Omnicom will lay off about 4,000 employees, and an additional 10,000 people will be impacted by sell-offs, following the completion of its acquisition of rival Interpublic Group (IPG), executives tell Axios.
Why it matters: The cuts mark one of the biggest restructurings in the ad industry in years and comes as agencies adapt to new technologies and changing client demands.
Zoom in: Omnicom and IPG had about 120,000 employees in total as of 2024.
About 4,000 people will be let go through the end of the year.
Roughly another 10,000 people will be impacted as the company sheds businesses in certain locations, which will not necessarily be completed by year end.
What they're saying: Omnicom CEO John Wren told Axios that at the onset he set the terms to be unbiased toward his company's employees.
"I said we were going to take the approach that even though we were acquiring IPG, that the best person qualified for the particular job was going to be that one that survived into the future," Wren says.
Zoom out: The deal reflects an urgent need for consolidation among agencies as they seek scale and tech investments to best serve their clients, Wren says.
"This brings together, bar none, the best creative talent throughout the world," Wren says. "With the number of creative brands and the way that we're going to manage ... we're going to preserve as best we can the agility on those creative people responding to clients' and consumers' needs."
The combined Omnicom can offer clients greater choice "without the conflict of having to go through nonsense of the delays in firing one agency and selecting another," Wren adds.
Between the lines: Omnicom Media CEO Florian Adamski says scale doesn't just mean the agency now has $74 billion media billings, but it also has more intelligence.
Adamski noted that Acxiom, the marketing data company acquired by IPG in 2018, works with 90% of global credit card issuers and 75% of U.S. retail banks.
CTO Paolo Yuvienco says Omnicom's "agentic framework" sits on top of all of its platforms, providing autonomous and semi-autonomous agents to assist all employees, such as media planners and strategists.
What's next: Omnicom is planning to launch a new integrated tech platform at CES in January with the first 10 major clients going live in the first quarter.
"Much to popular belief, we're not going to be taking two years to make this happen. They'll be going early next year," says Duncan Painter, CEO of Omni and Flywheel Commerce Network.
