Agencies
State of Play
Revised Sep 3, 2026The moment. A year into Cindy Rose’s tenure, WPP Media’s retention rate has climbed to 43% from 16%, with $3 billion in new accounts won against $2.81 billion lost — and an operating margin still at 4.1% against Publicis’s 17.4%. State attorneys general are suing to block Paramount’s $110 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery, with the 2018 AT&T-Time Warner verdict as the precedent both sides reach for. Fox’s World Cup coverage drew 128 million viewers and lifted its ad revenue 28% to $4.2 billion, and buyers did not carry any of that into Premier League inventory.
The tension. The pitch numbers recovered and the margin did not, which is what buying share with price looks like on a balance sheet. The same compression runs down the market: a six-station radio group in North Carolina and Virginia watched agency revenue fall from 30% of its business in 2005 to 5–10% today, and overall deals in television are shifting from guaranteed money to success-only bonuses.
Who’s moving. WPP, winning more accounts and earning less on them. The state AGs, setting the terms on the largest media deal on the table. Sinclair and Scripps, buying and hiring at broadcast scale while the big deal is frozen. California lawmakers, patching the tax credit cap they just wrote. The venture firms The Ankler surveyed, funding AI and live events rather than studios.
What the desk is watching. Whether the AT&T precedent holds when the plaintiff is a state rather than the Justice Department, and whether a ratings event as large as the World Cup can stop failing to move adjacent inventory.
WPP’s legal woes mount, but clients aren’t fleeing yet
WPP faces a former exec’s kickback lawsuit, a class action alleging execs misled shareholders for 19 months, and a Sony probe finding WPP kept 80% of publisher rebates. Clients like Coca-Cola still praise the holdco publicly.
VAB study: local TV news ads lift purchase intent and brand image
A VAB/Dynata survey finds ads in local TV news boost purchase likelihood and brand perception across age groups, including younger viewers. The findings arrive as advertisers have grown wary of news environments over political polarization concerns.
Asda’s George taps Lucky Generals for its biggest brand push yet
Asda’s George brand launches “If you know, you know,” created by Lucky Generals, its first campaign leading the entire George brand. The homeware-led push spans TV, social, OOH, retail media and in-store, with fashion activity to follow later this season.
Ex-Banijay branded entertainment exec launches Impeto Media
Carlotta Rossi Spencer has founded Impeto Media after exiting Banijay, where she headed branded entertainment business development. The new venture positions her as an independent player in brand-funded content and format development.
Havas Market wins Superdrug media account from WPP’s Mindshare
AS Watson has moved UK media planning and buying for Superdrug, Superdrug Online Doctor and Savers to Havas Market, ending an 11-year run with WPP Media’s Mindshare. The Perfume Shop and other AS Watson brands are unaffected.
Paramount-WBD antitrust fight splits Hollywood as Ellison threatens exit
Ellison has threatened to move Paramount out of California absent a settlement, while California AG Bonta calls that “blackmail” and insists only structural remedies, not behavioral promises, will resolve the antitrust suit.
Chief Media buys Amazon, TikTok shops to build out commerce stack
Independent performance agency Chief Media acquired AMZ Advisers, an Amazon-focused consultancy, and social agency Reach Social, giving it retail and marketplace expertise and letting it cross-sell clients across services, CEO Scott Paternoster said.
JCPenney spoofs off-price retail with ‘Retail Rejuvenation Retreat’ campaign
JCPenney is running a wellness-themed campaign that parodies off-price retailers, framed as a “Retail Rejuvenation Retreat.” Marisa Thalberg, marketing chief at parent Catalyst Brands, positions it as a way to break shoppers of bad off-price habits.
Holding companies rally around ‘outcomes’ as H1 2026 earnings buzzword
Publicis, Omnicom, WPP, Havas, Stagwell, S4 and Dentsu all framed H1 2026 earnings around “delivering outcomes” rather than media planning. Executives admit privately that outcomes are hard to prove given too many external factors on consumer behavior.
Court filings: WPP insiders say GroupM ‘simplification’ was quietly abandoned
Exhibits in a wrongful-termination suit quote ex-WPP executives saying GroupM’s restructuring stalled by 2024, with cuts outpacing fixes. One called Choreograph’s data five years behind Publicis’s Epsilon.
Brand execs: audience fit beats celebrity wattage in collabs
At eTail Boston, UrbanStems, H&M and Chobani execs detailed how they vet partnerships. UrbanStems’ Laneige tie-up flopped on age-demographic mismatch, while H&M’s Anitta relationship earned it free multi-million-dollar World Cup media coverage.
MediaCo grows Q2 revenue 9% but profitability slides on digital costs
MediaCo’s Q2 net revenue rose to $34 million, up 9%, with digital now 47% of ad revenue. But higher expenses drove Adjusted EBITDA down 38% to $942,000 and widened net loss 17% to $8.6 million.
Local TV’s consolidation-for-journalism argument echoes newspapers, radio
Broadcasters cite local news as justification for bigger scale, but newspaper and radio consolidation didn’t preserve newsrooms. Operators should demand measurable journalism commitments from deals, not assume scale alone helps local coverage.
Media placement itself becomes a creative lever, not just distribution
Campaign argues that as ad environments multiply, where and how a message appears is now shaping creative strategy, not just amplifying it. That blurs the old media-creative divide and pushes agencies to plan channel and concept together from the start.
Chartbeat exec: media’s next act is calibration, not transformation
Chartbeat’s Kiran Paranjpe argues publishers should stop chasing scale and instead double down on direct sales and loyal audiences. His pitch: differentiation, not platform-scale competition, is the durable edge as AI automates the rest.
Brands build in-house studios as Hollywood production dries up
Brands like Nike, Ford and Coca-Cola are funding scripted content and launching in-house studios as TV ad campaigns lose reach. Struggling mid-size production companies are leaning into branded entertainment just to stay in business.
Tinuiti’s Klaassen on why drive still beats pedigree in ad-agency careers
Tinuiti CEO Abbey Klaassen frames career advancement in agency/media work as a function of personal drive, explained in terms simple enough for a teenager. It’s a reminder that leadership pipelines in ad-tech and agencies still reward initiative over credentials.
Big Tech’s $700B capex spree exposes a capital gap among agency holding cos
Google, Meta, Amazon and Microsoft now guide to $700B combined 2026 capex. Meanwhile Stagwell spends 8% of net revenue versus Omnicom’s 1%, showing scale, not urgency, drives who bets big on AI infrastructure.
Stagwell builds its own inventory marketplace, muscling into ad tech turf
Stagwell is launching an AI-driven media curation marketplace to control inventory access directly, rather than relying on ad tech intermediaries. It’s a sign agencies want a bigger cut of the supply chain, not just a seat at the buying table.
Agentic media buying is turning into a client-by-client build, not a platform
Butler/Till is scaling AI agent buying across clients and channels, but says controls must be configured per client, not applied uniformly. That means agencies need bespoke guardrails, not one-size-fits-all automation, to trust agentic systems with budgets.
Spectrum Reach exec: fragmentation forces marketers to buy reach differently
TVREV’s Alan Wolk and Spectrum Reach’s Dan Callahan discuss how “Feudal Media” fragmentation is pushing marketers toward partners who can aggregate premium inventory. Transparency and trust are becoming the differentiators as reach gets harder to assemble.
FCC’s Aug 6 vote may scrap national ownership cap, not just raise it
The FCC is weighing whether to drop the 39% national ownership cap entirely in favor of case-by-case public-interest review.
RPA exec: AI’s real payoff is freeing up time for partnerships, not replacing them
RPA’s Lisa Herdman argues AI’s value is cutting the data-wrangling grunt work, not the relationships — leaving agencies more room for strategic client and partner collaboration.
Wpromote CEO: skip building AI platforms, own measurement instead
Wpromote’s Andrea Bendzick argues independent agencies beat holding companies by staying agile, buying brand credibility via M&A, and using AI for grunt work — not building costly proprietary platforms. Her advice: own measurement, partner for execution.