Over the past 30 years, agency holding companies have operated media and creative agency networks as distinct P&Ls. But that separation is ending. Major brands are consolidating media and creative budgets within single holding company relationships, and the holding companies are now fundamentally restructuring to meet that demand. This represents more than organisational housekeeping, but a tipping point that reverses decades of unbundling.
However, simply re-bundling agencies won’t guarantee the effectiveness brands seek. Consolidation may simplify contracts, but it does not simplify decision-making. Unless brands redesign their internal operating models to align with this shift, integration risks becoming the agency’s responsibility rather than a shared ecosystem.
Brands vote with their wallets: consolidation at scale
Major brands are actively consolidating media and creative within single holding company relationships at a scale. The World Federation of Advertisers and Ebiquity 2026 Media Budgets Survey found that 75% of global marketers plan to drive deeper integration between media and creative.
Bayer moved its $752m media and creative account to IPG. Mars restructured its $1.7bn media roster into an integrated partnership with Publicis. Jaguar Land Rover consolidated its $500m creative and media business with WPP.
Dan Sherwood, Marketing Director at Santander, recently discussed the bank’s own consolidation with Campaign, explaining how:
“Moving to a single global agency platform helps enhance the consistency of our brand globally whilst powering our markets at local level to execute faster, with more efficiency and with a stronger connection between media, creative and the insights and data that underpin it all”.
The perfect storm: why now becomes a tipping point
Several forces are converging to trigger the re-integration of media and creative.
First, creative must now perform across dozens of formats and platforms. That complexity cannot be addressed by creative teams working in isolation from media expertise.
Second, AI and data maturity have reached the point they enable optimisation across creative production, media placement and content at scale. In a recent Ebiquity webinar, Mars’s Ron Amram framed this as:
“It is a perfect storm: access to data, leveraging retail media, and the emergence of AI and agentic AI that allows you to optimise not just media execution but also placement and production.”
Third, commercial pressures add urgency. Agency holding companies can offer substantial financial incentives for consolidated partnerships by removing duplicate back-office functions and creating vertically integrated client P&Ls.
Finally, public market pressure provides the final force. Holding companies are struggling in the public markets. Even Publicis, which delivered seven consecutive years of growth and strong 2025 results, saw its share price drop 8% following its February earnings announcement. Incremental growth will not satisfy investors who are nervous about the impact of AI on the category.
Holding companies respond: from holding to operating companies
Agencies are fundamentally restructuring to meet this demand, moving from the distributed holding company model towards vertically integrated operating companies.
- WPP consolidated its GroupM roster of media agencies (Wavemaker, Mindshare and EssenceMediacom) to form WPP Media. It folded production capabilities into WPP Production. Most recently, reports indicate WPP Creative will house Ogilvy, VML and AKQA under a single banner.
- Dentsu, benefitting from its acquisition of Tag Group, launched Content Engine, pulling media planning and creative delivery into the same process.
- Publicis has delivered seven consecutive years of growth through its integrated model, demonstrating the commercial viability of this approach.
The transformation goes beyond branding changes. Rather than having different agency entities with their own P&Ls having power and autonomy, there will likely become a client P&L that is vertically integrated, with a client CEO within the holding group who holds the power and coordinates on behalf of the client across all capabilities needed.
The reality check: making integration work
Consolidation alone does not guarantee integration benefits. David Abramo, Group Director of Media Management at Ebiquity Americas, explains
“Just having your agencies under one holding group umbrella does not mean they will automatically be more collaborative and integrated. In our experience we see many of the same challenges in these models as with non-integrated ones. It’s critical for marketers to truly interrogate the proposed model to understand where processes and outcomes are integrated – beyond just standing up teams that are part of the same organization.”
The internal integration is critical. If media, creative, ecommerce, and data teams remain siloed within the client organisation, a single holding company structure only mirrors existing fragmentation.
Success depends on the internal operating design. Clear decision rights, shared KPIs, aligned incentives, and connected data flows are more impactful than organisational charts. Without these elements, consolidation risks adding friction rather than creating a seamless system.
Consolidation can reduce the burden of managing multiple agencies, but only if governance structures support it. The efficiency benefit emerges when brands’ operating models align with the holding group’s structure—enabling integration rather than just reducing the number of contracts.
Strategic imperatives for brands
Several actions separate brands that achieve genuine integration from those that merely consolidate organisational charts.
- Demand integrated planning where creative is developed for the channel and context.
- Align governance, processes, investment, and accountability across media and creative as part of a defined internal operating system.
- Match agency models to decision-making complexity. If your brand makes marketing decisions as an interconnected system, your agency partnership should mirror that reality.
- Focus on outcomes, not structure.
From unbundling back to integration
The industry has come full circle from pre-2000s integrated agencies, through specialisation, back to integration. But this integration differs fundamentally from what came before. It’s powered by data, AI and platform-native thinking.
To succeed, brands will need to match internal operating model transformation with external agency integration.
