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Too siloed, too complex and hard to navigate, are comments on the brutal side of client feedback, as reported by global advertising agencies in the latest round of financial result announcements.
Talk about clients, those who pay for services, was a significant theme among holdcos when discussing the December quarter.
The holdcos also report that clients want more, not just advertising services.
And while AI will revolutionise the industry, measuring that value has so far been elusive.
Clients also want integration, data intelligence, measurable outcomes and a partner who can help them navigate AI transformation.
WPP, in the middle of a deep structural change, has changed its incentives scheme so that staff get bonuses for client success.
The new CEO, Cindy Rose, had been seeking client feedback during her first six months in the role.
"Clients pointed to the fact that our complexity got in the way of true client obsession. We were siloed,” she told analysts in a briefing.
“We were hard to navigate. We haven't been intentional enough about evolving our integrated proposition to adapt to the changing needs of our clients."
Omnicom, integrating takeover target IPG, has doubled its cost cutting to $US1.5 billion across every area of the business.
“We are evaluating and deploying automation and AI to improve how we service our clients and run our operations,” says Omnicom, now the world’s biggest advertising group.
Havas gave the example of The Travel Corporation — a client that had been in-housing its marketing before returning to an external agency following a competitive pitch — as evidence that the in-housing trend, widely anticipated, is not uniform.
"We see a lot of talks and literature on the fact that clients might be in-housing more in the years to come. These clients have decided to go full external," said CEO Yannick Bolloré.
Publicis reported that existing clients contributed about three percentage points to organic growth.
The company said clients are increasingly asking for an enterprise-level transformation partner rather than a traditional agency.
WPP described a shift in how clients want to pay, away from time-and-materials and toward output and outcome-based pricing, tech licensing and performance fees.
The pivot to outcome-based commercial models is emerging as an industry-wide issue.
"It's no longer they're paying for us to create five ads. In fact, we can create thousands of ads... it's how do you get those ads into the right audiences,” said Joanne Wilson, CFO, WPP.
“That's really what they're paying for, which is really enabling this output-based pricing, it's outcome-based pricing."
However, WPP described 2025 as a year of more cautious client spending, with a higher degree of volatility than expected.
The impact was most pronounced in CPG, automotive, and technology and digital services. Havas reported no significant change in client pressure.
"We are always facing requests from our clients ... to reduce our fees year after year,” said François Laroze, CFO/COO, Havas.
“And today, we are still at this pressure, but we are totally used to living with it."
Publicis said that despite ongoing macro caution — particularly with CapEx spending by tech clients and a wait-and-see posture from the Sapient business — nine of its ten client industry sectors posted positive growth for the full year.
Food and beverage (+14.2%), financials (+11.2%), and healthcare (+10.9%) were the standout performers.
Dentsu's most upbeat client signal was the bottoming-out of its CXM (customer experience management) business in the Americas, which has been a big drag on the international division since 2023.
The new pipeline for CXM is growing 14% year-on-year, and win rates have improved.
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