I know what you did last Summer (Well, in H1 2025!)

Global advertising groups rarely make founder headlines.

But if you are building in technology, media or marketing, their results provide something useful: free intelligence on where global demand is moving.

The major agency groups sit between many of the world’s largest brands and billions of dollars of marketing spend. They influence procurement standards, see changes in client priorities early and acquire businesses when they need capabilities they cannot—or do not want to—build themselves.

So when the major groups reported their H1 2025 numbers, we paid attention.

If you’re a founder operating anywhere around marketing, media, data, commerce or AI, you probably should too.

The winners, the strugglers and the resets

Publicis: data continues to win

Publicis delivered 5.9% organic growth and raised its guidance, with data, identity and retail media continuing to underpin performance. Its acquisition of Lotame further strengthened its position in first-party data and identity.

The signal for founders is fairly clear.

As third-party identifiers disappear and brands demand greater accountability from marketing spend, the ability to connect data to measurable outcomes becomes increasingly valuable.

Founder takeaway: If your technology helps brands organise, activate or measure first-party data—and demonstrate incremental commercial impact—you are operating where budgets continue to move.

Omnicom: bigger media, bigger buyer

Omnicom reported Q2 revenue of around $4bn, with media and precision marketing among its stronger areas.

But the bigger strategic development was its proposed $13bn combination with Interpublic, creating an even larger global marketing-services group.

Consolidation creates an interesting dynamic for founders.

A relationship with one large group can potentially provide access to significant global client spend. But the other side of scale is procurement. Security, privacy, compliance, integration and enterprise readiness become increasingly important.

Founder takeaway: Enterprise readiness is part of the product. If you want access to global agency clients, being genuinely plug-and-play matters almost as much as the proposition itself.

WPP: pressure creates demand for efficiency

WPP had a much more difficult first half, with declining like-for-like revenue, pressure on margins and weakness across parts of its creative business.

AI and technology are central to its plans to improve productivity and reposition the group.

That matters because organisations under margin pressure tend to become much more interested in technologies that can demonstrate measurable efficiency.

Founder takeaway: Don’t sell “AI magic”. Sell the delta. How much time does it save? What happens to unit cost? How much faster can work be produced? What happens to performance?

When budgets are under pressure, measurable economics beat impressive demos.

Dentsu: integration still matters

Dentsu continued to face challenging growth outside Japan, while customer experience and media remained important components of the group.

The wider signal is the continuing convergence of CRM, commerce, media, data and customer experience.

Brands increasingly want those systems to work together rather than exist as separate technology and agency silos.

Founder takeaway: Integration is valuable. Technologies that connect fragmented customer, commerce and marketing infrastructure can solve a very real enterprise problem.

Havas: resilience away from the biggest groups

Havas delivered H1 organic net revenue growth of 2.9%, with adjusted EBIT increasing 8%. Performance was stronger in the Americas, while China remained difficult.

Its performance is a useful reminder that marketing spend is not moving uniformly across groups, services or geographies.

Founder takeaway: Don’t assume every opportunity sits with the largest enterprise clients. There remains room for technologies that make sophisticated measurement, content and commerce capabilities accessible without enterprise-level complexity or cost.

Stagwell: the challenger model

Stagwell continued to grow, supported by new-business performance and strength across areas including advocacy and digital services.

Its more entrepreneurial positioning also makes it an interesting group for founders to watch.

Large holding companies can provide enormous distribution, but smaller challenger networks can sometimes provide faster routes to experimentation, partnerships and early enterprise adoption.

Founder takeaway: Your first strategic agency relationship does not necessarily need to be with the biggest name. The best partner may be the organisation willing to deploy the technology and prove the use case.

S4 Capital: the reset continues

S4 Capital’s Media.Monks continued to experience revenue pressure during H1, alongside further reductions in headcount as major technology clients reconsidered spending and AI changed parts of the production model.

Again, the interesting point is not simply that budgets are being cut.

They are being reallocated.

Clients still need content, marketing and technology capability. But increasingly they want it delivered faster, more efficiently and with a clearer connection to commercial outcomes.

Founder takeaway: If your product can demonstrate meaningful cost reduction, greater production capacity or faster execution without sacrificing quality, you are aligned with one of the industry’s most important structural shifts.

Five signals founders should pay attention to

Individual company results are snapshots. The more useful intelligence comes from looking across them.

Data is becoming part of the margin engine. First-party data, identity, measurement and activation continue to attract investment because they sit close to demonstrable client outcomes.

Performance infrastructure is proving resilient. Businesses and technologies that connect spend to measurable results remain easier to defend than capabilities perceived as discretionary.

Geography matters. Performance varies considerably by region. Founders selling globally should pay attention to where clients are increasing investment rather than assuming demand is uniform.

Consolidation creates both opportunity and friction. Larger groups can provide enormous distribution, but they also bring more demanding procurement, security and compliance requirements.

And AI budget reallocation is real. The question is increasingly moving from whether agencies and brands will use AI to where it can genuinely change the economics of marketing delivery.

The simplest way to think about it?

Don’t pitch your features. Pitch your delta: cost down, performance up, speed increased, compliance assured.

Why agency results should matter to founders

You don’t read a WPP or Publicis earnings update for entertainment.

You read it because these companies sit close to the decision-making of many of the world’s largest advertisers.

Their results and management commentary can provide useful signals about where clients are increasing or reducing spend, which capabilities are becoming strategically important and where the large groups themselves are investing.

For founders, that intelligence has several practical uses.

It can inform go-to-market strategy by highlighting stronger sectors, geographies and service categories.

It can inform product development by showing what large customers increasingly expect around data, AI, measurement, security and integration.

It can inform enterprise sales because the large groups often influence procurement requirements and technology adoption across major client organisations.

And it can inform exit planning because agency groups are not simply potential customers and distribution partners. They are also active acquirers of technology, data and specialist marketing capabilities.

That makes their earnings calls useful for another reason.

They tell you not only what agencies are selling today—but what they may need to buy tomorrow.

What should founders do with this?

Treat the results as market intelligence, not gospel.

Use them to understand where global marketing spend is moving and test that against what you are seeing directly from customers.

Use them to sharpen sales targeting. If particular sectors, capabilities or geographies are attracting investment, understand whether your proposition genuinely fits.

Use them to think about strategic partnerships. Agency groups can provide distribution, credibility and access to enterprise customers that would otherwise take years to build.

And if an eventual exit is part of the long-term plan, understand what capabilities potential strategic buyers are building internally—and where they continue to acquire.

The goal isn’t to build your company around what the holding companies want today.

It is to understand where the market around you is heading.