Omnicom CEO John Wren announced today that the company expects to close its acquisition of Interpublic in November. 

The update was provided with the release of the company’s third quarter earnings results that show an organic revenue gain for the period of 2.6%. Wren said underlying growth (excluding Olympics and election dollars from 2024) was closer to 4%. 

Omnicom’s organic revenue figure is not a net figure and does not exclude pass-through costs such as those related to principal-based trading, which competitors like Publicis and WPP provide. The net figure would be lower. Organic growth for the first nine months was 3%. 

Reported revenue for Q3 was just over $4 billion, up 4%. The nine-month figures: $11.7 billion, up 3.3%.  

The company broke out the following organic growth figures by discipline: media & advertising, 9.1%; executive & support, 2%; and precision marketing, 0.8%. Revenue declines were reported for healthcare, -1.9%; public relations, -7.5%; experiential, -17.7%; and branding & retail commerce, -16.9%. 

Tough comparisons to last year due to political and Olympic dollars were partly responsible for the declines. 

In the media and advertising sector, Wren told analysts on an earnings call that media was responsible for most of the growth while creative was “stable.” 

As for the IPG deal, Wren said the European Commission was the remaining regulatory body yet to issue approval of the transaction. Omnicom this week completed what he called the “last step” in the process leading to a Commission ruling, which he expects shortly.  

He added that planning has been ongoing and that the companies expect to “hit the ground running from day one” following what is now expected to be a late November closing of the transaction. 

Asked to identify what he sees as the three biggest growth opportunities emerging post-closing, Wren replied, “media, health, precision marketing.” He noted that the combined firm’s media business would be 50-60% greater than Omnicom’s current business and that there are “really talented people” on the media side at both companies.  

While Omnicom’s health operations took a hit with the loss of its Pfizer account last year, “going forward we see strong assets and we punch way above our weight.”  

Wren said the firms expect to “exceed” the $750 million in synergies initially highlighted when the agreement was announced last December. He declined to say by how much. 

He did say that a key part of the combined offering would be a next-generation version of the company’s marketing operating system Omni called Omni Plus that integrates IPG’s cloud-based Acxiom identity solution called Real ID and a robust layer of agentic and generative artificial intelligence. The official Omni Plus launch is planned for early January at CES. 

Asked how Omnicom intended to close the growth gap with Publicis Groupe, Wren responded, “we’re not concerned about closing the gap.” He asserted that Publicis and Omnicom are “the two companies that are ongoing” in the holding company peer set. “We intend to focus on those areas showing strong growth and differentiation,” he added. 

Details including leadership roles, organizational structure, strategic priorities and more will be revealed shortly after the closing, Wren said. 

There was $61 million in Q3 costs related to the pending acquisition and $38 million in “repositioning costs” primarily related to severance payments. 

As to Q4, CFO Phil Angelastro noted that some $200 million to $250 million in project work is “potentially available,” but that it is too early to tell how much of that work the company’s agencies will reel in. 

On the tone of business, Wren said clients aren’t “euphoric” about current market conditions, but that for the most part budgets have remained intact. 

Separately, IPG said it would release its third quarter earnings report "on or before November 10." The company also said that given that the acquisition by Omnicom is on schedule for this year, it won't hold an earnings call or update further its full-year guidance.