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( 01 )Every Monday

The Agency Brief.

A weekly read on where the agency market is moving, across new business, pricing and AI, for agency owners and leaders. Each issue picks the week’s dated, sourced developments and says why they matter for an independent agency.

8 issues, latest 2 November 2026 RSS feed

( 02 )Latest issue

Issue 8

Agencies' Q3 2026 earnings: where the value is moving

Q3 earnings landed in a cluster and told one story: media and data are growing, classic creative is shrinking, and every major group is pricing its future on AI plus fewer people.

  1. 01WPP's creative revenue fell 5.1% while media returned to growth.
  2. 02Publicis, the fastest-growing major, named the two-speed AI client.
  3. 03Pricing is moving off the billable hour as a quarter of the work automates.
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( 03 )Recent issues

  1. The AI dividend shows up in the P&L, and most agencies can't measure theirsHolding-company Q3 results turned the AI and consolidation story into reported margin numbers and pitch-free wins. In the same week, agentic AI passed 50% adoption in marketing while two-thirds of organisations still had no way to prove its return.
  2. The holdco wars turn into a margin contestPublicis grew 5% and welcomed a three-horse race at the top. Omnicom went into its results needing to prove a $1.5bn AI-efficiency case. The whole market is now arguing about where AI savings land: in margin, in price, or in headcount.
  3. Agencies are selling the machine, and the guardrails around itAdvertising Week New York became a showcase for agentic media. Stagwell rebuilt a media agency around software, Tinuiti opened its measurement data to clients' own AI agents, and the agency pitch moved from "we use AI" to "we govern it".
  4. A holdco president calls time on FTE pricing, in publicHorizon's Bob Lord called hours-based agency pricing "the old system" from a stage in Manhattan. Independents kept winning on specialism, and Advertising Week opened with AI out of the pilot phase and the CFO in the room.
  5. AI's cost line is breaking the agency retainerAI moved from pitch theatre into plumbing this week. Omnicom signalled it will bill AI compute to clients, WPP opened an AI production centre in London, and DMEXCO declared the experimenting phase over. Independents are splitting between industrial throughput and human judgement.
  6. The Coke and Pepsi reshuffle: big accounts now move on data and conflictThe year's two biggest media reviews were decided by portfolio conflict and by who runs the client's data and tech, with creative firepower a secondary factor. Meanwhile the holding-company tier is splitting in two, and AI is forcing agencies to rethink hourly pricing.

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