Agencies
State of Play
Revised Sep 18, 2026The moment. Three signals ran on this channel, and the money story sits underneath all of them. Channel 4 Sales became the exclusive UK ad sales partner for Paramount’s 5 and other networks from 2027 in a long-term partnership valued at over 300 million pounds, ending Paramount’s Sky arrangement. Amazon’s Local Ads division, run by former CBS Radio and Entercom executive Jennifer Mock Donohue, is partnering with iHeartMedia and Spectrum Reach to sell small and mid-sized advertisers into Amazon’s streaming, audio and Twitch inventory. And marketers at State Farm, Mercedes and Hoka told Digiday they are citing AI search behavior in budget debates, arguing brand spend protects consideration as ChatGPT and AI Overviews reshape how people research.
The tension. That last one is the tell. Upper-funnel budget is notoriously the first thing cut and the hardest to defend, and the argument that is working for it right now is not a measurement result — it is anxiety about a channel nobody can measure yet. It works because the alternative is worse: ARF research this week found five of 13 major buyers cutting or dropping retail media over measurement problems, and the ANA found disciplined quality governance converted 56.7% of Q4 programmatic spend into benchmark-qualified impressions against 37.5% for the rest. Agencies are being paid for judgment in the places the numbers have gone quiet, which is the oldest version of the job.
Who’s moving. Channel 4 Sales, taking Paramount’s UK inventory off Sky. Amazon Local Ads, using broadcast sales forces to reach SMBs it cannot reach directly. State Farm, Mercedes and Hoka, making the AI-search argument for upper-funnel money. The ANA, on programmatic quality governance. The ARF, on buyers withdrawing from retail media over proof. Channel 4 itself, cutting around 340 roles, 28% of its workforce, in a three-part turnaround.
What the desk is watching. Whether AI-search anxiety survives its first flat quarter as a budget argument, and whether a sales house taking a rival’s inventory is the start of consolidation in UK ad sales or a one-off.
Publicis, Travis Kelce launch Tekta to unify fragmented NIL marketing
Publicis Sports, Travis Kelce and Lionsgate-owned 3 Arts Sports formed Tekta, a consulting venture giving advertisers access to Division I athletes across 68 Power Four schools with a unified measurement framework. Select Publicis Sports clients get early access.
Omnicom’s media chief: govern AI before scaling it
Omnicom Media Group’s Ben Hovaness argues AI adoption should start with data governance and human oversight, not speed. He says agencies will win by orchestrating AI across ecosystems and by agreeing on consistent outcome measurement, not by owning the technology.
State AG suit against Paramount-WBD chills wider media M&A
Paramount’s $110B WBD deal is on hold until mid-2027 amid a state attorneys general antitrust suit, even after clearing federal and global regulators. Executives now warn the state-level threat could stall other pending media combinations.
Marketers chase ‘fandom’ as the new buzzword for brand loyalty
Marketing execs are rallying around “fandom” as a way to embed brands in culture rather than advertise around it.
WPP’s legal woes mount, but clients aren’t fleeing yet
WPP faces a former exec’s kickback lawsuit, a class action alleging execs misled shareholders for 19 months, and a Sony probe finding WPP kept 80% of publisher rebates. Clients like Coca-Cola still praise the holdco publicly.
VAB study: local TV news ads lift purchase intent and brand image
A VAB/Dynata survey finds ads in local TV news boost purchase likelihood and brand perception across age groups, including younger viewers. The findings arrive as advertisers have grown wary of news environments over political polarization concerns.
Asda’s George taps Lucky Generals for its biggest brand push yet
Asda’s George brand launches “If you know, you know,” created by Lucky Generals, its first campaign leading the entire George brand. The homeware-led push spans TV, social, OOH, retail media and in-store, with fashion activity to follow later this season.
Ex-Banijay branded entertainment exec launches Impeto Media
Carlotta Rossi Spencer has founded Impeto Media after exiting Banijay, where she headed branded entertainment business development. The new venture positions her as an independent player in brand-funded content and format development.
Havas Market wins Superdrug media account from WPP’s Mindshare
AS Watson has moved UK media planning and buying for Superdrug, Superdrug Online Doctor and Savers to Havas Market, ending an 11-year run with WPP Media’s Mindshare. The Perfume Shop and other AS Watson brands are unaffected.
Paramount-WBD antitrust fight splits Hollywood as Ellison threatens exit
Ellison has threatened to move Paramount out of California absent a settlement, while California AG Bonta calls that “blackmail” and insists only structural remedies, not behavioral promises, will resolve the antitrust suit.
Chief Media buys Amazon, TikTok shops to build out commerce stack
Independent performance agency Chief Media acquired AMZ Advisers, an Amazon-focused consultancy, and social agency Reach Social, giving it retail and marketplace expertise and letting it cross-sell clients across services, CEO Scott Paternoster said.
JCPenney spoofs off-price retail with ‘Retail Rejuvenation Retreat’ campaign
JCPenney is running a wellness-themed campaign that parodies off-price retailers, framed as a “Retail Rejuvenation Retreat.” Marisa Thalberg, marketing chief at parent Catalyst Brands, positions it as a way to break shoppers of bad off-price habits.
Holding companies rally around ‘outcomes’ as H1 2026 earnings buzzword
Publicis, Omnicom, WPP, Havas, Stagwell, S4 and Dentsu all framed H1 2026 earnings around “delivering outcomes” rather than media planning. Executives admit privately that outcomes are hard to prove given too many external factors on consumer behavior.
Court filings: WPP insiders say GroupM ‘simplification’ was quietly abandoned
Exhibits in a wrongful-termination suit quote ex-WPP executives saying GroupM’s restructuring stalled by 2024, with cuts outpacing fixes. One called Choreograph’s data five years behind Publicis’s Epsilon.
Brand execs: audience fit beats celebrity wattage in collabs
At eTail Boston, UrbanStems, H&M and Chobani execs detailed how they vet partnerships. UrbanStems’ Laneige tie-up flopped on age-demographic mismatch, while H&M’s Anitta relationship earned it free multi-million-dollar World Cup media coverage.
MediaCo grows Q2 revenue 9% but profitability slides on digital costs
MediaCo’s Q2 net revenue rose to $34 million, up 9%, with digital now 47% of ad revenue. But higher expenses drove Adjusted EBITDA down 38% to $942,000 and widened net loss 17% to $8.6 million.
Local TV’s consolidation-for-journalism argument echoes newspapers, radio
Broadcasters cite local news as justification for bigger scale, but newspaper and radio consolidation didn’t preserve newsrooms. Operators should demand measurable journalism commitments from deals, not assume scale alone helps local coverage.
Media placement itself becomes a creative lever, not just distribution
Campaign argues that as ad environments multiply, where and how a message appears is now shaping creative strategy, not just amplifying it. That blurs the old media-creative divide and pushes agencies to plan channel and concept together from the start.
Chartbeat exec: media’s next act is calibration, not transformation
Chartbeat’s Kiran Paranjpe argues publishers should stop chasing scale and instead double down on direct sales and loyal audiences. His pitch: differentiation, not platform-scale competition, is the durable edge as AI automates the rest.
Brands build in-house studios as Hollywood production dries up
Brands like Nike, Ford and Coca-Cola are funding scripted content and launching in-house studios as TV ad campaigns lose reach. Struggling mid-size production companies are leaning into branded entertainment just to stay in business.
Tinuiti’s Klaassen on why drive still beats pedigree in ad-agency careers
Tinuiti CEO Abbey Klaassen frames career advancement in agency/media work as a function of personal drive, explained in terms simple enough for a teenager. It’s a reminder that leadership pipelines in ad-tech and agencies still reward initiative over credentials.
American Eagle’s CMO: algorithms can’t replace gut feel on creative
American Eagle CMO Craig Brommers argues human emotion still drives brand campaigns more than AI-driven optimization. It’s a marketer’s pushback on the industry’s rush to automate creative and media decisions with algorithms.
Big Tech’s $700B capex spree exposes a capital gap among agency holding cos
Google, Meta, Amazon and Microsoft now guide to $700B combined 2026 capex. Meanwhile Stagwell spends 8% of net revenue versus Omnicom’s 1%, showing scale, not urgency, drives who bets big on AI infrastructure.
Survey: budget approvals, not creative, are top campaign bottleneck
A 400-marketer survey from Extreme Reach finds budget approvals, not creative disputes, are the leading source of friction between marketing and finance.
Stagwell builds its own inventory marketplace, muscling into ad tech turf
Stagwell is launching an AI-driven media curation marketplace to control inventory access directly, rather than relying on ad tech intermediaries. It’s a sign agencies want a bigger cut of the supply chain, not just a seat at the buying table.