Ad holding companies have had polar opposite Q3 results, with Havas noting impressive growth, while Interpublic (IPG) reports struggles in the penultimate quarter of the year.
Havas, now owned by Vivendi, published a 4.5% organic growth increase, only just behind French rival Publicis, but ahead of Omnicom’s 3.3%.
The strong results were attributed to “spectacular” growth in Latin America, with the French firm claiming it was the “best in class” among its international rivals, despite being the smallest of the ‘big six’ groups.
Having growth in every region, Havas also accredited the growth to its ‘rapid pace’ of acquisitions, such as its 51% majority stake in Uncommon Creative Studio, earlier this year.
“Given the (economic) circumstances, we can be super-satisfied with these results. We have growth in every region in this quarter, said” Havas CEO, and now Vivendi, boss Yannick Bolloré.
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In contrast, reporting an organic decrease in Q3 2023 of 0.4% YOY on revenue, IPG’s CEO hinted that the company were prepared to adapt to address its “underperformance”.
“We are focused on closing the year as strongly as possible and, specific to areas of underperformance, will simultaneously assess internal structural solutions in order to improve,” said IPG CEO Philippe Krakowsky.
Whether this means further redundancies, spending cuts or internal merges, the firm – which is still yet to prepare for the loss of its Amazon account, now the world’s biggest advertiser – has not yet announced any major decisions.
In addition, Krakowsky pointed out factors such as that the healthcare sector has a more limited growth than expected, and new business wins taking longer to establish than expected, as an explanation for the firm’s slumped Q3 report.
“The same factors that we’ve discussed as having impacted the first half of the year continued to weigh on Q3,” Krakowsky said.
Other notable reasons for the firm’s potential prolonged underperformance include McCann’s loss of Verizon account to Ogilvy – a move that Krakowsky hinted could contribute to further low growth at the beginning of 2024.
So far, IPG has predicted its organic growth forecast for Q4 at 1% YoY, and will likely miss the 1% to 2% range it forecasted for the full year in Q2.
