With most of the holding companies reporting results for the third quarter, Madison & Wall’s Brian Wieser has calculated that collectively organic growth in the period for the firms amounted to 2%. (That’s for WPP, Publicis, Omnicom, Interpublic and Havas). 

That's down from 2.8% in Q3 2023 despite somewhat easier comparables, Wieser reports.  

For the full year, he projects that the major holding groups collectively will post organic growth of 3% to 4%. 

Media agencies were generally strong across the groups and creative agencies generally weak, “as per normal in recent years,” Wieser notes.  

That said, the numbers varied significantly on the media side. WPP’s GroupM was up by only 1.6% organically while at Publicis media grew by “high single digits.”  

At IPG, media agency growth was described as “very strong,” Wieser noted, while media growth at Omnicom was also up in the high single digits on a gross basis. 

With Q3 results in hand, WPP and IPG both reduced guidance for the full year, Wieser noted. WPP now projects growth of between 0.5% and 1.0% (vs. 1.5%-3.0% previously). At IPG, guidance is effectively flat.  

Omnicom now expects to be up 3.5%-5% and at Publicis guidance is 5.5%-6.0%. Wieser figures that Havas will probably come out closer to Omnicom and Publicis, while Dentsu will be closer to WPP and IPG. Thus, collectively, “the large agency groups now look poised for around 3-4% growth for the full year.”