Publicis Groupe secured nearly double the new business pitch victories of WPP and Omnicom during the first six months of 2025, according to pitch tracking data released this week. The Paris-based holding company's win rate marks the widest performance gap between major agency networks since COMvergence began tracking holding company new business in 2018.
The scorecard arrives as Omnicom prepares regulatory filings for its $30 billion IPG merger and WPP navigates its fourth consecutive quarter of organic revenue decline. Publicis CEO Arthur Sadoun told investors the result reflects "three years of platformization paying off in client conversations," referencing the company's Epsilon data acquisition and its proprietary Marcel AI tooling. WPP declined to comment on the scorecard. Omnicom's spokesperson noted the company "remains focused on integration planning and existing client growth."
The divergence matters beyond league tables. New business momentum historically predicts holding company stock performance with a 6-9 month lag, according to Jefferies media analyst James Dix. Publicis shares have outperformed the S&P 500 by 18 percentage points year-to-date. More immediately, pitch wins signal where CMOs believe capability infrastructure lives. Publicis swept retail media pitches in Q2, winning mandates from three top-20 U.S. grocery chains and a global luxury conglomerate's commerce acceleration brief. WPP's historically dominant shopper marketing units lost two incumbent defenses in the same window. The shift reflects client demand for integrated retail media execution tied to first-party data platforms, a category where Publicis Groupe's Epsilon and Citrus Ad investments provide structural advantage. Omnicom's Flywheel commerce platform, launched in 2023, has yet to register a major holding company-level win outside existing Omnicom Media Group client relationships.
The timing compounds pressure on WPP's turnaround under CEO Mark Read. The London-based group lost $4.2 billion in client billings during 2024, including Volkswagen, Unilever media in several markets, and portions of the Nestlé relationship. WPP's creative networks—once the group's anchors—have been conspicuously absent from final-round creative pitches for global brand platforms this year. Three brand-side executives involved in recent reviews told trade press their procurement teams explicitly asked whether WPP's cost-cutting had hollowed creative departments below competitive threshold. Read has promised $600 million in AI-driven productivity savings by year-end 2026, but clients appear to be pricing in execution risk.
Allocators should track three follow-on signals through Q3. First, whether Publicis converts pitch momentum into organic growth above 4% when it reports half-year results in late July—momentum without margin expansion would indicate price concessions. Second, whether WPP's new business pipeline stabilizes after leadership changes at Ogilvy and VMLY&R, expected to be announced before September. Third, how quickly Omnicom can activate IPG's healthcare and experiential assets in pitches post-close, likely in Q4 2025 at earliest.
Publicis now holds 22% of all global advertising pitch activity by volume, per COMvergence's tracker, the highest single-network share recorded since the firm began methodology adjustments in 2019.