Tag: holdcos
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Agency Leaders Predict Growth in Outcomes-Based Pricing, but Face Challenges.
Eighty-five percent of agency leaders expect to do more outcomes-based pricing. The consultancy that studied it says pure versions are “exceedingly rare” — what agencies more frequently agree to is an output fee with a performance measure bolted on. Sixty-nine percent name attribution as a barrier, and the same share name procurement.
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S4 Doubled First-Half Profit. Sorrell Says the Token Spending Has Been “Ill-Disciplined.”
S4 Capital’s margins widened to 12.3% and its first-half operating profit doubled. Its chair says the company has been ill-disciplined on token spending, and Goldman Sachs expects token consumption to rise 24-fold by 2030. Monks passes token costs to clients at no margin.
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WPP’s $1.8 Billion Enterprise Unit Is Selling Operating Models, Not Campaigns
WPP Enterprise Solutions now has a product line: five AI services, 12,000 people, $1.8 billion in revenue, and Accenture and Deloitte in its sights. The offer is an operating model rather than a campaign — and its CEO says the 2027 scorecard won’t be a dollar figure.
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Omnicom Media’s CEO Says the Holdco Is Now a “Capability Company”
Ralph Pardo runs the North American arm of the world’s largest agency holding company, and he says the traditional holdco is finished. His argument isn’t that AI is coming for agencies — it’s that AI has flattened the scale advantage holdcos were built to sell.
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Nano Banana 2: When Product Shots Go From “All-Day Edit” to “Blink and It’s Done
WPP says it’s been testing Google’s newest Generative Media model, Nano Banana 2, through early access—alongside Unilever and The Coca-Cola Company. The headline result isn’t “cool AI stuff,” it’s practical: the team reports better reasoning and grounding, which translated into factually accurate outputs and high-fidelity visuals (read: fewer weird brand-label hallucinations and less time fixing…
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The promise and problem of agentic AI in advertising
AI agents were everywhere around the Super Bowl this year—so brands are doing the obvious thing: chasing attention where the attention is. The twist is that both consumers and the industry are still figuring out what “agentic” actually means in practice, even as platforms keep shipping new tools. Google’s Ashish Gupta pointed to longer, more…
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Publicis Buys a Creative Crystal Ball (AdgeAI Joins the Fold)
Publicis Groupe just added another item to its AI shopping cart, acquiring Israel-based AdgeAI for an undisclosed price—funded from the $970 million deal budget it’s set aside for 2026. AdgeAI is a predictive creative analytics platform that uses machine learning to forecast which parts of an ad (video, images, text, GIFs) are most likely to…
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AI Personas Meet Real-Time Culture: Agencies Test a New Insight Stack
Horizon Media, Dentsu’s Carat, and others are piloting a consumer intelligence setup built through a Slightly + Vurvey Labs partnership. The hook: Vurvey uses video surveys to create “people models” and AI personas that simulate customer behavior with claimed 93–95% accuracy—aimed at speeding product development, marketing decisions, and co-creation by turning human feedback into something…
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S4 Capital betting on agency subscription model
S4 Capital’s Sir Martin Sorrell is talking less about whether the billable hour declines, and more about what replaces it. The answer, at least for S4, is subscriptions. On the company’s latest earnings call, Sorrell described a model built around fixed annual fees that bundle senior talent with agentic workflows, brand-specific knowledge bases, and periodic…
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Stagwell Unveils New AI-Powered Search Platform
Stagwell has a new entry in the “optimize for the machines that answer instead of the humans that search” category. Called Search+, the platform—built by its Assembly unit with AI visibility company Emberos—is aimed at helping brands show up more favorably inside large language model outputs. The pitch: not just getting clicks, but shaping how…
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Stagwell Unveils Adtech, AI-Focused Incubator
Stagwell just set up an incubator fund aimed squarely at adtech and AI-powered marketing tools. The vehicle is called Quarter Creek Ventures, and the model is straightforward: Stagwell takes a minority stake in selected projects, then backs them with seed funding (amounts not disclosed) plus practical help getting products built and into market. Beyond the…
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From Billable Hours to AI-Driven Value in Advertising
The ad game is looking a lot less like Don Draper’s boardroom and a lot more like an API call. As AI reshapes the fundamentals of media buying, creative development, and performance optimization, agencies are building platforms instead of just campaigns. Stagwell’s The Machine, Omnicom’s Omni, and WPP’s Open Pro are just a few of…
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WPP’s “Super Agents” Want to Work for You
Earlier this month, WPP showed its cards at CES with a new internal tool called Agent Hub, a collection of AI-powered “super agents” living inside its WPP Open platform. Think of it as a bespoke app store populated with digital brains trained on the company’s formidable roster of branding, strategy, creative, and behavioral science experts.…
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Code and Theory’s AI ‘Machine’ Wants to Run Your Entire Marketing Stack
At CES this year, Code and Theory quietly introduced The Machine—an agentic AI operating system designed to live inside the tools marketers already use, not replace them. Built to bridge creative, media, and data workflows, The Machine connects directly with familiar platforms like Adobe, Figma, and Workfront, enabling teams to scale content production, audience analysis,…
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Stagwell Puts AI on the Line With Voice-First Service Platform
Stagwell has launched NewVoices.ai, a new AI-powered workflow tool designed to handle everything from sales tasks to customer service—using virtual agents that speak any language and never sleep. It’s pitched as a full-stack operating system for enterprise teams that want to automate their appointment setting, lead conversion, customer inquiries, and support issues without sacrificing personalization.…
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Publicis’ AI-Driven Storytelling: Reflecting on 100 Years of Innovation
To kick off its 100th birthday, Publicis Groupe released a cinematic short film that retraces its history—not with a dusty corporate slideshow, but using a lion, generative AI, and the voice of an Édith Piaf impersonator. Titled “A Lion Never Gives Up,” the nearly seven-minute film fuses live-action scenes with AI-generated visuals inspired by over…
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Stagwell Taps Gradial to Unclog the Marketing Bottleneck
Stagwell is doubling down on AI-fueled marketing efficiency by teaming up with Gradial, a relatively young but fast-scaling player in the agentic AI space. The idea is to connect the dots between creative, design, and automated execution through AI agents that cut down on redundant workflows and crank out personalized content across channels. It’s all…
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WPP Launches Open Pro: Self-Serve AI Marketing
WPP has launched Open Pro, a self-serve spin-off of its existing AI-driven marketing platform, designed to help marketers at smaller brands or in secondary markets build and launch campaigns without going through an agency. The idea isn’t to cut agencies out of the loop but to give clients more tactical tools for lower-touch projects. Access…
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Why Your SEO Strategy Needs to Embrace AI and GEO
WPP’s chief AI officer Daniel Hulme makes a compelling case: SEO may not be dead, but it’s no longer the sun around which brand visibility orbits. As chatbots and personal AIs take charge of shopping behaviors, traditional keyword-centric strategies are losing relevance. Instead, we’re stepping into the era of Generative Engine Optimization (GEO), where a…
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S4 Capital Bets on Bots, Not Bodies
S4 Capital is shifting its operations to focus on AI-powered agents, automating traditional agency tasks like content production, which reduces timelines significantly. Executive director Wes ter Haar claims that 65% of agency work can already be managed by AI. The company envisions an “AI workforce” that integrates strategy, content, and media into tech-led services while…
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The Future of Agencies: AI as a Smart Colleague
Agencies like Dentsu’s Carat and indie firm Apollo Partners are integrating generative AI into their operations to enhance collaboration rather than eliminate jobs. Carat is utilizing tools from Vurvey Labs for richer consumer insights and faster decision-making. In a test with a restaurant, they streamlined media recommendations and creative input. Meanwhile, Apollo is developing its…
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IPG Taps Aaru to Help Predict Consumer Behavior
IPG is enhancing precision marketing through a partnership with AI-driven startup Aaru, which creates human simulations to predict audience reactions to campaigns before launch. This innovation, integrated into IPG’s Interact platform and Acxiom toolkit, is designed for improved creative testing and audience targeting across various sectors. The collaboration also includes a new Simulation Studio for…
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How AI is Boosting New Biz for Digitas
Digitas has achieved remarkable success with its AI tool, NX Score, winning 80% of pitches by analyzing brand performance across consumer loyalty stages. Utilizing large language models and data from various sources, NX conducts comprehensive brand health checks in just five minutes. It provides tailored reports with diagnostics and strategies, assisting clients in improving their…
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WPP Open reimagines planning with AI
AI is revolutionising how agencies plan – and how we create. WPP Open aims to combine data, tools and advanced AI to unlock faster, smarter, more agile planning. From social-first campaigns to real-time cultural activations, it’s helping brands stay ahead of the curve in a fast-moving world. Whether it’s finding the perfect TV show tie-in…
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IPG’s agentic e-commerce solution boosts sales
Interpublic Group (IPG) has launched Agentic Systems for Commerce (ASC), a data-driven platform aimed at enhancing e-commerce decision-making for brands. Currently piloted by 20 brands, ASC has shown significant sales growth by integrating various data points. Supported by IPG’s AI expertise, it seeks to unify fragmented commerce tools into one effective solution.
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Stagwell Taps Palantir to Supercharge Ad Targeting
Stagwell is dipping into Palantir’s toolbox to see if military-grade AI can sharpen its data targeting game. During its Q2 earnings call, CEO Mark Penn shared that they’re running a trial with Palantir’s technology to supercharge their ID Graph by combining both structured and unstructured data across platforms like BERA and the National Research Group.…
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AI Agents and Billable Hours: Omnicom’s Pending Revenue Rethink
Omnicom isn’t just weaving AI into its workflows—it’s giving the tech a corner office. During the company’s latest earnings call, CTO Paolo Yuvienco spotlighted a growing internal web of custom-built AI agents fed by Omnicom’s Omni data platform. These aren’t your average productivity bots; they’re tag-teaming strategy teams to simulate focus groups, fine-tune campaigns in…
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Synthetic Personas, Real Payoff: How Dentsu Is Redrawing Media Plans with AI
While AI headlines often chase shiny creative tools, Dentsu is focusing the spotlight on media planning. Through a partnership with startup Evidenza, the agency network is bringing synthetic audiences—AI-generated personas built from real but anonymized data—into the center of campaign planning and targeting. Unlike traditional panels, these digital twins are created quickly from probabilistic data,…
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Code, Create, Repeat: How WPP is Turning Prompts into Prototypes
WPP is doubling down on AI via an expanded partnership with Vercel, bringing next-gen development tools like v0 and AI SDK into the fold. These tools allow teams to move from text prompt to working prototype in record time. At the heart of it all is “vibe coding,” a natural language-driven workflow that flattens the…
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4A’s Noteworthy News – 14th Edition
THE BIG STORY: Google beats OpenAI to voice punch, launches new Pixel phones and Gemini Live This week, Google made significant waves with its latest announcements, revealing new AI-driven features and the launch of the Pixel 9 lineup. Gemini AI will power an expanded suite of capabilities across the new Pixel devices. With Apple announcing…
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WPP Automates 3D asset development with NVIDIA AI: Coca-Cola and Ford lead early adoption
WPP is leveraging NVIDIA’s AI technology to generate 3D environments for diverse market campaigns. Announced at the SIGGRAPH computing conference, WPP will utilize NVIDIA’s microservices to search visual archives and code objects into virtual settings. These tools, accessible via NIM, streamline AI model use in production, making WPP the first to employ these for Universal…
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Google and Omnicom team up on Generative AI for advertising
The generative AI arms race was on full display last week in Cannes, with Omnicom touting a new partnership with Google as the first commercial use of the platform’s generative AI models for both text and image creation. Google is apparently also offering copyright protections, which should in theory make the assets more readily available…