Publicis hikes salaries 7% after record 2024 and is ‘confident’ on outlook

Publicis Groupe kept up the heat on rivals as it ended 2024 on a high, with its strongest quarter of the year in Q4, and revealed it gave staff an average salary increase of 7%—ahead of annual revenue growth of 5.8%.

Publicis has been the fastest-growing agency group since the pandemic and the 108,000-strong company hailed another record year for net revenues – the fourth increase in a row – which rose to €13.96 billion ($14.4 billion). Q4 was up 6.3%.

All of the French agency group’s key regions posted annual growth, with the US up 5.1%, Europe up 5.4% and Asia-Pacific up 6.3%.

Arthur Sadoun, the chief executive, hailed the results, declaring: “Thanks to a very strong Q4, Publicis became the largest advertising company in the world in 2024.” 

That is on the basis that its net revenues have overtaken WPP, which has not yet reported annual results, and Omnicom, which does not typically disclose net revenues and reports results later today (4 February).

“It is a pretty historic year for us,” Sadoun told Campaign, saying “it’s not a small thing” for Publicis to become the biggest in net revenue terms. “Moving from the third position to the first position in three or four years meant years of work before” to reorganise the business, he explained. “It took us five to six years to be ready, but this is an important moment for us.”

Sadoun previously released a promotional video, featuring rapper Snoop Dogg, to celebrate becoming “number one” in November but Publicis faces losing the crown of biggest group if Omnicom completes its planned takeover of IPG, which was announced in December.

Sadoun said in an investor presentation for the annual results that the French group was “positioned to seize the opportunity” of taking on “the new Omnicom”.

He has already been looking to “reinforce our talent pool” by increasing wages, paying an average salary increase of 7% in 2024. That is understood to be similar to a year earlier and the company indicated inflation in the wider economy was not a factor.

Publicis kept its bonus pool at an “industry high” of €540 million ($558 million) the same as a year ago. The company maintained that rising headcount, which increased by 5,000 from 103,000 a year earlier, thanks in part to acquisitions, did not affect the size of the bonus payout as only some employees are eligible.

Publicis’ overall personnel expenses rose by 8.3% to €9.22 billion ($9.5 billion). “This increase is because of efforts to reinforce our talent pool to accelerate growth, as well as investments in AI,” the company said. Profit margin was steady at 18%.

Sadoun was “confident” about 2025 as he is forecasting revenue growth of 4% to 5% in 2025 despite macro-economic uncertainties such as US president Donald Trump’s threats to impose trade tariffs. Publicis also expects margin to improve above 18%.

He said: “We are ending the year in the number one position across the board, growing three times faster than our holding company peers, and five times faster than the IT consultancies.

“We delivered industry-high financial ratios while stepping up the pace of our investments in AI and talent. Once again, we topped the charts in new-business rankings.

“But even more importantly, we are accelerating on our status as a Category of One, thanks to our unmatched first-party data capabilities, our connected media eco-system, our creative firepower, and our 25,000 engineers, brought together through the Power of One.

“This makes us confident in significantly outperforming the industry in 2025 for the sixth year in a row [in terms of revenue growth versus peers].”