This FAQ explores the agency ecosystem, the forces reshaping it, and what marketers should consider when evaluating agency partners.

Ad agencies face AI disruption, consolidation, in-housing, and economic pressure. Legacy models are cracking as clients automate more work, forcing agencies to rethink their business strategies—or risk falling behind.

The Olympics and World Cup will propel sports ads to a record year, pushing global spend past $1 trillion.

This FAQ explains how data clean rooms have become essential infrastructure for retail media, enabling privacy-safe data collaboration, closed-loop measurement, and proof of performance as ad spend grows and marketers demand greater accountability.

Disney will invest $1 billion in OpenAI and allow Sora users to create short-form videos featuring more than 200 Disney, Pixar, Marvel, and Star Wars characters. User-generated material opens a new potential spigot of low-cost content for Disney+, which is under increased pressure to compete with YouTube. The move marks a major shift for a conglomerate that has historically held its IP close to the chest.

Horizon Media and Havas are teaming up in a new $20 billion joint venture, Horizon Global, designed to add scale without a full merger. Headquartered in New York, the entity will focus on U.S.-centric global accounts while Horizon and Havas continue operating independently. Horizon Global unites Horizon’s Blu platform and Havas’ Converged.AI into a new system called BluConverged, billed as the first AI-native media network. The move comes as Omnicom and Interpublic finalize a $13.5 billion merger, intensifying competition across the agency sector. Horizon Global offers clients a more flexible, performance-based alternative to mega-holdcos weighed down by bureaucracy.

Japan-based agency holding company Dentsu is considering selling its international business, ending its goal to compete against rivals Publicis and WPP. Selling its international business could allow Dentsu to reposition itself as a specialized player in its core market rather than stretching itself thin internationally where it can’t match competitors. The change could make the company more sustainable in the long run, but even if it focuses solely on Japan, rapid adoption of emerging technologies in the ad sector will still necessitate innovation.

The news: Brands are ramping up influencer investment and creator rates are skyrocketing following Unilever’s commitment to allocate half of its advertising budget on an “influencer-first” strategy. Numerous influencer and social agencies “unanimously” claimed a notable increase in client spend on influencer marketing since Unilever’s announcement, per sources cited by The Drum. Our take: Unilever has accelerated a trend that was already in motion, signaling the broader shift among advertisers toward influencer-led strategies that deliver consistent engagement and targeted reach among key demographics.

The news: Podcasts audiences are growing and becoming a more valuable channel for brand discovery. 73% of US adults over 12 have watched or listened to a podcast, per Edison Research’s The Podcast Consumer 2025 report. 65% of all podcast fans feel grateful to brands that support their favorite podcasts. Our take: Podcasts are platform agnostic and consumed actively, making them a standout medium for savvy advertisers. Partnering with shows and hosts whose content aligns with brand messaging and product offerings can help ads come across as authentic and maximize campaign efficacy.

Our midyear report revisits the top trends we named in early 2025 to see what’s shaping the market, evolving fast, or fading in the rearview mirror.

The news: Magnite and Dentsu are expanding their partnership in the Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) region to streamline video and connected TV (CTV) capabilities, per a press release. The agreement will use Magnite’s SpringServe video platform across markets like the UK and Spain to support Dentsu’s programmatic CTV offering, Total TV. Our take: Magnite and Dentsu’s partnership marks a critical expansion, giving advertisers a better opportunity to deliver impactful, precise, and measurable video and CTV experiences at scale across key markets.

The news: Dentsu recently launched Robmix, a new business embedding itself in Roblox’s culture and users, per a Dentsu press release. Robmix is a platform created with the goal of “discovering and developing the next generation of creators” on Roblox and focuses on entertainment opportunities related to Roblox users. Our take: Dentsu’s latest move gets ahead of the in-game wave, capitalizing on the future of marketing where creators and advertisers are increasingly turning to gaming as a critical opportunity to reach audiences when they’re most engaged.

Incrementality has always been the holy grail of retail media. But lately, it’s taken on greater importance as ad budgets are squeezed and retail media networks (RMNs) fight for their share of ad dollars.

M&A activity in the marcom space fell 37% in 2024: The decline shows a field in peril—but preparing for a rebound promises success.

The 2024 US presidential election ushered in a new normal in brand safety, with prominent social media companies such as X and Meta shifting the burden of content moderation from internal teams and contractors to users.

Retail media networks (RMNs) are eyeing the open web as an opportunity for scaled growth, but successfully integrating retailer data off-platform won’t happen overnight.

The ad agency ecosystem is vast, complex, and ever-changing. It now faces changes brought on by AI and clients’ shifting preferences over how and where to spend their advertising dollars.

Roblox could kick down the door to an in-game advertising boom: The gaming and metaverse platform is deepening ties to the ad industry and hiring for ad tech roles.

Several retailers look to harness generative AI’s potential: Instacart, Walmart, and Levi Strauss are among those testing potential use cases for the emerging technology.

Even as digital makes steady gains in Japan, traditional media continues to play an important role in the lives of adults, as reflected by media time spent. This is due, in part, to an aging population—and it’s one of the reasons why time spent with digital video lags TV.