Advertising production consultancy MurphyCobb has launched Amplify, a separate business designed to help advertisers figure out where AI, digital twins, virtual production, experiential formats and automation actually belong in planning, making and adapting campaigns. Francisco Lima, previously MurphyCobb’s head of AI and production technologies, runs the new unit as general manager.
For performance and growth teams, the signal is clear: production pressure is no longer about making more assets. It is about deciding which tools deserve budget and proving they work before scaling.
What Amplify is supposed to do
Amplify positions itself as a client-side, vendor-neutral adviser. Its pitch is not tool implementation but operating-system change: diagnose where emerging tech creates value, validate it against a baseline, then scale what survives.
The venture’s scope is deliberately broader than generative AI. MurphyCobb says it covers digital twins, virtual production, experiential work and automation, alongside content systems, data and production intelligence. The goal is to move clients from experimentation to measurable production impact in efficiency, cost, speed and quality.
“Clients aren’t asking why they need to invest in emerging technologies but where, how and what to do to govern, measure and scale it effectively across the organisation,” Lima said.
Six workstreams, one common thread
Amplify lists six areas of support:
- Rapid clarity: separate genuine use cases from hype.
- Proof before scale: validate approaches against existing results.
- Governance by design: build IP, provenance and risk controls early.
- Minimising wasted effort: test technology against real problems and measurable baselines.
- Independent advice: select vendors around client needs.
- Evidence base: support investment decisions for future operating models.
Read together, these sound more like assurance and procurement than production. That is the point: the bottleneck is rarely asset creation now, it is approval chains and proof standards.
Why this matters for marketers
Recent data explains the timing. WARC and TikTok found 88% of marketers reported higher creative volume after adopting generative AI, but only 45% saw significant quality gains. Typeface’s Signal Report found 92% of marketing leaders say campaigns now need ten or more stakeholders, while 44% need 20 or more people for a single launch, up from 10% in 2025. Generation is fast; sign-off is the bottleneck.
At the same time, trust and ROI are weak points. TripleLift found 67% of ad professionals cite lack of trust in AI output as a reason for manual oversight. TransUnion research found only 53% of marketing leaders report meaningful ROI from AI, even as budgets rise.
Amplify’s “proof before scale” principle is a response to that gap. For advertisers, it means another checkpoint between vendor claims and internal adoption. For agencies and production partners, it means an evaluator on the client side that will test tools against baselines.
The independence question and AI Act pressure
Amplify says it is not tied to any vendor, platform or technology stack. That independence claim will be watched closely because MurphyCobb runs its own production technology platform, Control Room. The announcement does not say whether Amplify can recommend that platform, exclude it, or how conflicts would be handled.
Governance is not just internal. The EU AI Act’s Article 50 transparency obligations became applicable on August 2, 2026, with fines of up to €15 million or 3% of worldwide turnover. Provenance layers such as C2PA metadata and SynthID watermarks are becoming technical requirements, not nice-to-haves. The IAB’s AI Transparency and Disclosure Framework also notes that labelling AI-generated ads can cut click-through by 31.5%, so disclosure has a real performance cost.
What to watch
No pricing, named Amplify clients, case studies or headcount have been published yet. The venture’s own success will likely be judged by the same standard it sells: proof before scale. If Amplify can show independent, measurable improvements for early clients, it could become a meaningful new category in AI production consulting.
Source: PPC Land
