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Issue #14: WPP vs Publicis: rival agencies go to war

The fastest way for digital marketing pros to look smart in the weekly stand-up

June 11, 2025 • Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes

☕ Hello there digital dynamos

Sip on your iced Americano and check the week’s key headlines in a flash.

🗞️ Top Stories

  1. Amazon DSP winning budgets from The Trade Desk
    Marketers are redirecting CTV spend from The Trade Desk to Amazon’s DSP, lured by retail data, supply partnerships and shoppable video ads. Investing.com

  2. WPP unveils Open Intelligence, its first “Large Marketing Model”
    A new solution inside the WPP Open platform lets brands build custom AI models to predict audiences and optimise creative without 3rd party IDs. Marketing Dive

  3. Meta invests close to $15 billion in Scale AI
    The investment is the largest in Meta’s history and secures cutting edge data labelling tech for the company’s ambitious AGI roadmap. Reuters

  4. WPP trims 2025 global ad spend growth forecast to 6%
    Mid-year guidance drops from December’s 7.7% growth forecast, with total global ad revenue now estimated at $1.08 trillion. Reuters

  5. The Trade Desk launches Deal Desk to fix PMP deals
    Live in beta Q3, the deal hub gives buyers real time pacing, quality and inventory controls plus AI driven recommendations when deals stall. Business Wire

  6. Publicis wins $1.7 billion Mars global media account from WPP
    Mars will move media, commerce and influencer duties in 70+ markets to a bespoke “OneMars” team inside Publicis. Storyboard18

  7. Publicis owned Epsilon called out over low quality programmatic supply
    WPP report that 26% of impressions bought through Epsilon were on made for advertising sites and viewability averaged well below industry norms. Exchange4Media

💭 60-Second Take - WPP vs Publicis: rival agencies go to war

WPP and Publicis have moved from polite rivalry to open confrontation - fighting for key client accounts, the moral high-ground on media quality and AI supremacy. Here’s why it matters:

  • Advertiser objectives: Publicis’ Mars win, plus Coca-Cola earlier this year, removes an estimated $2 billion in billings from WPP, signalling that brands now value commerce and data integration over legacy media operations.

  • Media quality: WPP’s public audit calling Epsilon inventory “low-quality” can be considered both a defensive move after recent losses and a strategic play to dent Publicis’ growing data and tech advantage.

  • AI platform race: WPP’s new “large marketing model” squares off against Publicis’ Epsilon identity graph, with each network likely to pitch its own data and tech stack as the safer, more future-proof option for clients.

WPP is now fast following Publicis’ long-running “buy the pipes” strategy, yet trying to de-value it at the same time. Rather than shelling out for big tech and data acquisitions, WPP is positioning home-grown tools as leaner, more transparent, and better integrated than Publicis platforms such as Epsilon.

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See you next time,

Access Adtech