What began as a regional conflict is now a compounding drag on the advertising industry — not catastrophic, but persistent enough that many CMOs are starting to feel it.
While the economics of war travel slowly — through oil prices, supply chains, corporate margins and people’s wallets — they do travel, and enough time has now passed for the effects to start showing up in the numbers.
WPP’s Middle East revenue fell 12.6% like-for-like in the quarter. Meanwhile Publicis’s MEA business was down 5.1%, with the conflict’s reach extending into Sapient’s U.K.’s operations — enough to put roughly 10% of the consulting firm’s total revenue in the conflict zone. Omnicom didn’t break out specifics but the Middle East and Africa were among its only declining regions.
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