Agency holding companies dangle free AI perks to expand principal media
One consultant who works with marketers on agency reviews, speaking on condition of anonymity, described a holding company offering free AI tokenization to a client willing to commit to principal buying alongside one of its data services. Cyd Falkson, svp of strategic accounts at MediaSense, said the pricing problem is systemic: agencies have struggled to price and sell their AI and technology services well on their own, so they are bundling them into principal media deals to drive adoption. Omnicom's third-party service costs, which the company says include principal buying on clients' behalf, climbed to almost $2.9 billion in the first half of 2026, up from $1.7 billion a year earlier. ID Comms CEO Tom Denford said, "If we're seeing these things happening now, it's not a blip, it's a systemic shift."
Marketers negotiating agency contracts now face bundled offers that tie discounted AI access to principal media commitments, a structure Falkson said can make true costs harder to see even when it appears to save money on paper. She advised marketers to state their position on principal media explicitly before any review begins, since staying silent can be read by an agency as consent to trade services for participation. Most independent agencies argue that a firm buying and selling inventory for the same client stops acting as an agent, and some marketers now weigh that objection against the savings holdcos say they deliver at scale.