Omnicom CEO John Wren used his first earnings call since the acquisition of Interpublic Group to stress the importance of agentic media buying, promising analysts that the holding company was using the technology to cut out intermediaries and get closer to publishers.
‘There are intermediaries today that stand between us and the publishers, and they take a toll,’ said Wren during the call with analysts on 28 April. ‘That is something you can continue to ask me about in the future because that is something we’re clearly working on.’
Last month, Omnicom ordered an audit of its work with The Trade Desk, after Publicis issued a note warning clients about hidden fees charged by the demand-side platform.
Paolo Yuvienco, Omnicom’s chief technology officer, said during yesterday’s earnings call that the company has started to execute ‘real media buys for several clients using our agent framework, doing agent-to-agent buying, which is all in service to shortening the media supply chain.’
Omnicom reported organic revenue growth of 3.9% in the first quarter of 2026. Unlike other holding companies, Omnicom only reports revenue including pass-through costs, like media spend. But earlier this month, Publicis began including a comparable gross organic revenue figure in its earnings to allow for comparisons, reporting 6.4% gross organic growth for Q1.
Following its acquisition of Interpublic Group, 51.5% of Omnicom’s revenue now comes from its integrated media business, which includes media, commerce, data, CRM and consulting. It also includes the content automation businesses, essentially shifting some production capabilities from creative and into media.
Omnicom’s other core operations are creative advertising, health, PR, experiential and ‘other’. All of these businesses grew in the first quarter of the year except for advertising.
If there was an underlying trend within the industry at the moment, said Wren, it’s that ‘clients are becoming more focused on selecting a single provider to take care of most of their needs.’
‘We saw during the quarter that we were able to extend the multi-year contracts for quite a number of clients.’
Wren also said that the company was moving towards performance-based pay, rather than being remunerated based on the number of hours worked.
‘That’s a change that’s ongoing,’ he said. ‘Nothing’s overnight, even though I know everybody likes everything to be overnight, it’s not overnight.’
