• by Joe Mandese , July 22, 2025

Interpublic’s media and data operations -- including Mediabrands, UM, Initiative, Kinesso, MRM and Acxiom -- were the biggest drain declining second quarter revenue, the holding company announced it what might be its last earnings call before it merges with Omnicom.

“The macro environment has been more volatile than anticipated as we entered the year,” CEO Philippe Krakowsky said in prepared remarks kicking the call off, and citing the inertial impact of big account losses from late last year as a primary factor in the quarter’s decline, which saw total revenue fall 6.6%, and 3.5% on an organic basis.

Media and data operations, by comparison, declined 10.5% totally, and 3.1% organically.

Despite the volatility in the macroeconomic environment, Krakowsky noted that Interpublic’s clients “as a whole, are not reacting reflexively to the changing business and geopolitical landscape.”

The U.S. held up better than Interpublic’s worldwide results, declining only 2.6% on an organic basis, and the company cited “growth domestically” within its IPG Mediabrands operations.

Looking forward, Krakowsky talked about the impact new technology -- especially generative and agentic AI -- is having on transforming the company, improving the workflow and output of its global workforce, and even generating new products representing new revenue streams coming from performance-based and SAAS-like fees.

He even previewed an announcement that he said would come later today about the launch of a new platform for consumer packaged goods marketers to utilize AI to automate their retail marketing and media end-to-end.

The platform, dubbed ASC for Agentic Systems for Commerce, utilizes AI to process multivariate data across brands, products, retailers and markets that would not be feasible without AI.

More broadly, Krakowsky touted the continuing buildout of Interpublic’s Interact platform -- and especially how it continues to onboard its global workforce, not just from early adopters in its media operations, but among creatives and other agency talent.

He said more than half of Interpublic’s workforce currently is using Interact, including 40% who use it daily, and he gave an update on the output coming from the platform:

“So far this year, we’ve processed well over one million prompts resulting in the creation of 10,000 purpose-based agents an hundreds of thousands of images, consumer journeys, media plans and other tools that make our people’s work faster, better and more effective to the benefit of our clients,” he said.