WPP and Omnicom’s recent success with the Coca-Cola Company’s global and North American media assignments can be summed up in one word: data. In fact, Coca-Cola and PepsiCo’s recent media agency reviews reveal how two competing data strategies are reshaping the global media agency market.*

The Intelligence Engine Strategy

Intelligence engines create value by improving the quality, speed, and defensibility of planning, measurement, forecasting, and optimization decisions. WPP Media’s Open Intelligence is a federated data approach that leverages multiple signals of behavioral, identity, interest, and geography advanced data collaboration via InfoSum. This is advantageous in regulated markets where the collection of personally identifiable information is not permitted. Put simply, WPP Media’s data strategy is useful in complicated markets like the European Union and Asia Pacific, where restrictions or lack of standardization require a diverse, market-to-market approach. This is likely part of the reason why the Coca-Cola Company hired WPP Open X in the first place: to use a federated data strategy to help create consistent execution across inconsistent, global markets.

The Audience Broker Strategy

Audience brokers create media value by identifying, enriching, resolving, and activating audiences, often with proprietary or licensed identity graphs. Publicis Groupe, dentsu, and Omnicom, after their respective purchases of Epsilon, Merkle, and Acxiom, champion this approach. Acxiom, Epsilon, and Merkle’s dentsu.audiences all use identity graphs to determine who to reach, down to the household and device. This is advantageous in markets that allow identifiers and the collection of personally identifiable information. Put simply, Publicis, dentsu, and Omnicom’s ID-based data strategies are useful in markets like North America, given its relatively lax privacy and data regulation. This was most certainly a factor in the Coca-Cola Company NA hiring Publicis Groupe, including dentsu, and eventually awarding the assignment to Omnicom.

The Data Strategy Underpins Agency Evolution

While billion-dollar advertisers like PepsiCo and the Coca-Cola Company are few and far between, this melee of agency reviews is instructive of the current state of the broader agency marketplace. The media agency cola wars show that:

  • The global media agency market is larger than the big three. Coke and Pepsi did select from among a shrinking, consolidating pool of agency resources capable of global delivery. But that’s not just limited to Omnicom, Publicis, and WPP. Coke also include dentsu and dentsu.audiences (formerly M1 and Merkury) data platform. Dentsu’s ID-based data approach was also in contention for Coke’s North American media assignment and retained it in Japan and South Korea. Alternatively, Havas Media, Horizon Global, Stagwell Media, and scaled PE-backed agencies like PMG and DEPT offer global media (albeit at different scale). As the global media agency market consolidates at the top, it expands at the base.
  • Marketing operating systems are becoming foundational to services delivery. Marketing operating systems — the combination of technology, data, workflows, governance, and human expertise — enable marketing and agency executives to plan, create, activate, optimize, measure, and integrate advertising and marketing campaigns. The initial Coca-Cola review in 2021 was instrumental in shaping the rise of these platforms as Coca-Cola and Open X were highly influential in the development of WPP Open, the holding companies’ operating system. And they’ve only grown: Omnicom’s Omni, dentsu.Connect, Publicis’ MRCL, Stagwell’s The Media Machine, Havas’ Converged, Horizon’s Blu, Tinuiti’s Bliss Point, DEPT’s Deptify, Rise’s Connex, PMG’s Alli, and Wpromote’s Polaris.
  • Every media agency provider is replaceable. Publicis Groupe’s withdrawal of the Coca-Cola review to accept PepsiCo’s media assignment (without review) portends a break-away performer in the category. Yet the Coca-Cola Company replaced one ID-based player with another and replaced one seasoned team with category experience with another seasoned team with category experience. This is a strong reminder that every agency is replaceable. That’s as strong a statement as winning without review.

On November 4, 2026, Forrester will release “The Forrester Wave™: Media Management Services, Q4 2026,” a deep assessment of the top players in the global agency marketplace. We show how scale is being redefined, how platforms are now part of the organizational model, and how agentic media is coming quickly. Forrester clients can schedule an inquiry or guidance session to learn more.

*For anyone needing a recap: Coca-Cola awarded its global creative and media assignments to WPP in 2021. In March 2025, the beverage company awarded its North American media assignment to Publicis Groupe. Coca-Cola announced a global media review the following year. This September, Publicis Groupe withdrew from the Coke review after winning PepsiCo’s global media assignment previously handled by Omnicom. Coca-Cola announced its new media roster as WPP globally, Omnicom in North America, and dentsu in Japan and South Korea.

Share