Why the coverage you’ve seen so far is missing the actual story about OMNI-PIG
How the Omnicom–IPG merger quietly rewrites the industry’s power map
Most of the early takes on the Omnicom–IPG merger read like they were written in a hurry between client calls by those reading old Mediapost issues.
You know the genre: polite references to “scale,” a nostalgic roll call of creative networks, a few quotes from analysts who always sound mildly sedated, and a closing line about “watching this space.”
It all sounds reasonable.
It is also profoundly incomplete.
This is not just a story about two holding companies getting bigger together.
It is a compression event, where an entire competitive set gets squeezed into a tighter, harsher shape, and one newly enlarged entity quietly becomes heavy enough to bend the space around it.
The result is simple to describe and complicated to live with:
the Big Five did not “evolve.”
The Big Five collapsed into an uneven Big Four, with one player now big enough to set the temperature in any room it walks into.
Everyone else is still writing about this like it is a corporate photo-op.
You are here because you would like the version that actually matches reality. I don’t get paid by the big five…four…to lie.
From Big Five to Big Four: when one player becomes gravity, not just size
For roughly two decades, the global holding-company landscape has been a familiar diagram you could sketch from memory: WPP, Publicis, Omnicom, IPG, Dentsu, with Havas hovering just off to the side like a compact satellite.
That map gave everyone comfort.
Clients could pretend they had a wide set of options.
Agencies could pretend they were part of a balanced ecosystem.
Consultants could pretend they were describing a competitive market rather than a slow-moving oligopoly.
The Omnicom–IPG merger quietly tears that napkin in half.
The combined entity lands with:
Revenue in the mid twenty billions, enough to step clearly ahead of any single rival.
The largest global media-buying footprint, which matters quite a bit when you are negotiating with streamers, platforms, and broadcasters who care about volume more than poetry.
A fused data and identity stack that combines Omnicom’s Omni with IPG’s assets like Acxiom, creating a spine that no other holdco can easily replicate without massive surgery.
This is not just “a bigger agency group.”
It feels more like a newly formed planet in an already crowded solar system, changing the orbits of everything around it.
WPP must adjust to the role of structurally smaller number two.
Publicis suddenly has to defend the position it thought it had locked in with its own decade of consolidation.
Dentsu is forced to stare harder at its own overlapping structures.
Havas now looks less like a quiet alternative and more like a piece everyone will speculate about in the next round of consolidation.
The industry has been talking about “the Big Five” for so long that the phrase feels permanent.
It is not.
We are now in a Big Four world, and one of the four has a heavier center of mass than the others would like to admit.
The problem with the official narrative
Most coverage so far has latched onto the safe, sentimental frame:
Remember all the famous creative networks.
Reference the “proud heritage” of BBDO, DDB, TBWA, McCann, FCB, MullenLowe.
Sprinkle in a few lines about “expanded capabilities” and “client value.”
It is like narrating a building’s history while ignoring the fact that engineers are quietly removing support beams below you.
The real story here is not that two legacy groups found each other attractive.
The real story is that both of them were living inside a shrinking opportunity space, and this merger is their attempt to become large enough, dense enough, and integrated enough to survive forces that do not care about holding-company tradition at all:
AI systems that reduce the need for armies of planners, buyers, and production teams.
Retail media and commerce platforms that now own the most valuable signals in the market.
Walled gardens and CTV ecosystems that increasingly prefer large, simplified buying partners with serious volume.
So yes, there is romance in the logos and nostalgia in the case studies.
But beneath that, this is defensive architecture being rebuilt under stress.
What we saw in the internal restructure material
Here is where we step away from what you have read elsewhere.
Based on internal planning material and integration outlines we have reviewed, the public story only shows a fraction of what is being scoped. Official messaging leans heavily on “partnership,” “shared strengths,” and “preserving creative brands.”
The documents go further.
They describe:
Three primary structural scenarios for the merged group, ranging from “minimal disruption” to “creative nuclear option.”
Maps of overlapping networks and P&Ls that are not sustainable if the promised 750 million dollars in synergies are ever going to be real rather than decorative.
Conceptual models for collapsing multiple global brands into fewer, larger entities, with some treated as “crown jewels” and others quietly repositioned as capabilities rather than fully independent networks.
A staged integration of data, media, and CRM platforms, designed to move more work onto a unified tech spine, whether individual agency brands are ready for that or not.
Publicly, the merger is being sold as a story about scale and complementarity.
Privately, the work is about reduction and concentration: fewer networks, fewer middle layers, more shared infrastructure, more power in the center.
We will break those options and implications apart in detail inside ADOTAT+, including what each scenario could mean for specific global networks and why certain structures are politically tempting but strategically weak.
For now, the key point is simple:
if you are only reading the investor slides, you are missing the actual surgery.
Why this is a structural pivot, not a bigger version of the past
The easy way to misunderstand this merger is to assume the industry simply gets a larger version of Omnicom and a larger version of IPG, fused together like two LEGO towers.
That is not what is happening.
What emerges from this is a group that:
Has unmatched leverage in media and investment negotiations, especially in TV, CTV, and platform deals where volume commitments and bundled buys still move the needle.
Can push harder on principal media buying, where inventory is bought in bulk and resold, creating margin opportunities that smaller players cannot realistically access at the same scale.
Can weaponize a combined data and ID stack to promise more integrated planning and measurement, even if delivering that in practice takes years of painful integration work.
Has every incentive to streamline overlapping networks, even if the public language will initially focus on “choice” and “heritage.”
This is why treating the deal as just a “scale and synergies” story is lazy.
The deeper shift is architectural.
The industry is moving from a world of many similar-sized giants to a world where one super-holdco can press its advantage in negotiations while the rest decide whether they want to bulk up, specialize, or quietly fade into middle-tier irrelevance.
What this means for the others
Each of the remaining groups is now forced into uncomfortable clarity.
WPP must decide how far it is willing to go in further consolidation. The existing integrations were hard enough. Matching the new Omnicom–IPG mass without breaking its own culture will be harder.
Publicis suddenly has a real peer again at the top of the table. Its “Power of One” story was more compelling when everyone else looked messier. Now there is a rival that could become equally streamlined, if leadership has the courage to sacrifice beloved brands.
Dentsu faces the question no one likes to say aloud: what does simplification look like when your structure is already complex and your growth narrative is cautious.
Havas becomes either a carefully defended differentiated player or the piece everyone imagines being pulled into someone else’s consolidation story. There is not much safe middle ground anymore.
What comes next in ADOTAT+
This free chapter is the wide shot.
The next four parts go closer, into the machinery everyone else is politely stepping around.
In ADOTAT+, we break down:
The actual shape of the merged entity and what the internal models say about which networks survive as true globals and which become “capabilities.”
Where the 750 million dollars in synergies really come from, who gets cut, and how that timeline lines up with client risk.
How this new scale plays out in media, CTV, and principal buying, including the pressure it puts on independents and mid-sized shops.
What CMOs should be doing right now, while the integration noise is loud and their leverage is higher than usual.
This merger is not just another item in the news feed.
It is the moment the ceiling dropped a few feet lower for almost everyone in the business.
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