{"id":20975,"date":"2026-04-29T02:51:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-29T02:51:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/20975\/"},"modified":"2026-04-29T02:51:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-29T02:51:09","slug":"omnicom-has-an-ai-powered-plan-to-cut-out-ad-tech-middlemen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/20975\/","title":{"rendered":"Omnicom Has An AI-Powered Plan To Cut Out Ad Tech Middlemen"},"content":{"rendered":"

Back in 2018, Omnicom passed on buying Acxiom for $2 billion, which went to IPG instead<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In retrospect, that was a good move twice over, CEO John Wren told investors during the holding company\u2019s Q1 earnings call on Tuesday, which was also its first full quarter with IPG folded in.<\/p>\n

Seven years after IPG bought Acxiom, Omnicom was able to buy the entirety of IPG<\/a> for $9 billion. \u201cI think my waiting paid off from an economic point of view,\u201d Wren quipped.<\/p>\n

But he also admitted the deal wouldn\u2019t have made sense for Omnicom back then. <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\u201cIf I want to be really fair,\u201d he said, \u201cwe probably weren\u2019t ready for it in 2018, but we\u2019re certainly ready for it 1777431068.\u201d<\/p>\n

Omnicom is plugging Acxiom\u2019s data into Omni, the holdco\u2019s AI-enabled sales and marketing platform, and building customer IDs that tie signals together across channels \u2013\u00a0a setup that Wren and Omnicom CTO Paolo Yuvienco describe as far more impactful in a world with generative AI and agentic tools in the mix.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe ability for us to actually drive values from that data is greater now than it\u2019s ever been,\u201d Yuvienco said, \u201cand it is exponentially more powerful for our clients.\u201d<\/p>\n

When AI buys the ads<\/p>\n

All of that only works, though, if the data is good.<\/p>\n

Acxiom has solid data, Wren said, because it works principally with clients in highly-regulated industries, including finance and pharma, where the bar for accuracy and fidelity is high.<\/p>\n

\u201cTheir data is not as haphazard as consumer data can be,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

With Acxiom\u2019s data as the foundation, Omnicom is pushing further into agentic media buying<\/a> and rethinking how it connects advertisers with publishers.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s been experimenting with AdCP<\/a>, for example, a protocol that lets AI agents from advertisers, publishers and ad tech systems communicate, negotiate and execute ad deals more directly. Omnicom has already \u201ctested the pipes,\u201d Yuvienco said, and run agent-to-agent media buys for several clients.<\/p>\n

The goal, he said, is to move more budget into working media and less into the machinery around it, which is usually operated by middlemen. If agents handle more of the planning and execution, it makes \u201cthe entire process more efficient and effective,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

Shortening the supply chain<\/p>\n

In other words, Omnicom wants a larger share of ad budgets to end up with publishers instead of intermediaries (minus its own margin, of course).<\/p>\n

There\u2019s always what Wren called \u201ca messy middle\u201d between buyers and sellers. Intermediaries \u201ctake a toll,\u201d he said, \u201cand that toll is paid for by clients and by the industry itself.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s worth pointing out, of course, that principal-based media buying<\/a> \u2013\u00a0which involves agencies purchasing inventory directly from publishers as a discount and reselling it to clients with markup \u2013\u00a0is already a multibillion-dollar business for Omnicom. With the acquisition of IPG, Omnicom is planning to scale up the practice even more.<\/p>\n

But pretty much all of the major agency groups are looking to have a more direct relationship with publishers, Wren said, and it\u2019s something Omnicom is actively investing in.<\/p>\n

Agentic tools are purpose built for this job, because they\u2019re \u201cin service of shortening the media supply chain,\u201d Yuvienco said.<\/p>\n

The real test, though, will be whether advertisers actually see fewer tolls \u2013 not just new ones.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, as for the quarter itself, Omnicom reported $5.6 billion in revenue from its core operations,\u00a0not including the businesses it plans to sell or shut down, which is up 6.7% year over year with 3.9% organic growth.<\/p>\n

On the hunt for synergies, Omnicom is in the midst of stripping out duplicate costs post-IPG acquisition and shifting more of the business towards higher-growth disciplines, like its integrated media unit, which includes media, commerce, data, CRM, consulting and content automation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Back in 2018, Omnicom passed on buying Acxiom for $2 billion, which went to IPG instead. In retrospect,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":20976,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[14717,2272,24,14718,25,155,14719,14720,14716,14721,14722],"class_list":{"0":"post-20975","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ai","8":"tag-acxiom","9":"tag-agencies","10":"tag-ai","11":"tag-ai-media-buying","12":"tag-artificial-intelligence","13":"tag-featured","14":"tag-ipg","15":"tag-middlemen","16":"tag-omnicom","17":"tag-principal-media","18":"tag-q1-earnings"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20975","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20975"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20975\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20976"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20975"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20975"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20975"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}