Agency Operating Systems: A Comparison

AI Specialty

Secret Weapon

Tech Jargon Level

Selling Point

Decoding the Names

Agency Operating Systems: A Comparison

The borg: Like Star Trek’s “The Borg,” this operating system assimilates with agencies’ existing work tools.

The absolute unit: After IPG merger, this platform is all about scale, and acts as a commerce powerhouse.

The secret identity: Built upon strong identity graphs and clean room technology to understand consumers.

The tinkerer: The OS stands for “open sphere,” prioritizes human intelligence and flexibility with AI partners.

The central nervous system: Centralized ecosystem, giving brands an AI marketing heart.

The concierge: A guide presenting options to brands, Havas emphasizes human oversight and interoperability.

The Techie: Sounds like its straight out of Silicon Valley, the Pro version of WPP Open gives AI tech to for brands to self-serve.

Stagwell The Machine

WPP Open / Pro

Omnicom Omni

Dentsu Connect

Horizon Media HorizonOS

Publicis CoreAI

Havas Converged.AI

Works while you sleep. It connects to corporate apps that help manage marketing 24 hours a day.

Size is a quality all its own, plus commerce-driven orchestration gives it a performance edge that’s hard to beat.

Brands own their custom bidding models, audiences and algorithms; interoperability with data platforms such as Snowflake, AWS, Adobe.

Not a “walled garden,” but open ecosystem allowing brands to choose tech partners; no black-box decision-making; de-risks AI implementation.

An AI factory approach with centralized intelligence; unified data through Epsilon; offering technological infrastructure not just services.

An integrated boutique-feel; data-agnostic; end-to-end from creative production to media.

You drive. The Pro version offers direct client access opening the agency to the world of small and medium size advertisers.

LOW: Pro especially sounds more like a consumer-facing product by referring to “apps” more than “models.” Meant to give tools to masses, not just experts.

MEDIUM: Still in the sweet spot of marketing, Omni promises “connected intelligence” while stressing “measurable sales growth.”

MEDIUM: Dentsu has de-nerded since rebranding from Merkury, focusing on "marketing impact" over "probabilistic matching."

MEDIUM: "Open ecosystem" is their safe word. Mixing old school ad lingo with a dash of Silicon Valley engineering.

EXTREME: Perhaps the most tech-heavy of the bunch, this is a “connected marketing ecosystem;” brands’ “operational backbone.”

LOW: Uses just enough jargon to sound high-tech but maintains the spirit of a creative director just learning to code.

HIGH: Leans hard on the word “agentic,” with phrases such as “agentic velocity” to describe the speed of decisions.

Open architecture that plugs into work tools, including Slack, Teams, Adobe and Figma.

Partnerships with all of the major language, image, video and audio models, updates as new releases are pushed live.

Flywheel Commerce offers the most complete transaction data set, with potential to see near real-time sales reports in stores and online.

Dentsu.Audiences is the data and identity platform within Dentsu.Connect. Also, strong B-to-B.

Open architecture lets brands choose tech partners and build bespoke products through HorizonOS Labs.

Bodhi, Sapient's enterprise knowledge backbone, giving all 100,000 employees access to the same brain.

Persona Live creates AI-generated target audiences that can literally talk to marketers. Vermeer is a proprietary gen AI creative tool.

Agentic platform with continuous learning so all campaigns learn from past campaigns.

Agentic capabilities that surface brand-specific insights to users, built on decades of WPP consumer and industry data.

Omni accesses more than 20 models from Google, Microsoft, Amazon, etc.

Dentsu.AI is agentic workflow that powers Dentsu.Connect. Working on agentic orchestration with tech partners.

Agent Q uses Google Gemini Enterprise for complex marketing decisions and strategy.

“Center of excellence” with Nvidia; Bodhi orchestrates agents to generate creative, media plans and insights.

Ava is the agentic portal; Akkio, a tech partner, connects to LLMs.

Data Engine

Code and Theory developed custom software on Palantir Foundry, the data collaboration platform.

InfoSum is the crown jewel of WPP’s data platform.

Owns Acxiom after acquiring it through IPG, Flywheel Commerce.

Proprietary data, panel data, DataSource within U.S.

Horizon Blu connects to real-time consumer data; bolstered by Nielsen and TransUnion data; flexible with partnerships.

Owns Epsilon and data collaboration platform Lotame; strategic partnership with LiveRamp.

YouGov, third-party behavioral data, including AIQ and Samba TV, Havas’ proprietary studies, client first-party data, and clean rooms.

Key Challenge

Aligning disparate technologies across a network of agencies.

Losing that bespoke human touch when relying on software for creative production.

Integrating with IPG and juicing incremental sales for major brands that are already at near-capacity.

There can be a steep learning curve to sovereign data ownership.

Managing integration friction across many vendors in open system.

Centralization has down sides, handing control to the end-to-end services provider.

Maintaining creative soul while automating maximum production speed.

How You Pay

Software-as-a-service and managed services fees.

Self-serve software-as-a-service fees for Pro and managed services fees for Open.

Outcome-based.

License data, “own” identity; managed services; performance based.

Mix of performance and seats for access to client teams; clients own data and models.

Outcomes based and tech fees.

Mix of subscription and activation costs; outcomes-based costs for clients.