Omnicom Media North America CEO Ralph Pardo on integration and disintermediation

Omnicom leadership has taken its share of lumps since closing on the acquisition of Interpublic Group at the end of 2025. But it didn’t stop Ralph Pardo, CEO of Omnicom Media North America, from speaking at Digiday’s spring Media Buying Summit, which is wrapping up today in Nashville.

Although careful with his choice of words in describing Omnicom’s integration of the IPG agencies and assets (particularly data giant Acxiom) into the mothership, Pardo said progress has been steady, in part because moving slowly simply isn’t an option anymore. (The need for speed was expressed generally across virtually all sessions at the summit.)

Omnicom Media NA CEO Ralph Pardo

For now, the IPG Media brands will stay alive and active alongside the Omnicom brands, which was a “purposeful conscientious strategy,” he told attendees — but that may not last forever. The integration itself will take time, no matter how much speed can be applied.

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How creator talent agencies are evolving into multi-platform operators

The legacy agency model, long overdue for a reckoning, is finally being rebuilt from the ground up — with creators at the center.

The old agency model — brokering deals, manually sourcing talent and running slow, service-heavy operations that treated creators like traditional talent — came of age in a fragmented market. But that model is giving way to something faster, more scalable, and built around how creators actually operate today.

Take Shorthand Studios, an agency based in Los Angeles, which has worked with health content creator Nick Norwitz on his branding and testing strategies across YouTube and Substack for a year. He told Digiday that within the last year, the views on his YouTube channel have grown 442% and his subscribers have grown by over 650,000, while his Substack (written content, without video) has grown by almost 800%.

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