When the global industry plate shifts, we do not feel it immediately. It is like when an earthquake in Friuli reaches Mostar and only rattles the glasses in the cabinet. Nothing breaks, but you know walls are collapsing somewhere far away. That is exactly what yesterday’s formal closing of the Omnicom–IPG merger felt like: a quiet tremor whose real impact on our foundations will be revealed over time.
According to Ad Age, Omnicom has written the largest acquisition cheque in the history of the agency business. The deal that was worth around 13.3 billion dollars in December 2024 now closes at around nine billion, due to Omnicom’s declining share price. This places Omnicom at the top of the global agency hierarchy, ahead of WPP, Publicis and even Accenture Song. Interpublic, the first modern agency holding company since 1961, exits the stage as a name but not as a portfolio.
Campaign Red looks at the same event with colder eyes: the combined organic growth of the two groups in 2025 is nearly a straight line, minus 0.3 percent. Publicis continues to sprint ahead, Havas and Dentsu keep their heads above water and WPP sinks deeper into negative territory. Omnicom and IPG together generated around 18 billion dollars in the first nine months and more than 25 billion annually, but this is a story of size, not vitality.
And while Ad Age calls it a defining moment, Campaign simultaneously asks the real question: do clients even need an even bigger version of yesterday’s model? Or do they need a completely new architecture of work, one that is gen AI native, customer obsessed and freed from structures that merge systems but often fail to merge people?
What is striking is how these two tones, the corporate celebratory and the analytically concerned, blend into something that feels like a warning. A large merger does not mean progress, it simply means reorganisation. And reorganisations are always, without exception, the loudest on markets that matter the least globally and hurt the most locally.
Which is, let us not pretend otherwise, exactly the Adriatic.
To be brutally honest: Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Slovenia, North Macedonia, Montenegro and Albania are not key markets. But they are a perfect stage for testing new models, finding savings, consolidating teams and piloting the operating company logic Campaign describes as the next era after the age of holding companies. And that is why this merger is not just a global headline. It is a very specific stress test for our region.
Take Croatia. It is the first point on the map where the new global umbrella physically overlaps. Omnicom’s OMD and PHD stand across from McCann Zagreb and UM or Initiative, which until yesterday belonged to IPG. Now they all fall under the same corporate parent. This means Zagreb, whether it likes it or not, becomes one of the first mirrors in which the new organigram cathedral will be drawn. Creative and media verticals that spent years competing must now share a house. Some will get new roles, some supporting ones and some will simply become redundant.
Belgrade is a different story and a far more complex one. The Serbian market is the largest, the most commercially potent, the most aligned with global structures and the only one in the region that truly resembles a small CEE. This is why Belgrade is both the greatest opportunity and the greatest risk. An opportunity to become a central hub for data, content, performance and AI operations. A risk that, through the logic of centralisation, it will lose creative and strategic volume to larger European centers. Everything depends on whether local leadership chooses to play offense rather than wait for instructions from London and New York.
Bosnia and Herzegovina is often invisible in macro moves like this until you realise how operationally valuable it is. Sarajevo has been delivering regional and international projects for years. The talent is surprisingly strong, the cost base remains competitive and most clients are already network aligned. This makes BiH one of the most likely points of the new rationalised model. It may become a hub for selected functions such as content, craft or data support. But it could just as easily lose parts of its operations to larger regional centers. Whether Sarajevo fights for a role or waits to be reorganised by an Excel sheet depends entirely on its own ambition.
Slovenia may be the most intriguing of all. Small, sophisticated and deeply European. Ljubljana’s clients are demanding, disciplined and accustomed to high quality. In such a setting, the merger opens the door for Slovenia to position itself as a boutique quality hub for the region or even the wider CEE. A place where work that cannot be done cheaply elsewhere is executed with precision. But it also risks media buying shifting to regional trading desks. Slovenia will be a laboratory of elegance, if it is allowed to be one.
North Macedonia already functions as an extended arm of the big systems. Under the new Omnicom structure, Skopje could easily become home to operations requiring a combination of low cost and solid talent. Ad ops, community management, digital support, social listening and production units. This is not a bad trajectory. It is often a doorway into larger projects. But small markets rarely choose their destiny. Destiny chooses them.
Montenegro is likely to be the least affected. Networks operate there because global clients are present, not because the local economy sustains large operations. Podgorica will almost certainly remain a satellite of larger centers. No shockwaves and no dramatic breakthroughs. A quiet, stable, rules based market.
Albania, surprisingly, may gain the most. Today it resembles Serbia in 2010. A fast growing economy, an e-commerce explosion, a retail transformation and a digital acceleration. The talent is young, motivated and far below the European price point. For global networks, this is magnetic. The perfect environment for testing centralised operations. If a decision lands to relocate parts of technical functions like ad ops, data processing or performance support, Tirana may quickly become an unexpectedly important point on the map.
In the end, when everything is added up, this merger is not Big Bang 2.0. It is, as I said before, late era leader Tetris. Stacking massive blocks to maintain stability in an industry already shaken by platforms, AI and clients demanding speed. But if there is anything good about a merger of this scale, it is that for the first time the Adriatic can choose how it wants to position itself within the new structure. This region has everything. Undervalued talent, clients who expect regional thinking, markets that can be both hubs and test fields and systems that love efficiency.
The mega merger is done. Shareholders had their show, analysts their charts, the industry its headlines.
But the scenario for our region has not yet been written.
The only question now is whether we will hand it over to someone else again. Or whether, for the first time in a long time, we will sit at the table as authors rather than as secondary characters in someone else’s M&A spectacle.
p.s. When I say “M&A spectacle”, I mean the corporate theatre that always follows a merger: the celebratory press releases, the CEO quotes polished to a shine, the investor calls that sound like TED Talks, the organigram leaks, the whispered redundancies. A whole drama staged for shareholders, while the real consequences ripple quietly through the markets that never make it into the spotlight.
