Omnicom’s job cuts near end as IPG integration wraps up

Omnicom has now moved past most of its planned reduction of about 15,000 roles. CEO John Wren told investors on the group’s third-quarter earnings call on 22 October that its integration of Interpublic Group (IPG) is “substantially completed”.

The group has set a year-end deadline for the 15,000 cuts, two months away. Severance and repositioning costs show how much of the work fell in the third quarter. They more than doubled to US$84.7 million (about A$120 million), from US$38.6 million a year earlier. That is close to two-thirds of the US$135.8 million (about A$193 million) Omnicom has spent on severance and repositioning so far this year.

The cuts and the sale of businesses Omnicom classifies as noncore underpin its target of US$900 million (about A$1.28 billion) in cost savings this year. Wren said the group remains on track to meet it.

“Major progress has been made in divesting the businesses we identified as not core to our future,” Wren said.

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How the 15,000 cuts unfolded

Omnicom completed the acquisition on 26 November 2025. It is the largest deal the agency sector has seen, making Omnicom the world’s biggest advertising group.

The first wave came in December, when Omnicom merged management layers and retired agency brands including DDB, FCB, and MullenLowe, and more than 4,000 roles were expected to go.

In September, Chief Financial Officer Philip Angelastro said the group aimed to reduce its workforce by 15,000 by year-end. That would take its workforce from about 120,000 at the end of 2025 to about 105,000. The figure includes redundancies and roles moved through outsourcing, offshoring, and business sales. Angelastro said the cuts targeted duplicated corporate functions and regional management.

“Those headcount changes really have not impacted client-facing people very much at all,” Angelastro told the Goldman Sachs Communacopia + Technology Conference.

Integrated media drives quarterly growth

Revenue rose 7.2% year on year on an organic basis to US$6 billion (about A$8.5 billion) in the quarter, excluding businesses held for sale.

Integrated media grew by more than 10%, helped by new wins including Novo Nordisk’s US media buying. Omnicom also pointed to the US$9.9 billion (about A$14.1 billion) in sports sponsorships it manages. The company said that business benefited from the World Cup and is expected to support the group ahead of the 2028 Olympic Games.

Coca-Cola win follows PepsiCo loss

The Coca-Cola Company announced it was moving its North American media duties to Omnicom. Publicis Groupe has handled Coca-Cola’s North American media and data business since last year.

The win follows Omnicom’s loss of PepsiCo’s global media account, which it held for decades, to Publicis. Publicis secured the PepsiCo business without a traditional pitch, and Omnicom executives have previously said they were disappointed by the loss.

When investors asked about Coca-Cola, Wren referred questions to the client. He said pitch activity was healthy overall, and that most accounts expected to go into review had done so in the first nine months of the year. Omnicom recorded 5.8% organic growth over that period.

Advertising revenue slips amid creative departures

Revenue in Omnicom’s advertising segment fell by a mid-single-digit percentage in the third quarter. That follows a high-single-digit organic decline in the second quarter, which executives attributed to internal restructuring as agencies merged.

Several senior people have left the creative division. Tyler Turnbull, who held senior roles at FCB and McCann, left this month to lead WPP’s creative arm. Before that, Troy Ruhanen, a long-serving executive and most recently President and CEO of Omnicom Advertising, retired.

Omnicom has a small number of sales still to complete. “We expect to complete the remaining handful of dispositions in the near term,” Wren said.