Omnicom and Interpublic Group (IPG) together cut around 8,200 jobs in 2025 as the two advertising giants moved towards completing their merger and began restructuring the combined business.
According to Omnicom’s annual report, the combined workforce declined by 6.4%, falling from a total of 128,200 employees at the end of December 2024 to 120,000 by December 31, 2025. Before the merger, Omnicom had 74,900 employees while IPG had 53,300.
The headcount reduction is believed to have come through a mix of redundancies, natural attrition, and the sale of non-core agencies.
The job cuts marked the second consecutive year of workforce reductions across the two companies. Their combined employee base had stood at 133,300 at the end of 2023, when discussions around a potential merger first began between Omnicom CEO John Wren and then-IPG CEO Philippe Krakowsky.
IPG alone shed about 3,200 jobs in the first nine months of 2025 after losing several major client accounts, according to its Q3 financial results. Omnicom did not disclose its exact figure but is estimated to have cut close to 5,000 roles during the year based on its year-end headcount.
As part of a broader restructuring following the acquisition, Wren announced 4,000 redundancies on December 1, with the intention of completing those cuts by the end of the year. It remains unclear whether all of those reductions are fully reflected in the 120,000 employee figure disclosed in the annual report.
Omnicom has also increased the expected synergies from the IPG acquisition, doubling its annual savings target to $1.5 billion by 2028. Around $1 billion of these savings are expected to come from labour-related costs.
To achieve this, the company plans to accelerate the offshoring of roles to lower-cost markets and outsource certain functions to third-party partners.
Omnicom previously indicated that the combined workforce would eventually shrink to around 105,000 employees. Based on timelines shared during its fourth-quarter results, the company expects to reach that level by mid-2028, implying that another 15,000 roles could be eliminated over the next three years.
A substantial portion of the reduction may come through agency disposals. Omnicom has indicated that roughly 10,000 employees could leave the payroll as the company exits non-core businesses or sells stakes in certain agencies. Recent examples include IPG’s sale of R/GA and Omnicom’s exit from experiential agency Jack Morton at the beginning of 2026.
Following the acquisition, Omnicom’s 120,000-strong workforce is spread across regions, including 37,700 employees in the US, 17,600 in the rest of the Americas, 38,000 in EMEA, and 26,700 in Asia-Pacific.
The US workforce saw the biggest increase, rising 72% year-on-year due to IPG’s strong presence in its home market. Staff numbers also grew sharply in the rest of the Americas, up 89%, while Asia-Pacific increased by 58% and EMEA by 42%.
The annual report also confirmed that Omnicom paid $8.9 billion to acquire IPG in an all-stock deal. When the agreement was first announced in December 2024, IPG was valued at over $13 billion. However, the final valuation dropped after Omnicom’s share price fell by around 30% before the deal closed last November, amid investor concerns and broader uncertainty in the agency sector.
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