Month: January 2025

Omnicom’s proposed acquisition of IPG, announced earlier this month, would make it the world’s largest agency-holding company, with $25 billion in annual ad revenue and over 100,000 employees.

The deal aims to generate $750 million in cost synergies, primarily by consolidating back-office functions and reducing redundancies by potentially cutting 30% of staff. A depressingly familiar page in the corporate playbook.

However, the initial pitch from IPG and Omnicom’s executive teams focused on other outcomes, such as AI and the combination of both entities’ big bets in data-enabled marketing. 

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It’s unsurprising that more teenagers aspire to become influencers, given how many grew up watching TikTok stars like Charli D’Amelio and Ariana Greenblatt go from social media to the big screen.

During this year’s U.S. presidential election, we saw greater interest from candidate Kamala Harris to engage Gen Z through TikTok trends like “brat” summer. Many major creators have also expanded beyond social apps to launch careers in acting, music or starting other businesses.

These are the first cohorts to grow up as digital natives, so they daydream about being creators, explained Alyssa Stevens, global director of PR, social media and influencer marketing at independent agency Connelly Partners.

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In June 2024, the mobile game developer HOMA published “Clean It,” a casual game inspired by the #CleanTok TikTok trend — and the game became a viral hit. 

The game launch, the result of a collaboration between HOMA and TikTok, is the latest example of the TikTok’s intentional bid to court game publishers onto its platform.

“Clean It” was not the first TikTok-inspired game to be published by HOMA, whose most popular titles include mobile games such as “Merge Master” and “Aquarium Land.” For years, the developer has created casual games by combining popular game genres with relevant TikTok trends. 

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Tech giants and startups alike have spent the past year building new generative AI tools for users and advertisers.

From AI images for programmatic ads to a growing number of AI-generated TV commercials, brands are starting to explore new ways of thinking about creative across various platforms. The final weeks of 2024 had big news with expanded access and improved outputs of generative models like OpenAI’s Sora, Amazon’s Nova and Google’s Veo.

Despite the technical feats, AI-generated content has gained both eager devotees and harsh critics. Depending who you ask, the category’s a powerful new form of creativity, underwhelming “AI slop,” or an IP-stealing job-killer. However, the question is, which of these viewpoints will be the one to stick.

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