Agents Of Change
Shrinking is a necessary part of growth – that is, according to Omnicom, which is consolidating after absorbing fellow holding company IPG.
IPG had already cut thousands of jobs prior to the merger, and now Omnicom estimates that about 4,000 more positions will be eliminated.
Florian Adamski, CEO of Omnicom Media Group, describes the decision to Adweek as “building a company for the future,” rather than “eradicating jobs.”
And it’s not just individual roles that are being eradicated (er, sorry, that are “building a company for the future”); it’s entire brands, too.
The creative agencies FCB, DDB and MullenLowe will “cease to exist” as independent companies. As has happened with WPP’s creative fleet, these long-time agency names will instead roll into one of Omnicom’s three surviving global ad agencies: TBWA, BBDO, and McCann. (FCB will fall under BBDO, while DDB and MullenLowe join TBWA.)
On a brighter note (for advertisers, at least), OmniPlus, a new end-to-end operating system, will launch in early 2026. The OmniPlus product, according to CTO Paolo Yuvienco, is “by far, bar none, the most elite data set in the world.”
Definitely no hyperbole there.
No Cap(ital)
Publishers aren’t just losing web traffic to AI overviews; they’re also losing out on interest from potential buyers and investors, reports Digiday.
According to data from PitchBook, there have been fewer venture capital deals with publishing companies (both print and digital) in 2025 compared to this time last year.
Most of that activity has been focused on newsletter-based media ventures and tech platforms – like Substack, which raised $100 million in VC funding in July, and Air Mail, which was bought by newsletter publisher Puck in September.
So far, deal sizes are higher than they were in 2024 (although Paramount’s $150 million acquisition of The Free Press in October may be an outlier there). Several analysts that Digiday spoke to say that, overall, investors are holding back and making lower offers.
Why? Because they’re unsure how publishers will respond to the looming threat of AI and whether their sites will find new ways to effectively monetize audiences.
Right now, the whole category looks like a falling knife.
Many publishers are building new revenue pillars, such as creator or influencer programs, as well as podcasts and video content. But it’s too early to know if those strategies will amount to anything substantial – and, possibly, too late to save the revenue that’s already been lost.
Don’t Aggregate The Player, Aggregate The Game
There is a strong belief – more substantiated than mere speculation – that ChatGPT will soon introduce an ads business model.
Most ChatGPT users would probably prefer that OpenAI not, please. But for many business analysts observing the AI category, the feeling is, “What are you waiting for already?”
Google took only two years to begin advertising on its search engine. Facebook acquired Instagram in 2012 and introduced ads in 2015. OpenAI’s “refusal” to launch an ads product, as put by Ben Thompson at Stratechery, “is a dereliction of business duty.”
As Thompson argues, ChatGPT competes with companies like Google and Meta, which gain their strength fundamentally from the number of individual everyday users. The best business model fit for this aggregator model is advertising. This stands in contrast to Microsoft or Apple, which he describes as aggregating services and business, then taking a cut of the platform economy.
Google doesn’t even have to offer a superior product. ChatGPT may practically dethrone itself “by refusing to adopt an Aggregator’s optimal business model.”
But Wait! There’s More
After 18 years, John Halley will leave his position as president of Paramount Advertising. [Variety]
How David Sacks, Trump’s AI and crypto czar, almost made a play to preempt state AI laws across the country. [The Verge]
Recent surveys by the Census Bureau and others suggest AI adoption at work is stagnating, or bifurcating. One survey by Dayforce found executives (87%) and managers (57%) are far more likely to use AI on the job than workers (27%). [The Economist]
Researchers confirm that increasing the prevalence of “partisan animosity” in a user’s X feed leads to a marked increase in political polarization, and that reducing such content prevalence has the opposite effect. [Science]
You’re Hired
Outfront Media hires Stacy Minero as chief marketing and experience officer and Abhi Vyas as VP of performance marketing. [Variety]
Check My Ads hires EU digital policy scholar Dr. Aleksandre Zardiashvili (aka Lex Zard) as director of policy. [release]
