where capability gaps are already affecting performance and talent pipelines.
Productivity Impact: Analysis of 500 job adverts from the advertising and marketing sector shows an average 24.6% productivity loss due to skill mismatches, costing firms approximately £10,584 per employee annually. Sector-wide, this equates to £2.7 billion per year, or 14% of annual Gross Value Added (GVA).
Emerging Fusion Skills: Horizon scanning and a foresight workshop identified a set of new hybrid “fusion skills” that are not yet widely recognised but will be essential for effective human AI collaboration. These are:
-Human-AI Intelligent Interrogation (effective prompting and reasoning with AI)
-Reciprocal Apprenticing (training AI agents to learn organisational context)
-Judgement Integration (deciding when to trust or override AI outputs).
Key Findings
Future Skills in Demand: Analysis of Kingston University’s regular Future Skills surveys of over 2000 UK business leaders highlights that creativity, problem-solving, communication skills, digital skills and critical thinking are seen by employers across all sectors and sizes as vital future skills. Digital skills have seen the largest increase in importance, reflecting AI’s growing impact.
Current Skills Gaps: Employers report widespread shortages in digital skills, alongside concerns that graduates are not adequately prepared for AI-enabled workplaces. Creativity and communication also emerge as areas where capability gaps are already affecting performance and talent pipelines.
Productivity Impact: Analysis of 500 job adverts from the advertising and marketing sector shows an average 24.6% productivity loss due to skill mismatches, costing firms approximately £10,584 per employee annually. Sector-wide, this equates to £2.7 billion per year, or 14% of annual Gross Value Added (GVA).
Emerging Fusion Skills: Horizon scanning and a foresight workshop identified a set of new hybrid “fusion skills” that are not yet widely recognised but will be essential for effective human AI collaboration. These are:
-Human-AI Intelligent Interrogation (effective prompting and reasoning with AI)
-Reciprocal Apprenticing (training AI agents to learn organisational context)
-Judgement Integration (deciding when to trust or override AI outputs).
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Place of Publication | Kingston upon Thames, U.K. |
| Publisher | Kingston University |
| Commissioning body | Publicis Media |
| Number of pages | 29 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 1 Jul 2026 |
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