Media Buying Briefing: How the holdcos fared in 2025, according to Comvergence

Comvergence, which hits 10 years in operation this year, has become the gold standard of measuring agencies’ success (or lack of). However, the data Digiday is citing here is only provisional. As Comvergence’s founder and CEO Olivier Gauthier explained, the data doesn’t include wins and losses not publicly announced — that final report will be issued in February, once Comvergence connects with all the agencies it tracks.  (Although Gauthier acknowledges that the numbers don’t change on average more than 5% or so.)

Back to the numbers themselves. Somewhat surprising is what happened in between Publicis and WPP Media. Dentsu, it turns out, had a solid year, ending 2025 up $1.7 billion (details by holdco below), which technically puts it in second place for the year. But the gap between No.’s 1 and 2 — $9.5 billion to $1.7 billion, is cavernous to say the least. 

Another surprise is third-place finisher IPG’s Mediabrands, which yielded a positive $1.6 billion, and placing it ahead of Omnicom Media, which ended 2025 up $1.2 billion — and yet Omnicom was the acquirer of IPG. If you put them together, they’d tally $2.8 billion in wins, ahead of Dentsu but still a distant second to Publicis. 

Here’s a breakdown by holdco, ranked in order of total business won. 

Publicis Media 

It’s no secret the French holdco has been on a tear, winning Mars, Coca-Cola, Paramount, PayPal and most recently Kenvue, demolishing the competition. More importantly, it’s retained 50% of its business, according to Comvergence’s provisional totals, more than any other holdco. It lost just over $1.5 billion in media business.  

Dentsu

Even though Dentsu outside of the Japanese mothership is informally on the block, it had a decent year. Although it won $1.8 billion in new business, it lost almost as much — which means its strength came from successful retention, which amounted to some $1.6 billion. Observers will be watching closely to see what happens to the former Aegis agencies that are seemingly up in the air. 

IPG Mediabrands

“It’s very interesting that Mediabrands had a very good year in the U.S.,” said Gauthier. Most would agree with that sentiment, given that IPG was the acquisition target all year. It pulled in $2.4 billion in new business, but lost $1.9 billion, leaving it at a net of under $500 million — once again, successful defense helped win the day as Mediabrands held onto $1.1 billion it had to defend. 

Omnicom Media

Omnicom Media really didn’t have a good year at all, which is perhaps the biggest surprise of the numbers. It’s only thanks to WPP Media’s truly awful year that distracted from this reality. Not counting retention, Omnicom Media came out just under $700 million ahead ($3 billion in wins vs. $2.3 billion in losses). To make matters worse, its retention rate was a wan 17% according to the Comvergence data, the second worse among the holdcos. It’s safe to say 2026 will be a different story as the absorption of IPG takes root — whether it’s a better or worse story remains to be seen. 

Havas Media 

Parent company Havas has been on an acquisitive streak of late but its media arm remains smaller than its holdco counterparts. Havas Media secured $1.4 billion in wins, lost $750 million and retained $350 million. According to Comvergence’s tallies, its retention rate was a middle-of-the-road 32%. What remains to be seen is how Havas Media fares with its new joint venture with Horizon Media. The pairing is complementary on paper, with Havas weak in the U.S. but well represented globally, and the opposite for Horizon. Gauthier said Comvergence will create a new category for that JV once it’s up and running this year. 

WPP Media

And finally, WPP Media remained the punching bag of the holdcos, and with some good reason — ending the year $2 billion in the negative ($3.3 billion in wins, $6.4 billion in losses and successfully retaining only $1 billion). All that said, it’s worth noting that the Cindy Rose era of WPP was in its infancy for Q4, which is when WPP Media landed big-ticket accounts such as the U.K. government and Jaguar Land Rover (both from Omnicom). It’s also shoring up its client-side team by hiring away Angela Steele from Publicis (no easy feat to lure an exec away from the No. 1 holdco) where she had been CEO of Publicis Collective and in charge of the Verizon account. This year could bring better fortunes to the beleaguered London-based holdco.

Color by numbers

Since you’ve just had to absorb a LOT of numbers in the main story, here are two eye-popping stats that Comvergence’s Gauthier mentioned in relation to the holding companies. Together they were involved in more than 1,900 pitches across 50 countries last year, which totaled something in the neighborhood of $28 billion.

Takeoff & landing

• At CES, Havas announced it will launch this spring an LLM portal called AVA, which will centralize the holdco’s access to major LLMs including GPT-5, Claude Opus 4.5, and Gemini 3. 
• Both WPP Media and Stagwell made moves in the sports arena. WPP Media Sports is a new practice charged with creating sponsorships, content and integrations, with GumGum and Relo Metrics as partners. And Stagwell, which has put on Sports Beach as a Cannes Lions activation for a few years, made it into its own marketing business unit, with multiple events scheduled over the course of 2026. Beth Sidhu, who is also Stagwell’s chief brand and communications officer, was named CEO.    
• Horizon Media said it will incorporate Sightly’s Brand Mentality and Model Context Protocol tools into its Blu market intelligence platform.
• PMG acquired London and New York-based Digital Voices, an influencer marketing agency, in a bid to beef up its influencer and creator resources. 
• Independent Novus tapped Libby Morgan to be its new CEO, coming over from Merge where she was chief digital officer. Morgan replaces Melony Rios. 

Direct quote

“71% of people say they trust people over a brand’s messaging. And they say that they trust influencers more than they would a brand’s messaging. So you have this trust thing that’s happening that’s so powerful and so important.”

Joanna O’Connell, chief intelligence officer, Omnicom Media North America, talking about the power of influencers.

Speed reading

• I was able to catch up with Omnicom Media global CEO Florian Adamski for a wide ranging conversation on client rosters, principal media and why Omnicom kept so many agency brand names alive. 
• Seb Joseph dug into how Accenture Song evolved into the equivalent size of an agency holding company, but operates largely outside traditional agency lines, or as Joseph put it, upstream of them. 
• I also covered a series of exclusive news announcements Omnicom Media made during CES, including partnerships and collaborations with Google, with Meta and Walmart, with Amazon and Roku and with Pinterest.