The news: Omnicom officially owns IPG after completing its long-discussed acquisition last week—and the company is already implementing a massive wave of changes.

• An estimated 4,000 positions at Omnicom-IPG will be eliminated worldwide, CEO John Wren told Adweek. Employees across Omnicom’s agencies reported layoffs on Monday.
• The merged company will retire ad agency networks FCB, MullenLowe, and DDB. Omnicom Advertising will now have only three global creative networks: McCann, BBDO, and TBWA.
• The company announced nine new “connected capabilities,” designed to unify agencies and expertise. These include advertising, media, public relations, commerce, and precision marketing. Leadership roles will largely be filled by Omnicom talent.
• Omnicom emphasized a unique advantage of the merger: Its expanded enterprise genAI capabilities. Wren claimed in a press statement that all teams will now have access to advanced AI tools and advanced intelligence platform Omni, while Omnicom will integrate its genAI technology across its agencies to deliver personalized content at scale.

Why it matters: The merger is reshaping industry power dynamics and has far-reaching implications for the advertising landscape.

• Omnicom is now the largest advertising holding company by revenues, surpassing competitors like Publicis and WPP. The company has notable control over media buying and leverage over publishers and advertisers that could reshape the competitive landscape of the US ad industry.
• For advertisers, Omnicom’s new connected capabilities and unique advantages offer more efficient services. The merger simplifies the management of multichannel and global campaigns to offer greater efficiencies—though mass layoffs could reduce creative diversity.
• The consolidation could have industry-wide effects as competitors seek similar scale through mergers to remain competitive—and turn to AI acceleration to prove value.

What advertisers can expect: Advertisers should prepare for an agency landscape where AI-driven capabilities become the norm and where consolidated services become a competitive differentiator.

• With Omnicom uniting creative, media, data, and commerce capabilities together under its connected offerings, brands will increasingly rely on a single, end-to-end ecosystem rather than disparate agency teams.
• Enterprise genAI is the major driver behind this shift and sits at the core of Omnicom’s new value proposition. Advertisers can expect AI to support a broadening set of use cases, including ideation, research, content drafting, ad production, streamlining processes, and more.
• The merger accelerates this transformation by unifying the companies’ data, identity assets, and technology infrastructure, giving the combined entity the scale needed to deploy genAI across every phase of the advertising lifecycle.
• For advertisers, the result is a future where AI is more than an add-on—it’s a foundational layer in how the world’s largest holdco delivers strategy, creative, and media.