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Voyage EdgeISABELLA'S ISLAYMay 1, 20262 min readAd-free
Publicis Groupe Won 2× WPP and Omnicom's Combined H1 2025 Pitch Volume
Sadoun's operational model captures new business while Anglo rivals navigate merger integration and margin compression.
Voyage Edge deskVoyage Edge · Huang GoodmanSource: Ad Age ↗
In plain words
Publicis's 2× pitch-win advantage over WPP and Omnicom in H1 2025 stems from a data and commerce stack Anglo rivals cannot match during merger integration.
2× the combined win volume
of its two largest Anglo-American rivals across the January–June…
$13.2 billion
acquisition of Interpublic Group—a merger announced December 2024 that…
4.1%
organic revenue decline in Q1 2025
3.8%
organic growth in the same period
Publicis Groupe secured twice as many new business pitches in the first half of 2025 as WPP or Omnicom individually, extending a performance gap that began widening in late 2023. The Paris-based holding company converted 2× the combined win volume of its two largest Anglo-American rivals across the January–June period, according to pitch data released this week.
The divergence arrives as Omnicom finalizes its $13.2 billion acquisition of Interpublic Group—a merger announced December 2024 that triggered what Publicis CEO Arthur Sadoun called the "most negative news cycle since Covid" for legacy holding companies. WPP reported 4.1% organic revenue decline in Q1 2025, while Publicis posted 3.8% organic growth in the same period. Omnicom has not yet released H1 figures as a combined entity. Publicis closed 68 new client assignments in H1, versus 31 for WPP and 23 for Omnicom on a standalone basis, per COMvergence tracking.
The gap reflects structural advantages Publicis built between 2019 and 2024: a unified data platform (Epsilon), first-party retail media infrastructure (Citrus Ad), and embedded commerce units that bill separately from traditional media planning. Single-family offices allocating to consumer brands now face a holding-company landscape where one player operates a vertically integrated demand-side platform, and two others are managing post-merger systems integration. WPP's GroupM lost $1.7 billion in net new business during 2024; Publicis's Starcom and Zenith collectively added $2.1 billion. The margin implication: Publicis operates at 18.2% EBITDA, WPP at 14.9%, per most recent filings.
Operators should watch three follow-on events. First, Omnicom-IPG's combined pitch performance in Q3 2025, when integration costs peak and client conflicts force divestitures. Second, whether WPP accelerates M&A to acquire retail-media or commerce capabilities it cannot build organically—dealflow likely surfaces by September 2025. Third, whether Havas (owned by Vivendi, now trading separately post-split) uses its 22% YoY growth in H1 to challenge for top-three global ranking, forcing a four-way resource war.
Publicis now holds 18.7% global ad-spend share versus 15.3% for WPP, the widest gap since 2008. The next six months will clarify whether this is cyclical outperformance or the start of a two-decade reshuffling.
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