#agency-consolidation

#agency-consolidation

Media and creative agencies face a range of threats in 2026, from generative AI to media fragmentation and the continued dominance of Meta and Google's platforms. In response, few businesses in this sector have stood still. They've chosen to merge, acquire - or in the case of Dentsu, cast loose - to keep moving forward. The likely destination? A leaner sector that employs fewer people and trades on its tech bonafides and principal-media trading capabilities over its creative chops.

"Investors as well as brands have had the realization that a somewhat tech enabled agency didn't enable a true level of scale that the brands needed," said Leopold. "If you look at like the 10-ish billion dollars of brand direct to creator spend, that's very constrained. It's less than 2% of the $800 billion of digital media spend running through platforms."

This week brought big shifts in streaming, fresh AI experiments in commerce, major agency consolidation, and regulators keeping a close eye on ad tech. In today's MadTech Daily, we cover Meta planning to use conversations people have with its chatbots to personalise ads on its platforms, OpenAI preparing a social app for AI video, and the UK ordering new data demands for Apple users.