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CMO TLDR: Your Weekly Marketing Brief

Weekly Digest - June 6, 2025

Author

Peter Brendan
June 06, 2025

CMO TLDR: Publicis Displaces WPP Amid Ad Tech Budget Shifts and AI Disruption

The New Centers of Gravity

Inside Publicis Groupe's Rise to the Top and How It Plans to Stay There

Publicis Groupe has overtaken WPP as the world's largest advertising holding company by revenue and market cap after a turbulent transformation that saw its stock price quintuple since the pandemic. The French ad giant's $12 billion acquisition spree, including purchases of consulting firm Sapient and data company Epsilon, initially drew skepticism but now positions it ahead of struggling rivals like WPP and soon-to-merge Omnicom-IPG. Publicis continues to acquire in growth areas, such as influencer marketing and retail media, while leveraging its integrated data capabilities to win major accounts, including those of Disney and Coca-Cola.

Marketers Move Millions in Ad Spend from The Trade Desk to Amazon's Ad Platform

Advertisers are shifting millions of dollars in connected TV ad budgets from The Trade Desk to Amazon's demand-side platform, with one global auto brand moving approximately $80 million in annual spend and PMG reporting that 80% of its clients have redirected tens of millions to Amazon over the past year. The migration is driven by Amazon's lower fees, with some programmatic guaranteed deals offered at just 1% compared to the typical 7% to 15% charged by other DSPs, plus exclusive access to live sports and Prime Video inventory. Amazon's ad revenue grew 18% year-over-year to $13.9 billion in Q1, while The Trade Desk reported 25% growth to $616 million. However, industry analysts note that Amazon's overall DSP market share has been larger for several years.

The Race to Re-Engineer

IAB Tech Lab unveils plans to bolster publisher monetization in the AI era

The Interactive Advertising Bureau's tech arm announced two major initiatives to help publishers fight back against AI-driven revenue losses, including a framework that would let content creators control how large language models access and monetize their work. The organization also unveiled a containerization project designed to speed up programmatic ad buying by reducing latency from 300-500 milliseconds to just 50-100 milliseconds. IAB Tech Lab CEO Anthony Katsur urged every publisher to sign licensing deals with AI companies, calling unauthorized content crawling "intellectual property theft.”

Agency & SSP partnerships are growing more common and blurring programmatic's old dividing lines

Media agencies are increasingly bypassing traditional ad tech middlemen to strike direct deals with supply-side platforms, seeking premium inventory and cost savings as they face budget pressures from clients. Stagwell's Assembly has consolidated from 20 SSPs to just four core partners, while major holding companies like WPP and Havas are deepening existing SSP relationships to access better inventory and transparency. The trend is blurring traditional programmatic boundaries, with more than half of PubMatic's investment now coming from direct agency partnerships as SSPs expand beyond the big six holding companies to target independent agencies.

The Trade Desk's Deal Desk Aims to Save Advertisers Hours of Deal-Making Headaches

The Trade Desk is launching Deal Desk, a centralized hub to streamline the creation and management of programmatic deal IDs after finding that 90% of such deals fail to scale on its platform. The new tool aims to reduce operational burden for advertisers who currently spend up to 40% of their work week troubleshooting deal IDs that mostly rely on inefficient email-based transactions. Deal Desk will pilot this summer as part of The Trade Desk's broader push to transition all clients to its newer Kokai interface by the end of 2025.

The New York Times struck its first AI licensing deal with Amazon rather than OpenAI or Google, allowing Alexa to use NYT content while potentially strengthening the publisher's copyright case and signaling that major publishers are now open to AI partnerships at the right price.

Meta plans to enable brands to create complete advertising campaigns from scratch using artificial intelligence by the end of 2026, allowing businesses to simply provide a product image and budget goal while AI handles everything from creative content to targeting. The move represents CEO Mark Zuckerberg's vision to fully automate the ad process that generates over 97% of Meta's revenue, though some major brands remain wary of ceding creative control to AI systems.

Paramount moved its $600 million media business to Publicis Groupe and Interpublic Group without a formal review, taking the accounts away from WPP and Horizon Media in what sources described as a cost-savings effort.

Newsweek acquired healthcare-focused adtech firm Adprime for an undisclosed sum to deepen its advertising offerings in the health vertical, marking a rare instance of a publisher buying into adtech while rivals like Yahoo and Vox have been divesting such assets.

T-Mobile selected Monks as its first dedicated social media agency of record following a review process that lasted from October through May.

Contextual AI startup Classify emerged from stealth mode with backing from former AppNexus CEO Brian O'Kelley's Scope3, offering advertisers URL-level content curation through its proprietary AI model that aims to move beyond traditional keyword-based targeting taxonomies.

Key Article Takeaways - TLDR

  • DSP Price Wars: Amazon is offering ad inventory at 1% fees compared to the industry standard of 7-15%, plus exclusive access to Prime Video and sports content, making it an obvious move for marketers looking to maximise budgets during uncertain times. While The Trade Desk can't match Amazon's subsidised pricing or exclusive content, marketers should leverage this pricing pressure to negotiate better terms and additional services from The Trade Desk while Amazon continues undercutting them.

  • AI is Reshaping Content Economics: The NYT-Amazon deal and IAB Tech Lab's new framework show smart publishers aren't just protecting their content, they're monetizing it through licensing while maintaining control. Meanwhile, Meta's push toward full campaign automation by 2026 suggests brands need to prepare for a world where creative differentiation becomes increasingly challenging when AI handles everything from concept to execution.

  • Scale and Integration Win in Consolidation: Publicis's rise to the top demonstrates that strategic M&A focused on data and consulting capabilities beats pure creative prowess in today's market. Their ability to win major accounts like Paramount and Coca-Cola, combined with the broader trend of agencies consolidating vendor relationships, shows that integrated service offerings and operational efficiency now matter more than traditional agency strengths.