"Last December's news that Omnicom would acquire IPG sent shockwaves through Madison Avenue. The deal, worth an estimated USD$25bn, promised to create the world's largest agency network - a marketing behemoth with combined billings dwarfing even WPP's. Unsurprisingly, the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) stepped in, flagging concerns that the tie-up could limit competition across media buying, creative services, and data management."
"For months, the transaction hovered in limbo. But a revised framework for "cross-stack ad competition" introduced midyear gave the merger new life. By late summer, the FTC cleared the deal, followed in December by unconditional approval from the European Commission. Almost immediately, Omnicom announced a sweeping restructure: 4,000 roles set to go before year-end as it moves to consolidate overlapping units and unify its data strategy under a single global platform."
"With 2026 just days away, take a look at the major stories of 2025 - and their impact across the ad tech landscape... Mergers old and new reshaped the agency landscape; regulators pushed back against the giants; and Google quietly admitted something few thought possible - that the cookie era might be here to stay after all. @exchangewiretokAd Tech News: The Year in Review 🗞️✨ 1. Omnicom acquires IPG and plans restructuring 2. M&A in ad tech: Equativ & Sharethrough,"
Omnicom completed a roughly $25bn acquisition of IPG, creating the world's largest agency network and prompting FTC and European Commission reviews before clearance, followed by a restructure eliminating about 4,000 roles to unify data strategy. Multiple ad tech consolidations occurred, including Equativ with Sharethrough and Publicis with Lotame. Netflix and Paramount competed over Warner Bros acquisition. A deal was signed to transfer TikTok ownership to the US. Google faced trials and investigations, saw AI search reduce publisher referral traffic, and abandoned the Privacy Sandbox initiative, signaling persistence of the cookie era and reshaping monetization and targeting approaches.
Read at Exchangewire
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