The ‘BS’ about Meta making agencies obsolete needs to stop, according to Publicis Groupe’s chair and CEO, Arthur Sadoun.
In an earnings call with investors on 17 July, Sadoun said people have been telling him ever since he became CEO of Publicis Groupe in 2017 that Meta ‘will eat us for breakfast…and since then, we have actually doubled our revenue and more than doubled our market cap.’
The comments came as Publicis continues its strong run of financial results, reporting a 5.9% increase in organic revenue in Q2 2025 and revising up its end-of-year forecast, from between 4–5% to close to 5%.
While Publicis anticipates a reduction in client spend in the second half of the year, Sadoun said this will be offset by the holding company’s ‘unprecedented’ streak of new business wins, which include Mars’ global media account and Coca-Cola’s US business.
Asked about the threat posed by Meta’s plans for an automated end-to-end advertising service powered by AI, Sadoun said: ‘We need to stop [with] the BS and fear that the platform will make us disappear.
‘Thinking that a single tech platform, however good, [can] deliver an end-to-end solution for big clients is actually misunderstanding the intelligence of our clients.
‘Clients perfectly understand that they need to leverage AI, that they need the best platform, but they need a partner that can connect the entire ecosystem and help them to grow in this very, very complex, AI-driven world…AI is great, but AI has no taste.
‘If you think that our clients are ready to give up and basically, as Meta said, give their credit card to one platform, you’re wrong.’
Publicis’ Connected Media offering, which combines media touchpoint data with consumer identities provided by its Epsilon business, is what clients need most today, said Sadoun.
Connected Media is now responsible for approximately 60% of Publicis’ net revenue, which was €3.6bn ($4.2bn) in Q2 2025.
Integrating Epsilon’s data with Captiv8 and Influential has also enabled Publicis to build ‘the world’s largest and most powerful influencer media platform,’ adding, ‘in Cannes, we showed that we can now deliver Super Bowl-level reach, meaning more than 127 million impressions, for a fraction of the price.’
What is most definitely not a strategic focus for Publicis, according to Sadoun, is principal-based media buying. Asked whether the practice was responsible for the 40% year-on-year increase in pass-through costs, he said that media only accounts for between 30% and 40% of pass-through costs.
‘Unlike some of our peers that are saying that very publicly, principal media is not a priority for us,’ Sadoun added. ‘When you look at The US, which is as you know our largest market, it only represents circa 1% of our group net revenue.’
Main image by Thought Catalog on Unsplash