The completion of the Omnicom-IPG merger creates the world’s largest agency group by revenue and marks a significant moment of industry consolidation. For CMOs, Media Directors, and Procurement leaders, the priority is operational continuity.
The focus quickly moves to integration, affecting team structures, accountability lines, and delivery models across multiple markets. Major integrations create natural moments to verify service levels, strengthen governance, and reset expectations. Whether you currently work with Omnicom or IPG agencies, or with their competitors, the questions this raises about exposure, continuity, and contractual commitments apply broadly across any significant agency transition.
Establish your exposure
The first step is understanding how this integration impacts your operations. Marketers need to maintain clarity on who does what, where they sit, and who’s accountable.
Answer these questions about your current arrangements:
- Which Omnicom and IPG entities support your media, creative, data, production, and commerce?
- Where are these teams physically located – onshore, nearshore, or within shared service centres?
- What changes to team structure or accountability have already occurred?
You need a market-level view of planned changes to trading, strategy, analytics, or client service teams. Conversations with agency leadership should deliver specifics, not reassurances.
Verify capability meets commitments
Integration involves team consolidation, responsibility reassignment, and structural change. The question for marketing leaders is whether your service levels match contractual commitments.
Start with capability verification. Confirm whether trading desks and investment teams supporting your business maintain agreed staffing levels and seniority.
Beyond staffing, verify that day-to-day mechanics continue to function effectively. How do briefs move between brand, strategy, and activation teams? Do approval cycles and decision rights remain clear and fast? Are in-campaign optimisation routines and accountability holding firm? Is reporting cadence, data access, and performance insight consistency maintained?
Organisational change can affect these fundamentals faster than formal governance processes adjust. The mechanics of briefing, planning, buying, and reporting can shift while contracts and SLAs remain unchanged on paper.
Early verification prevents small gaps from becoming significant service issues. Across Ebiquity’s client base, advertisers who maintain clear visibility into these operational realities during major transitions protect value and performance more effectively.
Reinforce contractual protections
Major integrations are the right time to verify contracts provide adequate clarity and protection. This applies whether you’re currently in negotiations, approaching renewal, or mid-term.
Ensure contracts specify minimum team composition, seniority, and continuity requirements for trading, strategy, and analytics. Define what happens if commitments aren’t met. Remedies might include fee adjustments or the right to trigger independent review. Clarify notification and approval requirements before replacing senior personnel. These protections matter during any significant organisational change.
Verify audit rights remain valid regardless of group restructures or brand rationalisation. Ensure pricing principles and disclosure standards are clearly defined.
The combined Omnicom-IPG group will have greater negotiating leverage with media owners and technology providers. Your contracts should ensure clear definitions of benefits that must pass through to you as the advertiser, with audit rights that survive organisational restructuring.
Maintain strategic contestability
Major integrations create competitive dynamics across the industry. Henkel’s recent European consolidation with WPP following a review that included Omnicom and IPG agencies demonstrates how rival groups are using this moment. This creates both risk and opportunity depending on your current arrangements.
Integration periods open windows for strengthening partnerships on all sides. Agencies want to demonstrate stability and capability. Competitors want to demonstrate advantage. Neither wants to lose accounts during transitions. Use this dynamic constructively.
Maintaining clarity and control through change
Major integrations create periods where structures, teams, and delivery models evolve quickly. Advertisers who maintain clarity over service levels, performance, and contractual protections are better positioned to navigate these transitions without disruption.
Patterns from previous significant transitions show consistent themes. Marketers who verify service levels early and maintain clear contractual frameworks protect continuity more effectively. Well-maintained ways of working ensure organisational changes don’t weaken optimisation or oversight. Regular dialogue with agency leadership prevents assumptions and maintains alignment.
Ebiquity has published a detailed whitepaper, “Omnicom-IPG is official: Next steps for brands,” covering each of these areas with specific frameworks, assessment tools, and contract guidance.
Clients can access the full paper by contacting your Ebiquity client partner or reaching out to marketing.team@ebiquity.com.
