Marketing Briefing: The case for and against Omnicom acquiring IPG

It’s an end-of-year shake-up for adland: The third largest agency holding company, Omnicom, announced plans to acquire the fourth largest agency holding company, IPG, yesterday morning. The combination will have Omnicom leapfrog Publicis and WPP to become the world’s largest holding company, together accounting for $25 billion in annual ad revenue and over 100,000 employees, should the acquisition be approved by regulators. 

Consolidation has been the name of the game for some time for holding companies albeit at a much smaller scale. Think Dentsu Creative, Omnicom Advertising Group, VML, to name a few. There’s been a push to combine agencies (sometimes doing away with agency brands), find efficiencies where possible (like back office overlap) and use the scale of a bigger shop to woo advertisers. The push to do so is expected to continue with this acquisition. 

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