John Wren

Omnicom just reported its first earnings since closing the IPG deal and, shocker, it’s saying AI is main growth driver for combined holdco.

Water is wet, the sun sets in the west and Omnicom still says it expects to close its merger with IPG in the second half of this year.

Do Google AI Overviews really bring exposure to more websites?; Meta considered an all-ad Instagram feed; and agencies are cautiously optimistic even as tariff concerns threaten upfronts season.

Why worry about AI replacing jobs when a megamerger might make them redundant?

Antitrust regulation has counterintuitively favored the biggest ad industry players. Plus, another streaming service, anyone?

Rival browsers raise an objection to Google being forced to sell Chrome; ad agencies pivot to software and services; and people are turning to chatbots instead of search, with error-filled results.

Another big ad industry acquisition? Truly, it’s a Christmas miracle. Omnicom’s board of directors has unanimously approved a deal to acquire IPG, itself a major holding company.

While other holding companies are touting their AI roadmaps, Omnicom is focusing more on a different shiny object: retail and commerce media.

Agency holding company Omnicom’s going all in on generative AI – a topic that dominated its earnings call Tuesday.

Omnicom saw 5.2% organic revenue growth, or $178.7 million YoY, in the first quarter of 2023. The agency holding company reported total revenues of $3.44 billion, with net income up by 30.9% to $227.5 million, according to the company’s earnings call Tuesday.

Omnicom mitigated the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on its business in part by cutting 6,100 jobs across its network in the second quarter, the company said Tuesday during its earnings call. Omnicom also froze hiring, eliminated salary increases, implemented voluntary pay cuts across its agencies and participated in government subsidy programs in 35 markets. […]

The remote work experiment caused by COVID-19 will transform agencies. Automation will become even more integral to agency workflows as consumer media habits shift, changing the nature of talent and services. Highly office-driven cultures will shift to a more remote, distributed workforce, as companies reduce their real estate holdings to drive efficiencies during the economic […]

Like its competitors, Omnicom expects steep declines in the second quarter as the COVID-19 pandemic rages on. “In the preliminary forecasts we looked at, the second quarter was the most traumatic,” said CEO John Wren on the company’s Q1 2020 earnings call Tuesday. Omnicom also declined to give guidance for the rest of the year […]

Omnicom does not intend to buy a data company, even after Publicis Groupe bought Epsilon ($4.4 billion), IPG bought Acxiom ($3.2 billion) and Dentsu Aegis bought Merkle ($1.5 billion). Omnicom steadfastly believes that owning a data company would compromise its neutrality when serving advertisers. “Our systems have always been open and unbiased,” CEO John Wren […]

Omnicom is shedding nonstrategic assets to invest in data, technology and analytics. That strategy was made clear by management on the company’s Q2 and H1 earnings call Tuesday, when Omnicom reported organic growth in North America was down 0.9% for Q2 and 0.5% for the first half of the year. Worldwide revenues for the quarter […]

Spend on Omnicom’s trading desk Accuen continues to decline as brands increasingly favor disclosed programmatic buying models. Accuen’s Q4 revenue declined by $12 million globally and $17 million in the US year over year. Before Q3, when Accuen’s revenues first began declining YoY,  Accuen’s revenue had grown between $18 million and $45 million each quarter […]

The past year was a tough one for agency holding companies. WPP, Omnicom, Publicis Groupe, IPG, Dentsu Aegis Network and Havas posted little to no growth in 2017. The agency business has been in flux for years, but 2017 offered the “perfect storm” of challenges that caused growth to stutter, said Greg Paull, principal analyst […]

One of the many pressures facing holding companies is increased competition from management and IT consultancies like Accenture, Deloitte, IBM and PricewaterhouseCoopers. While consulting firms may not be their biggest threat today, tomorrow could be another story. Holding companies tend to work from the bottom up, focusing on marketing initiatives like creative or media strategy […]

Omnicom’s trading desk Accuen shrank $9 million, or 0.2% year over year, in the US this quarter because clients continue to favor fully disclosed programmatic buys, the company said Tuesday. In other markets, where nondisclosed buys have generally been more accepted by marketers, Accuen was almost flat, growing by just $2 million in the quarter. […]

Both Publicis Groupe and Omnicom focused on the need to transform their clients’ businesses and their own during their respective Q2/H1 earnings on Thursday. “We want to be the leader in marketing and business transformation,” Arthur Sadoun told investors on his first-ever earnings call as Publicis Groupe CEO. “Our clients need to transform.” Publicis saw […]

Growth at Accuen was flat last quarter as more clients moved away from nondisclosed programmatic buying methods, where agencies procure inventory and resell it to clients with an unrevealed markup, said Omnicom CEO John Wren on the company’s first-quarter earnings call on Tuesday. “A lot of clients have shifted to wanting these services on a […]

Revenue from Omnicom’s trading desk Accuen grew $33 million in Q4 and $86 million over the full year in 2016, the company said in its Q4 earnings call on Tuesday. Q4 marked the highest incremental growth Accuen saw all year. In the two preceding years, Accuen’s contribution to Omnicom’s overall revenue fluctuated between $20 million and […]

Less than a year old, Hearts & Science, Omnicom Group’s data-driven, integrated agency, has grabbed major accounts from rival holding companies. With Procter & Gamble and AT&T, the agency gained the two largest media accounts in the world within the first four months of its existence. Now Hearts & Science is starting to expand internationally, with […]

Advertisers’ concerns around viewability and fraud are slowing down spend on digital advertising, said Daryl Simm, chairman and CEO of Omnicom Media Group during the holding company’s Q2 2016 earnings call on Thursday morning. “While [advertisers] are continuing to grow their digital budgets, there is a tap at the brakes in that space as some […]

The lawyers may be scurrying and the deal fees mounting, but Omnicom and Publicis are still on track to complete their $35 billion megamerger by early 2014. The companies are making slow but steady progress on achieving regulatory approval for the deal, Omnicom CEO John Wren told investors on the company’s Q3 earnings call this morning. […]