Agency Industry 2025 Forecast, WPP CEO Change, WBD Split, Canada's Upfront, Future of Video Buying, Marketer Commentary and More
Madison and Wall: Saturday Summary for June 14, 2025
We have several upcoming speaking engagements over the coming week in Cannes to highlight:
On Monday June 16 at 3:30pm CET we are speaking in Cannes with Ana Milicevic, Tom Triscari and Criteo’s CMO Brendan McCarthy to discuss commerce and the shifting economy aboard the Criteo HQ Yacht. Request an invitation link here
On Tuesday June 17 at 10:00am CET we are joining McKinsey and Google executives at McKinsey’s Cannes space to talk about how new AI-enabled workflows can power media buying, ROI optimization, and marketing transformation, related to our recent publication on the topic. RSVP link here
On Wednesday June 18 at 3:00pm CET we will again be speaking at McKinsey’s venue joining executives from Adobe and Roku to explore challenges and opportunities in full-funnel marketing, with a focus on the balance between creative and targeting across the funnel. RSVP link here
After the Cannes Lions, are you returning via Paris? If so, on Sunday June 22 we will be organizing another “chocolate marathon.” It’s a nearly 26-mile path around Paris, France over the course of a day. To see a past route and get a sense of what it looks like, visit www.chocolatemarathon.com. If you would like to join in for some or all of the day please reach out and let us know.
On this week’s M&W Podcast we review our work of the week and provide additional commentary on new economic data points. Separately, on Agency Business, Olivia Morely and I reviewed various industry news items about the agency industry.
Weekly Work:
Global and US Advertising Agency Industry Update for Mid-Year 2025
WPP CEO Transition: Considerations For What Comes Next
Canada's Upfront/TV Ad Trends With US Context
The Near-Term Evolution of Video Buying
More Context:
Ahead of the Cannes Festival of Creativity, this past week we published our regular update on the global and US advertising agency industry. We forecast a 2% growth rate for the full year of 2025 for agencies in the US as the industry remains around $100 billion in annual revenue. Globally the narrowly defined agency sector is probably around $200-250 billion and if we include related IT services the figure is more likely around $300 billion.
In our extended note on the industry we review some of the key trends playing out for the industry at the present time and for the coming years. Although regulations are now among the challenges that agencies (surprisingly) face, as outlined in recent reporting in the New York Times regarding the imposition of a potential “political bias rule” on the combined Omnicom and Interpublic, perhaps most significantly among those trends is the impact of AI, especially on traditional creative advertising agencies where production related work has historically been an important source of profitability. We continue to believe that there are meaningful benefits that follow to marketers from working with expert practitioners, who almost by definition should be able to add value any technology, so long as they have the right skills and a corporate parent investing in new efforts to apply those skills. This may be problematic for the largest agency holding companies who are arguably too-used to balancing internal investment and shareholder returns. However, there is always an opportunity to change approaches.
We argue that paying dividends and engaging in share buybacks makes sense in a world and an industry that is somewhat predictable, but the agency sector is not fortunate enough to be in that position. Towards those ends, we continue to believe that growth can follow from those agency businesses (and others) who continue to prioritize investing in their own futures and adapting their offerings, while also believing that agencies who fail to do so risk ongoing declines.