U of Digital Newsletter - 6/25/25 (free)

June 18th-June 24th

Below is a roundup of last week’s notable industry news, with summaries and our opinions. The merger is happening! (but…)

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Top Story 👁️

FTC Approves Omnicom-IPG Merger After Ad Giants Pledge Not to Boycott Over Politics🔒
Source: The Wall Street Journal
June 23rd, 2025

Summary: The US Federal Trade Commission has approved Omnicom's $13.5B acquisition of IPG, but with a twist: It can't coordinate to block ads based on political or ideological viewpoints. Advertisers will still be able to dictate where their ads appear, but the agencies can't guide ad spend away from publishers or platforms like X due to political bias. The agencies also can’t create exclusion lists unless requested by clients.

The unusual political provision stems from ongoing Republican-led investigations into alleged ad boycotts by industry groups like the now-defunct Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) and major agencies. Rep. Jim Jordan's House Judiciary Committee and the FTC have been probing whether ad agencies colluded to boycott conservative outlets like The Daily Wire.

The approval clears a big step in the megadeal, announced in December. It will combine the industry’s third and fourth largest agency holding companies into the world’s largest, with $25B+ in net annual revenue. The merger will combine celebrated agencies such as Omnicom’s TBWA and BBDO with IPG’s McCann and Weber Shandwick, as well as the ad-buying units of Omnicom Media Group and Mediabrands.

When the deal was first announced, the agencies predicted cost synergies of around $750M within two years. Since then, IPG had been undertaking a $250M restructuring, which included layoffs🔒and selling some agencies like R/GA🔒.

The merger still needs approval from UK and Australian regulators. There's now a 30-day comment period and a final FTC vote, but the deal is expected to close this year.

Opinion: This agreement puts what will become the world’s largest agency holding company in a potentially awkward position—it must protect brands from reputational damage while remaining politically agnostic. But what happens when right- or left-wing media companies publish crazy talk, which we saw in the wake of the 2020 election? This will inevitably lead to brands avoiding all news across the board, which will hurt legitimate publishers, journalism, and the open web.

The ruling essentially forces these agencies to treat politics as a protected class, potentially undermining legitimate brand safety concerns. Every media plan, publisher recommendation, and client briefing may now require political bias auditing. This creates a new kind of business risk for Omnicom-IPG that no other industry players will face. What a headache. 

Add this to what surely will be a challenging integration. As we predicted in December when the deal was announced, combining these two massive, complex organizations is going to create "vicious politicking, rampant confusion, and plummeting morale."

Meanwhile, Publicis continues its winning streak🔒, closing major accounts while Omnicom and IPG will spend the next couple of years navigating integration chaos and political tightrope walking. 

Publicis and other agencies are salivating at the opportunities that will shake loose from this merger, even more so now with the political provision in place.

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That’s It For This Week 👋

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