Publicis increases lead over rivals with 5.9% Q2 growth
Yesterday we suggested 2025 was set to be a challenging year for the ad holding companies. It’s one that Publicis Groupe seems pretty well-equipped to meet.
Hard on the heels of Omnicom’s 3% growth in Q2 2025 the French-owned group has knocked it out of the park again (by ad holding standards ) with 5.9% Q2 growth. It’s now forecasting 5.5-6% for the year, forecasts it usually exceeds. Publicis still has a number of big wins in train including Coca-Cola US media, Mars media (both from WPP) and Nespresso from IPG.
All main regions performed well with US +5.3%, Europe +4.6%, APAC +5.7%.
CEO Arthur Sadoun (above) says: “In a tough macroeconomic environment, Publicis had a very strong Q2 ahead of expectations. We delivered +10% revenue growth, leading to +5.9% net revenue organic growth, and an outperformance versus competition once again, of 800 basis points.
“With H1 organic growth at +5.4% we continued to make material market share gains.
“At the same time we improved our already industry-leading margin to 17.4% in H1, while making significant investments in our people and our capabilities.
‘Despite the ongoing uncertainty of the global context, our unprecedented new business run of over a dozen material wins in the first six months of 2025 means we are raising our organic growth guidance to close to +5% for the full year, up from our previous +4-5% range.
“Now, in what is a particularly disrupted industry, we are looking ahead to the rest of the year and beyond with confidence and a single focus: executing on our strategy. We are uniquely positioned to continue to win market share by bringing clients the immediate business solutions they need to grow in an uncertain global context. We are reinforcing our status as a Category of One with a targeted M&A strategy to further accelerate on AI-led capabilities. And we will continue to invest to attract and retain the best talent in the industry.
“I’d like to thank our outstanding teams for their efforts in a challenging business landscape, and our clients for their trust.”
.
