"If you look at the holding companies, apart from Publicis and maybe Havas, which is growing at a small level, nobody else is growing. So really, it's the big platforms... their positions get reinforced. The big bananas are going to become even bigger. It's the six platforms - Google, Meta, Amazon, TikTok, plus ByteDance and Alibaba in China. Those are the big players and the problem for the regulator is they're going to get bigger."
"Pointing to the valuations of Google and Meta, he emphasized the need to acknowledge their scale: "Remember, these companies are nation-states. These are not Mickey Mouse companies... these are huge, so you have to get your mind around working with them and understanding what they're doing and we have to be validators." That reality also means agencies will struggle to offer genuine alternatives."
Major tech platforms are growing while most holding companies are stagnating, concentrating power among six dominant players: Google, Meta, Amazon, TikTok, ByteDance and Alibaba. Agencies face constrained growth and limited regulatory intervention, forcing a strategic pivot toward working more closely with those platforms. The relationship should be cooperative rather than adversarial, with agencies learning platform operations and acting as validators. The sheer scale of the platforms makes them akin to nation-states in market influence. Agencies will struggle to provide genuine alternatives amid platform expansion and the rise of AI-powered ad tools.
Read at The Drum
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