Interpublic got off to a slow start in the principal trading arena but the firm ramped up quickly in the second half of last year and now has a robust offering in the U.S. to buy and resell media to clients. 

According to IPG CEO Philippe Krakowsky about half of the firm’s clients “opted into” utilizing the new offering in 2025 or in subsequent years.  

At a Barclays investor conference this week, managing director Julien Roch asked Krakowsky what the “bottlenecks” were to IPG getting its principal trading operating off the ground. 

The short answer, there were none, according to the IPG chief. Rather, he asserted, there was a shift in client sentiment about the practice.  

Seven or eight years ago, “clients were very clear that that was not something that they were particularly supportive of,” Krakowsky said. “Our model was built, and very successful, with an approach that was consultative and much more focused on providing advice and decisioning around those investment decisions. That was supported by the expertise inside of Mediabrands and then what Acxiom brought to the table.” 

He credited Omnicom and Publicis with reading the shift in client sentiment quickly. He also noted that IPG will benefit from Omnicom’s global principal trading operation when the M&A transaction between the two firms is completed later this year (barring holdups in the approval process). “We can clearly move much faster in the rest of the world,” he said. 

Roch also noted previous comments that the merger transaction is expected to save $200 million in compensation costs and whether that would create “uncertainty” among the companies’ talent ranks. 

“That’s not front of house,” Krakowsky replied. “That’s not client-facing or revenue generating. Which is not to say that the question about talent flight is not a fair one.” 

Krakowsky also offered more insight into the firm’s $250 million streamlining program announced earlier this month.  

It’s “kind of an extension of the work that you saw us begin last year, where we started to say, okay, you’ve got to standardize much more. You’ve got to think about more of the business that can be run from ... a platform approach to some of the underlying support services.” 

With that in mind, he noted that the firm’s finance and human resources areas are being centralized. Further centralization within Axciom and production also are in the works.  

IPG noted earlier that three big losses last year weighed down full-year earnings results for 2024. Asked if the firm was currently defending any big pieces of business, Krakowsky replied, “thankfully no.” 

Note: This story is based on a transcript filed by IPG with the SEC.