Large Marketer Ad Market Commentary, Global Agency Growth Trends for 1Q25 + Comcast and Google Results, Too
Madison and Wall: Saturday Summary for April 26, 2025
Will you be in Cannes for the Lions? Are you returning via Paris? If so, on Sunday June 22 (the Sunday following the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity) we will be organizing another “chocolate marathon,” a nearly 26-mile path around Paris, France over the course of the 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 continue to focus on bringing you an audio version of these Saturday Summaries, but we are taking a brief break from our Advertising 101 series. Catch up on all of the prior parts of the series if you have haven’t already!
Separately, on Agency Business Olivia Morley and I hosted Nicole Estebanell, US CEO for Interpublic’s Mediahub. Beyond going into the details of Nicole’s professional journey, you can hear our deep dive into Mediahub’s business and its role within Mediabrands, too.
Weekly Work:
WPP's Soft 1Q25 Results As Global HoldCos Collectively Up 1.0% During Quarter
Comcast 1Q25 Shows Soft TV Ad Trends
Google's 1Q25 Saw Great Growth, But Risks to Outlook Ahead
More Context
With the world’s biggest agency holding companies having reported by now, we can now calculate overall global and regional trends for the largest holding companies, WPP, Publicis, Omnicom and Interpublic (although we note that including Omnicom, which reports on a gross revenue basis rather than on a net revenue basis as all of its peers do, distorts growth trends up slightly).
On a weighted average basis, global organic growth was up only 1.0%, a deceleration from 4Q24’s 2.2% and the softest results for global agencies since the first quarter of 2021. North America was 1.9% and the US was relatively softer (implying Canada was relatively stronger) and Europe was down -1.3% (and the UK came in under this level). APAC was down to a similar degree, while Latin America was up 8.3%, although there was likely some benefit from inflation in this number. Concerns about the economy from marketers are omnipresent, but so far, those concerns have not driven the agency results we have seen to date.