• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, July 17, 2024

Calling an analyst's question about Omnicom's media account wins over the past couple of years "terribly important," CEO John Wren attribute it to "structural" investments the holding company has made in AI and data that have "differentiated" it from the other major agency media offerings. Specifically, he cited a multi-year investment in OMNI, Omnicom's AI-powered operating system, as well as the proprietary "transactional" data it purchased along with its acquisition of Flywheel Digital from Ascential plc earlier this year.

“I think the behavior that you have seen over the last 18 to 24 months with who’s been winning business and who has not, is structural — as well as other elements coming into play," Wren explained, adding, "In our particular case, I think the key differentiator, in addition to having excellent people deployed, has been the decade-long investment and the progress that we’ve made in OMNI."

Wren went on to note that differentiation effectively "doubled in terms of its capabilities and the information that we gather to provide insights with the acquisition of the transactional information that we got when we purchased Flywheel’s commerce cloud earlier this year."

He alluded that the combination of AI technology and proprietary transactional commerce data now is table stakes for the entire industry vs. what it was just three years ago, and that Omnicom's early, first-mover investments have paid off and differentiated it from its peers.

"Also now, the improvement that we have in how we measure the effectiveness of media coupled with the content production tools that we’ve now automated and also then get included in some cases as modules that are compatible with the information that OMNI generates is a key factor in why we have been batting well above 600," Wren told investors and analysts Tuesday afternoon, citing it as the main reason it has been winning so much new media business.

He concluded his answer by alluding to another, ostensibly bigger and longer term project that will yield and even bigger pay off down the road:

"We’re looking to outcomes and proving client ROI," he teased, adding, "But that’s more to come on that."