Omnicom says agentic ad buying now routine, squeezes ad-tech middlemen
On Omnicom's first-quarter earnings call Tuesday, CTO Paolo Yuvienco told analysts the holding company has gone beyond testing its OMNI agentic buying platform and is now using it for routine media buys with certain clients. 'We've already tested the pipes and have been able to have money flow through to actually buy inventory available on certain publishers,' he said, adding that Omnicom was first to market with the AdCP protocol and has executed agent-to-agent buys for several clients. CEO John Wren said the process is producing better pricing and more direct deals with publishers, reducing ad-tech middlemen and lifting the amount of working media dollars. The buildout draws on Acxiom, the consumer identity platform Omnicom picked up through its Interpublic acquisition. Wren pointed out Interpublic paid $2 billion for Acxiom in 2018, while he paid $9 billion for the whole of Interpublic five years later.
Campaigns placed through Omnicom's agent framework route through fewer intermediaries, which should show up as tighter pricing and a larger share of budget reaching working media. Wren stopped short of saying how the shift affects Omnicom's own margins as a principal buyer, so agencies negotiating rates should watch how much of that efficiency gain gets passed on to clients. The Acxiom identity layer adds another variable: buys built on Omnicom's proprietary data carry a data advantage that open-market agentic buys lack, complicating side-by-side comparisons for marketers evaluating agencies on price alone.