Publicis claims largest advertising company in the world title

Chris Pash
By Chris Pash | 4 February 2025
 

Arthur Sadoun.

Publicis Groupe claimed the title of the “largest” advertising group in the world after posting organic growth of 6.3% in the December quarter.

This translated to full year organic growth of 5.8% with overall revenue of €16.03 billion and net revenue of almost €14 billion.

The France-based group is confident of continued outperformance in 2025, forecasting organic growth of 4% to 5%, outpacing rivals.

“Thanks to a very strong Q4, Publicis became the largest advertising company in the world in 2024,” said CEO Arthur Sadoun.

He didn’t name the global group Publicis overtook but he has previously named the UK-based WPP.

The title is expected to be short-lived, overtaken later this year with the Omnicom takeover of IPG.

Sadoun said the company was ending the year in the number one position across the board, growing three times faster than holding company peers, and five times faster than IT consultancies. 

"After being number one on organic growth for the last three years, in cumulative new business wins for the last five years, on margin for more than 15, and number one in market cap since early 2023, we finished 2024 as number one in size, becoming the largest advertising group with net revenue of circa €14 billion," he told analysts in a briefing .

"We leapfrogged from the third position to the first in just three years through a combination of four unique factors. First, we are winning more and at the same time, losing less than our competition. We won significant market share through net new business as confirmed by JPMorgan's ranking since 2019. Actually over this period, our net new business billings are close to four times larger than those of the second best performer.

"Factor two, our strategic acquisition of Epsilon and Sapient as well as complementary bolt-on investments have been strong contributors to our group organic growth for the last five years generating close to 35% growth since 2019.

"Factor three our country model has boosted all of our regions, allowing us to outperform across geographies. In the last five years, our organic basis in the US grew almost 3 times as fast as the industry average. Europe was up 25% versus a 15% for our industry average. And we grew by 20% in China when the largest player in the market is expected to be down by 25% for the period.

"Factor four, our people-first approach. We have always made our people our number one priority. We did it in tough times like COVID using Marcel to save thousands of jobs in better times when we reimbursed the salary sacrifice made by our teams at the beginning of the pandemic. And in good times, for example, when we saw two years of double-digit growth, we gave bonuses twice to everyone at Publicis."

He said the company delivered industry-high financial ratios while stepping up the pace of investments in AI and talent.

“Once again, we topped the charts in new business rankings.," he said.

“But even more importantly, we are accelerating on our status as a Category of One thanks to our unmatched first-party data capabilities, our connected media ecosystem, our creative firepower, and our 25,000 engineers, brought together through the Power of One. 

“This makes us confident in significantly outperforming the industry in 2025 for the sixth year in a row.”

Asia Pacific posted 5% organic growth, led by India and Australia. North America was up 5.6% and Europe 6.5%. 

publicis 2024 posted feb 2025

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