Omnicom becomes the world’s largest agency holding company | MarTech

Through its $13.25 billion acquisition of Interpublic Group, Omnicom has vaulted past WPP to become the world’s largest agency holding company. Omnicom and Interpublic separately had been the third and fourth largest global ad buyers. The deal is expected to attract regulatory scrutiny.

Among the agencies owned by Omnicom are BBDO and TBWA, while Interpublic owns McCann, Weber Shandwick, Mediabrands and others. The remaining five members of the “big six,” with which the new giant will compete, are Dentsu, Havas, IPG, Publicis and WPP.

The technology angle. These holding companies and the agencies they support are struggling against the challenge presented by newer technology companies like Google and Meta which have become, fundamentally, advertising businesses. At present, Google and Meta offer sophisticated tools to create advertising content and vastly popular channels in which to deliver it.

One clear trend among the holding companies has been the blurring of lines between the agency practice and marketing technology. In particular, they have become heavy investors in artificial intelligence. Publicis Groupe announced in January plans to evolve into an “intelligent system” through a 300 million Euro investment in AI capabilities. Dentsu was an early adopter of Microsoft 365 Copilot. WPP has said it will find $317 million to invest each year in the data and technology underpinning its AI strategy. In 2023, Omnicom launched Omni Assist, a genAI solution developed in partnership with Microsoft.

Dig deeper: How the big holding companies are handling genAI

Why we care. As Google and Meta look more and more like media companies (pending the consequences of Google’s antitrust loss, of course), the holding companies and their agencies look more and more like martech. As we’ve said for a long time, martech is marketing. And martech is advertising too.

The analyst’s angle. Jay Wilson, VP analyst for Gartner’s marketing practice, said: “This is certainly a big deal — holding companies have been consolidating their stables of agencies for some time, in the hopes of providing a more comprehensive, streamlined solution to clients. This kind of goes in the opposite direction, making for a single, rather complex holding company.”

He also speculates that this might be good news for the larger independent agencies that might be more appealing to clients than a “mega agency holding company.”