Madison Avenue’s center of gravity is shifting.
Omnicom is now officially the world’s largest ad agency holding company, thanks to its $9 billion acquisition of Interpublic Group, which closed Friday.
The combination brings together creative and media agencies, health marketing specialists, and production studios. They are all set to be underpinned by data from its Acxiom data-management company and Omni, which the company describes as its advanced intelligence platform.
The agency mega-merger is also set to bring about more than $750 million in cost savings, including 4,000 job cuts related to the transaction, the company said Monday.
Omnicom chairman and CEO John Wren told Business Insider in an interview on Monday that the merger would give the company fresh agility and scale.
“We will be in a position, for the foreseeable future, to be able to create the best commercial terms for our clients,” Wren said. “Underpinning that is a platforms group powered by generative AI that will be far unmatchable unless you’re one of the big six tech companies.”
Announced in December, the stock-for-stock transaction was initially valued at about $13 billion, but closed at roughly $9 billion because both Omnicom and IPG’s shares fell in the months after.
Wren said Omnicom’s stock price is “set to correct very quickly because of all the benefits that we’re going to get” from the IPG acquisition.
Business Insider spoke with Wren and other members of the Omnicom leadership team to learn what the deal reveals about the health of the advertising business, an industry facing multiple competitive threats and the rise of new technologies, such as AI. They also shared why Omnicom clients and staff should feel exhilarated by the close of the deal, and how the ad group’s AI strategy differs from its competitors.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Business Insider: How would you characterize the current state of Madison Avenue? Some of the observers and analysts looking at this merger have said it doesn’t reflect an industry in a position of strength.
John Wren: In terms of where this is all headed, and why I think there is tremendous growth, is that with the improvements that are coming on board with technology, with the unique database that we’re going to be able to provide our employees for insights and knowledge, we’re going to get closer and closer to that holy grail of wanting to be paid based upon agreed KPIs and performance.
We get paid well when you, the client, do well, and we suffer when you suffer.
That’s where it’s moving toward.
Business Insider: A lot of the focus today has been on the job cuts related to the transaction. There have already been thousands of job cuts across IPG and Omnicom since the deal was first announced. How should current Omnicom employees feel about their job security going into 2026?
Wren: IPG was fairly aggressive throughout the first three quarters of 2025. Quite a bit of that was right-sizing them for some of the business casualties they had in the past.
I’ve never taken cuts lightly at all, because they affect not only the individual but the individual’s family. This is an acquisition, but our people approach it from a talent point of view, as if it were a merger of equals, where, if there were two people competing for one position, the best person won — not because they were Omnicom, they win by default.
We held very true to something I said very early on, that people who are generating revenue and creating ideas and growth for clients, their jobs were to be safe. In principle, I think we accomplished that. We did it pretty fairly between the two groups.
We’ve been planning for this and rather anxious about it, because we don’t want to leave employees with the impression that, oh, this is just going to be a rolling cut and uncertainties.
We’re trying to get as much of it done now —between today and December 15 — as is humanly possible and is correct. It’s principally over, so people can be secure, but it’s never quite finished because there’s ongoing stuff that doesn’t have anything to do with the client, doesn’t have anything to do with the product, this has to do with us becoming faster and more efficient.
Troy Ruhanen, Omnicom Advertising CEO: This move, ultimately, has energized our staff and has energized our clients as they are able to see the full potential of what we can be as an organization.
Our staff feel they’re capable of being much more of a business partner to our clients, and our clients feel like they can trust us to complete the brand experience.
We’ve had a really good reaction already from our clients around this news and the capabilities we are bringing together and the places where we are going to demonstrate clear leadership.
Business Insider: It seems the ad industry has a “frenemy” relationship with AI. You’ve got no choice but to embrace it. CEOs are asking CMOs to figure out their AI strategies, and you can act as the consultant there. But AI also threatens to automate away many of the services that you once charged those CMOs for. How do you strike the right balance between those things, and what makes Omnicom AI’s strategy different from WPP and Publicis?
John Wren: Some of that we’re not going to disclose to you.
This technology probably has an immediate and serious impact on how we can become more efficient. Our current model, which has been morphing, is based on time and materials. As you’re eliminating manual types of functions or revitalizing them in some way, you’re going to lose some of that labor, but you’re going to become more expert.
We’re going to increasingly get more and more confident about our abilities to be paid for performance. In order to get there, the client’s KPIs have to be clearly articulated and explained, and we have to be certain that we can add value to that activity, which we believe we will.
But it’s going to be a journey. It’s not a light switch.
Business Insider: What separates you from an Accenture in this area?
John Wren: Our data is going to be better. Our insights as a result of that are going to be better. Our geography.
How do you add value to that? It’s our creative IP and what you do with that to enrich your at-the-moment data that differentiates you, and that’s where we are planning to be.
We’re servicing two-thirds of the leading companies in the world. I hope to expand that relationship with more. We provide services, but we also do a hell of a lot of observation in terms of who’s moving, at what pace.
We are constantly disrupting and trying to cannibalize ourselves so we are fit for purpose.
Paolo Yuvienco, Omnicom chief technology officer: There are several factors that really differentiate us.
One is around the first-mover partnerships we established early on, as early as 2022, as it relates to generative AI. We are working side-by-side with the leading researchers within some of the largest technology companies in the world, looking at the advancements that they’re making. They’re asking us, what are the appropriate use cases for these research projects that they have within their labs. So, because we’re adopting the technology and we’re operationalizing that technology at great speed, we have the advantage over many of our competitors.
Our data, bar none, is the most elite dataset in the industry. On the buy side, the connected graph around identity for that dataset is the most robust and most comprehensively supported graph in the industry. Then our platform strategy, where computation really fuels creativity, is allowing us to create this neural network of commerce, of media, of creativity, using agentic AI to turn data into desire and desire into growth.
We can do it faster than any one of the competitors out there, whether they are direct competitors or adjacent competitors, like the management consultancies.
