In the spring of 1985, the New York Times’ advertising correspondent Philip H. Dougherty wrote a prophetic bit of copy: “Some analysts of the advertising scene are convinced,” he said, “that the agency side will soon consist of just a few giant multinational organizations.”
Conclusive proof of what those analysts predicted emerged on November 26, 2025, with the $13B merger of Omnicom and IPG yielding a holding company with $26 billion in revenue and 1,500 agencies.
Behemoths aren’t built overnight, of course, and Omnicom sure wasn’t. Both it and Interpublic Group were the products of a string of mergers and acquisitions going back well over a century, when upstart slogan writers opened small firms aiming to professionalize the field of advertising.
