Publicis Groupe posts 5.9% organic net revenue growth for Q2 FY25; CEO downplays AI threat
Publicis Groupe’s momentum continued with a strong first half of the year, in large part due to 15 key new business wins such as Coca-Cola, Mars and Nespresso.
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French advertising giant Publicis has raised its full-year organic growth forecast after posting stronger-than-expected second-quarter results, with CEO Arthur Sadoun downplaying concerns about Meta's AI-driven ad creation tools.
The company upgraded its 2025 organic growth forecast to close to 5%, up from the previous range of 4% to 5%, after reporting 5.9% net revenue organic growth in the second quarter.
"When Meta comes along and says that they can do everything themselves, I think that they are completely underestimating the intelligence of our customers, who, moreover, are not fooled," Sadoun said during an earnings call, as reported by Reuters.
Read more: "Advertisers remain focused on market share amid global uncertainty": Publicis CEO Arthur Sadoun
Sadoun highlighted clients' reluctance to entrust their data to single platforms.
"None of our customers want to leave their data in the world of 'walled gardens.' None of our customers want to work with a single platform," he said, adding that customers wanted to measure the impact of their spending, "which obviously cannot be offered by those that do it within their own walls."
Publicis cited a unprecedented new business run in the first half of 2025, including wins with Coca-Cola, Nespresso,Lego,Paramount,and Spotify.
Sadoun, Chairman and CEO of Publicis Groupe said, “In a tough macroeconomic environment, Publicis had a very strong Q2 ahead of expectations. We delivered +10% revenue growth, leading to +5.9% net revenue organic growth, and an outperformance versus competition once again, of 800 basis points.
With H1 organic growth at +5.4% we continued to make material market share gains.
At the same time we improved our already industry-leading margin to 17.4% in H1, while making significant investments in our people and our capabilities.
Despite the ongoing uncertainty of the global context, our unprecedented new business run of over a dozen material wins in the first six months of 2025 means we are raising our organic growth guidance to close to +5% for the full year, up from our previous +4-5% range."
Publicis also set a more optimistic tone for the full year despite macroeconomic challenges, predicting organic revenue growth of close to 5%. Previously, it forecast growth of 4% to 5%.
Now, in what is a particularly disrupted industry, he added, that the company is looking ahead to the rest of the year and beyond with confidence and a single focus: executing on its strategy.
"We are uniquely positioned to continue to win market share by bringing clients the immediate business solutions they need to grow in an uncertain global context. We are reinforcing our status as a Category of One with a targeted M&A strategy to further accelerate on AI-led capabilities. And we will continue to invest to attract and retain the best talent in the industry," he added.
"Will never be an AI company”
In an interview with AdAge, Sadoun said he is fighting what he says is a false perception from financial analysts and the press that the ad industry is in decline and threatened by AI.
The executive dismissed talk that tech tools such as Google’s Veo 3, which can generate realistic AI videos, threaten to make certain aspects of the agency business obsolete.
“I have heard every quarter for nine years that the platforms are going to eat us for breakfast,” Sadoun told AdAge. “Nine years later, (Publicis) has doubled our size and more than doubled our market cap.”
While many agencies and holding companies have been reimagining their positioning strategies in the wake of mass AI adoption across the industry, Sadoun said that Publicis “will never be an AI company.”
“We are a service business, it means that we have two areas where we can always improve: our people … and investing in our platform to make sure that we continue to drive the kind of product and services that our clients need to grow.”
In his interview, Sadoun further admitted that AI has led to a slowdown in hiring in certain areas and an increase in others, but he pushed back on the notion that AI will stop holding companies from growing staff.
“In 2017, we were 70,000 people, since then, we have become 110,000 people. So there is no fatality to growing with AI and hiring people,” the executive remarked.
Sadoun said the industry still needs a healthy WPP, as a lot of the momentum from the top holding companies has been at Omnicom and Publicis this year, especially with the Omnicom-IPG merger.
He concluded saying, “We are very confident that we’re going to continue to outperform the market," mentioning that Publicis has spent about €1 billion ($1.16 billion) annually on bolt-on acquisitions.
