Future of Marketing Briefing: The word ‘agency’ is costing the ad giants

Once upon a time that label had a clear assignment: you represented the client, you worked the market, you made the introductions and you got paid for it. But the modern conglomerates – Publicis Group, Omnicom, WPP, Havas and Dentsu – don’t move like that anymore. They buy media, flip media, own data, rent out software and wholesale inventory.

The tension sits right there, in the gap between the label and the reality. The market still hears “agency” and reaches for the old mental model, even when the balance sheet is starting to look more like a platform play. 

Look at Publicis Groupe. Organic revenue for its latest financial year climbed roughly mid-single digits (5.6%), quarterly growth stayed in that same lane (5.5%) and guidance for the year ahead points to more of the same. In a sector where stability has been a rare commodity, that’s sturdy. Yet hours after posting those numbers earlier this week, the stock slid sharply (8%). 

That reaction felt less like a verdict on one company and more like a judgement on the category it’s still grouped into. Which is ironic since no firm has pushed harder than Publicis Groupe to frame itself as structurally different to the rest of the holdcos. But a lot of investors are looking at the sector through an AI-tinted lens that flattens those distinctions. In that view, the specifics blur. Consistently bearing expectations, lifting guidance and stacking up notable wins – the resume under Arthur Sadoun starts to feel like evidence of strong execution in a model they’re not convinced has a long runway. 

Because fair or not, the logic tends to collapse back to a simple shorthand: these firms are variations on the same theme – agencies – that’s seen as front-line exposure to AI disruption. Until that framing shifts, the sentiment attached to the sector is likely to stay pinned there. 

“This all comes down to the expectations and implications of the word ‘agency’,” said Ruben Schreurs, CEO of media management firm Ebiquity. “They act less as agents in the primary sense. Increasingly, they are positioned as vertically integrated marketing operating companies.”

There’s a real risk the holdco CEOs end up pitching that transformation like a march toward the promised land while investors hear it as a costly expedition into the unknown. 

This week’s market reaction put that disconnect in plain view. 

Software and analytics stocks wobbled as investors worried that advances in AI could start hollowing out layers of traditional software services. Publicis Groupe got pulled into that current as the market circled a basic anxiety: if AI flattens the value out of software dashboards and execution then tech stops reading like a moat. It starts to look like a commodity with real advantage concentrating within the biggest most specialized platforms. In that scenario, being “more tech” doesn’t automatically make a company harder to displace. The defensible ground shifts elsewhere – toward creative judgment, cultural intelligence, strategic nous and senior counsel that still carries weight once the conversation leaves the media plan and lands in the boardroom. 

Or to put it another way: AI may help produce more content, faster, but it doesn’t decide what should exist, what a brand should stand for or how to adapt when growth slows and the questions from the investors get sharper. 

There’s a reason creative agencies built around taste, instinct and cultural fluency are suddenly attractive assets. The recent dealmaking around social-first creative outfits like Ok Cool, which was acquired by private equity-backed creative agency network Residence earlier this week, points to where scarcity still lives: not in access to tools but in the people who know what to do with them and the processes that turn judgment into work that lands. 

“People still really admire strong creative that helps brands flourish,” said Matthew Lacey, partner at Waypoint Partners, the M&A advisory firm that worked on the deal.  

The buzz around the Anthropic is a reminder of that. Its messaging around its AI assistant Claude – that it won’t show ads – shouldn’t, on paper, work. ChatGPt dwarfs it in reach and swearing off ads is easier without a massive free audience to subsidize. But most people don’t know platform economics. They process trust. In a moment when AI already feels opaque, “no ads” reads as a statement of allegiance, not monetization. It answers who the system works for. 

That’s the part holdco chiefs can’t afford to ignore. And no, this isn’t nostalgia for some bygone era of the business. It’s a reminder not to mistake technology for strategy and move away from the capabilities that actually protect pricing power and relevance. Today, that shows up as creative judgement but the same logic applies to any high-trust high-context layer of the relationship that software alone can’t commoditize. 

Which brings the story back to where it started. Holdco CEOs can build platforms, buy tech and stack data. But if the market still hears “agency,” it reaches for a shrinking multiple and a disruption narrative. The operations may look like market infrastructure. The name still signals middleman. And that’s the version investors keep pricing. 

Numbers to know

• $11.4 billion: Total revenues YouTube ads generated in Q4 2025
• 24 million: Total subscribers to Snapchat’s Snapchat+ subscription service
• 45%: Percentage of 18 to 29 year olds that prefer reading the news rather than watching it, according to Pew Research
• $5.5 billion: How much OnlyFans potential deal with Architect Capital, to sell a majority stake – making it worth more than the likes of Substack and Patreon

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