If there is one thing I would like you to take away, it is that we are winning today, thanks to AI!
So says Arthur Sadoun, CEO of French advertising and marketing powerhouse Publicis Groupe, parent to digital consulting company Publicis Sapient. Clients include Walmart, T-Mobile, and Marriott, with the Sapient arm today contributing 15% of total group revenues.
According to Sadoun, Publicis made its first bets on AI a long time ago, investing over €12 billion in data and technology over the past decade:
“It’s a journey we started more than 10 years ago under the vision of Maurice Levy, Chairman of the Board, who said, ‘If we want to win in the future, we need technology and data.’”
The reason why we are winning today—and the reason why we believe we are a category of one—is that we made the investment in data and technology that allows us to leverage AI and create a massive competitive advantage at the moment.
The claim made by Sadoun is that Publicis Sapient is now in the right place at the right time, ready for its current and prospective client base to catch up:
“Although clients are yet to embark on their large-scale AI transformation programs, we are seeing growing engagement on AI consulting projects for them to build their own agentic networks.”
Marketing budgets remain firm, with no material cuts taking place. That said, clients are currently facing a marketing landscape that is more fragmented and complex than ever, where tech giants are spending billions on new AI technologies and infrastructure, multiplying the number of platforms and channels and making it harder to reach and engage with audiences.
As a result, none of our top clients allocate more than four percent of their total marketing spend to a single platform. In fact, across our top 20 clients, the average spend on their largest platform is just two percent.
In this context, our role as a trusted neutral partner—able to deliver consistent cross-platform messages, optimize their budget, and maximize return on investment with full transparency—has never been more important.
It allows us to carve out a white space for ourselves by serving as the connective tissue for our clients’ technology, data, and agents, creating the AI-powered marketing solutions that they really need to win in the future.
### Budgetary Considerations
There is a budgetary warning note to be struck against that backdrop:
“You need to know that AI has a cost. This is one of the big reasons our clients today are being cautious on spending. You can make all the plans you want, but if you really want to implement AI, it has a big cost in terms of CapEx and also in terms of OpEx.”
### Client Commitments and Demand Acceleration
However, there has been acceleration in client demand when it comes to AI-powered products and services, particularly in three areas, Sadoun says:
1. **Connecting Media** – which is booming at high single-digit growth, thanks to our ability to connect paid media with commerce and influencers through AI.
2. **AI Production Platform** – growing double digits on the strength of demand for personalized content.
3. **Building Agentic Networks** – for clients who can no longer afford a fragmented agent strategy and need to break down silos within their own organizations.
While clients may not have made big commitments to date on AI, there is tangible interest out there, argues Sadoun:
“I think the reason why things are changing now is that after a couple of years experimenting with AI, clients are realizing that they need to put AI at the core of what they do and that they need to do it in a way that can deliver today material business impact.”
This is what Publicis is doing with them, and this is why, by the way, we see such a boom, particularly in Connected Media and especially in the US, where our model is the most advanced.
### The Power of Connected Media
In terms of Connected Media, the big selling point is AI’s ability to connect paid media with commerce and influencers.
To give a concrete example, Sadoun explains:
“We are able today to spot someone to make sure that we advertise with the right influencer, leading directly to commerce on a new retailer website. I don’t want to give any numbers here, but as you can imagine, this is the kind of thing that we could not do before because, again, you need AI to connect those capabilities.”
He adds, “Never forget that AI is only data talking to data. Our ability to truly understand people better than anyone else with Epsilon—our PeopleCloud platform that includes capabilities such as data, identity resolution, customer data platforms, clean rooms, digital media, retail media, site personalization, direct mail, loyalty, email marketing, and measurement—link it to the biggest influencer network, and then link it to sales directly is the kind of application where AI immediately leverages capabilities that drive business outcomes.”
### Accelerating Content Creation and Production
AI is also speeding up content creation and production, although Sadoun adds a caution:
“The question is how AI allows you to measure the performance of this content and make sure that you can correct, eliminate, or accelerate depending on the business outcome. Again, for this, you need the data, which we have with Epsilon, and you need AI to connect it to the capabilities.”
### The Rise of Agentic AI
Publicis is placing a big bet on the success of agentic AI. Although it’s early days in terms of client take-up, the direction of travel is clear.
“What we have experienced with agents in the last year is clients trying to put agents almost everywhere and trying to see how it could work in a very fragmented way,” says Sadoun. “What they realize now is that they need to connect all of these agents. Thanks to Sapient, we have a fantastic solution, an agentic network called Bodhi, that allows us to truly help our clients transform and bring all those agents together powered by data.”
### ‘Eating Our Own Dogfood’
Publicis is also ‘eating its own dogfood’ when it comes to AI, concludes Sadoun:
“We are looking at every opportunity to automate labor-intensive tasks thanks to AI. This includes implementing agentic solutions at the core of our operations. In fact, we have started with our back-office processes.”
Combining their unique platform organization, shared services backbone, and the deployment of agents, Publicis aims to bring greater elasticity to its cost base.
Although it is early days, they are confident this agentic solution will help generate margin improvement beyond 2025, while allowing investment, including in training and upskilling talent to be AI-fluent.
Today, while many are asking how AI will impact the industry, Publicis has already embedded it into all operations, making their revenue mix AI-enabled and perfectly adapted to client needs.
### My Take
Many commentators have suggested that AI could negatively impact the ad and marketing sectors. It is even currently blamed for the low valuation of the industry as a whole.
Sadoun is having none of it, declaring:
“Since the emergence of generative AI three years ago, a lot has been said about its impact on our industry. When it comes to Publicis, let’s be clear: today, we are winning thanks to AI. We don’t want to talk about the promise of AI. AI is real at Publicis today, and it is the reason why we are growing now.”
https://diginomica.com/we-are-winning-today-thanks-ai-how-publicis-sapient-got-itself-right-place-right-time-clients-catch
