Creative Is Now a Line Item. Three holding companies priced it three ways.
Between July 16 and August 6, the three largest agency holding companies each reported what creative work is worth inside their business. One is moving capital away from it, one reported it shrinking, one is growing it slower than media. What they all did first is the finding.
If you run an independent agency, holding-company earnings season usually reads like weather in another country. Big numbers, distant companies, headlines about restructuring that have little to do with the brief on your desk. You skim them and go back to work, because the question you actually live with, what a client will pay for your creative thinking, never seems to be in them.
This summer it was. Publicis reported on July 16. Omnicom on July 28. WPP on August 6. Each was covered on its own, as a verdict on one company. Read side by side, the three filings answer a question independent agencies rarely get a straight answer to: what is creative work worth to the companies that own the most of it?
They disagree. One is selling advertising businesses. One reported its creative agencies shrinking while its production unit grew. One reported creative growing, more slowly than the media business beside it. Same half-year, overlapping clients, the same technology, and three different answers from three leadership teams that are not short of information. That disagreement is useful to anyone smaller. A settled question leaves nothing to claim. An open one is a position still available.
Advertising's share of Omnicom's core operations revenue in the second quarter of 2026: $942.6 million of $6.0 billion. Integrated Media was 52.5 percent. At the largest agency holding company, the work most people still mean by "agency" is now a line in a table.
Omnicom is moving capital away from it. Its quarter was strong: core operations revenue of $6.0 billion, organic growth of 6.1 percent, margins up. Underneath, $567.5 million of revenue in the quarter came from businesses disposed of or held for sale. Chief executive John Wren described what the combined company is for in one line: “We are built for an era where speed, integration, and scale matter most.”
WPP reported the split in its own numbers. Revenue less pass-through costs fell 4.7 percent like-for-like in the first half. Inside that, WPP Creative declined 4.9 percent while WPP Production grew 1.6 percent. Average headcount fell from about 106,000 to 97,000 year on year. Read carefully, the creative figure is less dramatic than it first looks: it includes WPP's enterprise-solutions unit, WPP attributes the decline to lower client spending, and it reports its brand and design agencies still growing.
Publicis is growing it, and even there it is the slower line. Connected Media, 62 percent of net revenue, grew at a high single-digit rate in the second quarter. Intelligent Creativity, 25 percent, grew at a low single-digit rate. The group raised its full-year guidance. Creative grew; media grew faster. What Publicis did was not protect creative so much as package it, selling it inside a connected offer with data and media and naming it for what it does.
| Company | What the filing shows | The decision it implies |
|---|---|---|
| Omnicom (Q2, Jul 28) | Advertising 15.7% of core revenue; $567.5m from businesses sold or held for sale | Reallocate capital toward integrated media and scale |
| WPP (H1, Aug 6) | Creative −4.9%, Production +1.6%, group −4.7% | Shrink cost, keep execution, restructure into four units |
| Publicis (H1, Jul 16) | Intelligent Creativity 25%, low single-digit growth; Connected Media 62%, high single-digit | Keep creative, but sell it inside a connected offer |
The three report on different bases (core operations revenue, revenue less pass-through costs, net revenue) and different periods. This is a picture of choices, not a league table of growth rates.
Omnicom calls it Advertising. WPP calls it Creative, one of four operating units. Publicis calls it Intelligent Creativity. Different words, the same move: in all three companies, the work is now a unit with its own revenue line, its own growth rate, and a quarterly comparison against units that scale better. That happened before any of the three decisions, and it is what made them possible. A unit can be sold, shrunk or renamed. Something that organizes the whole firm cannot.
An independent agency has the opposite structure, and it is an advantage. Creative is not a line on its profit and loss; it is the whole business, and nobody can reorganize it away. The exposure is the other side of the same fact. The 4A's and the ANA reported in June 2024 that only 10 percent of agencies, and 5 percent of clients, have a formal definition of the value an agency delivers. Publicis wrote its definition into how it sells. Most independents never have.
One reporting cycle, three companies. Omnicom's figures are reshaped by its acquisition of Interpublic, which closed in November 2025; WPP is mid-restructuring; Publicis is on a different fiscal rhythm. Third-quarter results arrive in late October and may change the picture.
The discipline names are the companies' own, and they are marketing labels as much as accounting categories. WPP's creative line includes a consulting-style unit; Omnicom's advertising line is not the same set of businesses as Publicis's creative practice.
The strongest argument against all of this is Publicis itself. If packaging creative inside a connected offer is what keeps it growing, a holding company can build that package faster than an independent, because it already owns the data. What can be said is narrower: a package built on data belongs to whoever owns the data, and one built on judgment belongs to whoever makes the judgment.
- You cannot say in one sentence what a client loses if you disappear — and if you asked them, neither could they.
- Your value is described as craft or capability — never as a client outcome with a number attached. That is the missing package, in your own words.
- Your growing hours are making hours — and your thinking hours are flat or falling. WPP's split, on your own timesheet.
- Price entered as the entry gate and is still the frame at month eighteen — cost at the start is normal; cost as the permanent frame is a signal.
- Your renewal case lists what you made, not what you decided — deliverables can be recovered from a folder; judgments are recorded nowhere.
Split your own last four quarters into thinking hours and making hours, and see which one is growing.
Pull time or staffing records for the last four quarters and sort every hour into two buckets: hours spent deciding what a client should do, and hours spent producing what was already decided. Chart both by quarter. If making is rising and thinking is flat, you are running WPP's split at your own scale, and you will feel it in price before you see it in revenue.
- What it costs
- Half a day if your time records are clean; longer if they are not, which is itself a finding. The harder cost is that the answer may show your senior people spending most of their time making things.
- How you'll know
- You have two lines on one chart by the end of the week. If thinking hours are a shrinking share, set a target share for next quarter and check it at quarter-end; if the share rises and the next two renewals hold price, the split is moving the right way.
The three largest owners of creative work reached three different answers about what it is worth, in the same three weeks. That is not a reason for anxiety. It is the stretch of time in which the definition is still open for an independent firm to write.
Related from Sound Decisions: They’ll Pay for the Work. They Won’t Pay for the Thinking. · You Don’t Need More Clients. You Need Longer Ones. · Your Best Clients Are the Ones You Undercharged
One conversation. What your work is worth, in your client's numbers.
Not a rebrand. A read on how your firm currently describes its value, and whether a client could repeat it back.
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