Publicis Groupe charts steady course into 2024 with 5.3% growth

Publicis Groupe is sailing on into 2024 much as it navigate4d 2023, with (probably) industry-leading organic growth of 5.3%, spread pretty evenly across its regions, with Asia recovering. This is ahead of expectations, says Publicis, although the market would have been disappointed with anything less than 5%.

Q1 Revenue was €3,711m, net revenue €3,230m, organic growth +5.3% and reported growth +4.9%.

CEO Arthur Sadoun (above) says: “Publicis had a very strong start to 2024, sustaining growth momentum despite ongoing macroeconomic tensions. We accelerated on our organic growth this quarter, delivering +5.3%, ahead of expectations.

“There were three clear drivers of this performance. First, our ability to capture a disproportionate part of the increasing demand for data-led marketing transformation, boosted by AI, in a soon-to-be-cookieless world. This translated into the double-digit growth of our combined Epsilon and Publicis Media offer.

“Second, continued new business tailwinds, coming after we topped the league tables once again, and as we have for the past five years.

“Last but not least, the impact of a clear rebound in the tech sector, where we saw double-digit growth this quarter.”

The latter observation may be some consolation for lagging rivals WPP and Interpublic (IPG) which both suffered from tech client cutbacks in 2023. Publicis is clearly ahead of the game although Omnicon may narrow the gap this year after some big media wins.

As a group, though, the big ad holding companies are still struggling to match the growth performance of newer, more tech-based comms businesses.