Omnicom in talks to buy Interpublic—report

Omnicom ís in talks to buy Interpublic and a deal could be announced as soon as this week, the Wall Street Journal has reported.

Campaign has contacted Omnicom and IPG for comment but did not immediately receive a response.

A merger between the two US ad agency groups would create the world’s biggest advertising holding company, overtaking Publicis Groupe in terms of stock market capitalisation and WPP in terms of annual revenue.

Omnicom is currently valued at $20 billion and IPG at $11 billion. Talks between the two companies are said to be “advanced” and IPG would likely be valued at around $13 billion to $14 billion, according to the WSJ.

Publicis, which has been the fastest-growing agency group since the pandemic, is valued at €26 billion or about $28 billion.

Omnicom and Publicis previously attempted to merge in 2013 in an effort to gain scale and overtake WPP, then the largest group, but they called off the deal after almost a year because they could not agree to terms. 

In the subsequent decade, the ad industry changed radically as technology platforms such as Google, Meta and Amazon have expanded hugely while agency groups have grown far more slowly.

Rumours of a potential Omnicom-IPG merger first surfaced a year ago.

Campaign reported in April 2024: “IPG and Omnicom were said to have discussed a potential tie-up in autumn 2023 but sources familiar with the situation said it was not true.

“They told Campaign the two companies had contact but only because Omnicom was helping Ascential on the sale of HudsonMX, following Omnicom’s $900 million purchase of sister business Flywheel (the biggest acquisition in the US agency group’s history) from Ascential.”

Speculation about agency M&A has continued to mount during 2024—with Vivendi planning to spin off Havas, subject to a shareholder vote on 9 December.

In a sign of the febrile atmosphere, a report on a financial blog 10 days ago claimed Publicis was looking at a potential purchase of IPG, although sources close to both companies dismissed the "uncooked" rumour to Campaign.