Media Buying Briefing: China remains a tough market for holding companies to figure out

Back in 2015, then-WPP boss Sir Martin Sorrell declared himself a “raging bull” for the Chinese economy, while the British agency group then pulled in around $1.5 billion in revenue from the country. More than a decade later, the company he once led projected the Chinese ad market to grow 6.7% in 2026, but its own revenue in the country fell 12.2% in the first quarter of this year and has been contracting since 2021. Sorrell, now leading S4 Capital, has since switched his enthusiasm to India. 

While the global pandemic played a role in this reversal, it’s the long-term shift among Chinese advertisers away from traditional channels like television and toward e-commerce, KOLs and platforms that has served to hold back holdco revenues in the world’s second-largest ad market.

“Holding companies in China are under more pressure than ever in their history,” Greg Paull, co-founder of R3 China, told Digiday. In 2025, per COMvergence data, WPP Media still held the greatest market share (8.4%), but saw billings contract 5.5%; Dentsu and Havas also saw billings fall.

Omnicom and Publicis Groupe are the exceptions. The former has a market share of 4.2% following its merger with IPG, while billings are still rising at 3.6%, the growth slowed down considerably from 2024’s 19.6%. COMvergence estimates tell a healthier tale for Publicis, which enjoyed 2025 billings growth of 13.6%, bringing its market share (8.2%) close to WPP’s.

In its second quarter results published July 16, Publicis charted 7.5% organic growth. Just as in other markets across the globe, it’s benefitted from its closest rival’s woes in China. The 2023 bribery scandal, recently concluded with the sentencing of former WPP exec Di Fei, provided an “incredible opportunity” to Publicis, one consultant, who exchanged anonymity for candor, told Digiday.

The French company seized that chance. In early 2024, a few months after Fei’s court case kicked off, KFC parent firm Yum Brands — one of the largest advertisers in China — broke its 26-year relationship with WPP and handed its account to Publicis.

In the long run, the scandal has increased client scrutiny of agencies’ media transparency practices, said Paull.

Competition from domestic agencies adroit with digital channels has also contributed to tougher conditions, he noted. “Talent is leaving to start local agencies, and marketing is fragmenting to specialist agencies like creator, e-commerce, and live-streaming,” Paull said.

But even Chinese companies have struggled amid a market-wide shift in media spending. Zhewen, BlueFocus and Hylink all saw billings fall in 2025, according to COMvergence data; all in all, Chinese media budgets fell 29% between 2024 and 2025. They, alongside the international holding companies, are disadvantaged by Chinese advertisers’ demand for e-commerce, KOL and platform inventory — channels that offer agencies thinner margins than traditional media. 

Digital channels suck up 86% of Chinese media spend, and eight digital platform companies — including Alibaba, ByteDance, Tencent and Baidu — account for 85% all digital media spending in the country, according to a recent Ebiquity research note. China’s €11.7b KOL market, meanwhile, represents 58% of global influencer spending and 17% of total ad spend in the country. 

Agency holdcos haven’t been sitting still. As far back as 2022, Publicis moved to hire Jane Lin-Baden as its Asia-Pacific boss, based in Shanghai. The former Isobar exec was seen as a smart promotion for a market so reliant on digital media. “Publicis has a very strong leadership,” noted Stewart Li, managing director of Ebiquity China. 

Other agencies have made similar moves of late. In March, WPP brought aboard a client-side exec, former Shiseido svp Tina Chen, as its China CEO. Two months later, it debuted a China-specific version of its WPP Open AI unit.

Omnicom recently refreshed its Chinese leadership structure in June, promoting former PHD boss Joey Zhao to lead its overall media operation in China and appointing former Amazon exec Maggie Mu and Laura Liang, previously of McCann and Ogilvy, as respective CEO and COOs of agency OMD.

But while leadership reshuffles and bespoke platforms might woo the international brands looking for a guide in the Chinese market, they’re not enough to stem the tide of advertiser cash towards social platform companies. 

For those hoping there might yet be lessons in China worth applying in the U.S. and Europe, it’s a daunting fate.

Color by numbers

To some media buyers, YouTube is neither fish nor fowl, in that yes it is video, but it’s so different from other video channels. But it’s also a social vehicle, and yet not at all like Instagram or TikTok. WARC released a few stats around the Google-owned platform that are somewhat telling of its tweener status: 

• YouTube generated more than $60 billion in total revenue in 2025, one-third of which is from premium subscriptions. 
• More than $40 billion is attributed to advertising but ad growth is slowing, from 14.7% growth in 2024 to 11.7% in 2025 — and it’s forecast to slow even further to (a still-envy-invoking) 7.9% by 2027. 
• 51% of Gen Z males and 43% of Gen Z females made a purchase after watching an ad on YouTube Shorts, which bolsters its commerce bona-fides. — Michael Bürgi

Takeoff & landing

• Arguably the biggest headline of Publicis’ first-half 2026 earnings is the fact that organic revenue growth actually increased from first through second quarter, from 4.5% to 4.8% — a small increase, to be sure, but an increase nonetheless. Equally impressive is the French holding company’s operating margin growth, up to 17.5%. 
• CourtAvenue expanded its U.S. reach into Chicago, where it has opened a new office, while also expanding its office in Dallas, under the watch of Robyn Freye, its no-longer new president and chief growth officer. 
• In acquisition news, independent holding company Meet the People purchased The Loomis Agency, which has reach in the southern U.S., while fellow independent agency Brunner acquired AdSkate, an AI-powered creative analytics and marketing intelligence platform. Finally, marketplace agency Podean acquired Social Commerce Club (SCC), a TikTok Shop agency. Terms were not disclosed for any of the acquisitions. 
• Account moves: Dentsu’s Carat in Malaysia won Malaysia Aviation Group’s global media AOR business … WPP Media’s EssenceMediacom won jewelry retailer Michael Hill’s media business for Australia, New Zealand and Canada, previously handled by Omnicom Media … Horizon Global, the joint venture between Horizon Media and Havas Media, finally landed its first client in Skechers, winning Asia-Pacific, Latin America and most of Europe, while WPP Media held onto the U.K. … Havas Media U.K. won mobile game maker (of Candy Crush fame) King’s media AOR business, while Havas Media landed Farmer’s Insurance’s media AOR business from Zenith and RPA … Brainlabs landed media AOR duties for Xponential Fitness, which franchises various fitness brands.

Direct quote

“Influencers are truly setting the influence within culture right now, but they’re just creating a bunch of other people like them. Influencers themselves are influencing influence, and they’re all influencing the same thing — and it’s creating the algorithm. So everything that you participate in is an algorithmically driven experience.”

— Laurel Burton, CEO of Instrument, part of Stagwell’s Code and Theory Network

Speed reading

• I reported on Stagwell’s launch of Stagwell Curate, an AI platform that pulls curated  CTV, online video, display and audio ad inventory from publishers and adtech partners into its own central reservoir.
• I also covered the growing practice of vector-based targeting, which entails finding an audience based on a combination of several different pieces of information, like the different “dimensions” to a coordinate, rather than targeting using keywords.
• Finally, I looked at why Erling Haaland and Zlatan Ibrahimović are the rising stars emerging out of the World Cup this year.