Welcome in, today is Tuesday, July twenty-eighth, and we begin with Statista's forecast that global marketing spend clears two point one trillion dollars this year. Statista's Marketing Worldwide report puts combined global advertising and marketing spend at roughly two point one zero eight trillion dollars in twenty twenty-six, against an estimated one point nine two trillion in twenty twenty-five. That is annual growth of nearly ten percent, and it is reported by Merca two point zero. Growth is not evenly spread. The same report has spending on digital and alternative media up eleven point four percent last year, while traditional media managed one point two, a divergence that puts the burden of proof on every television, radio and print line in a plan. In a WARC survey of more than a thousand marketing professionals cited in that reporting, online video led budget intentions on a net balance of sixty-five percent, influencer and creator marketing fifty-five, social media fifty-four. Television sat at negative twenty. Industry reaction leans toward reading the headline number as a fragmentation story rather than a growth story, with a recurring concern that proving the return on each dollar is the harder problem. Also today, the World Cup scoreboard for sportswear. Digiday's Sam Bradley takes on the question of whether Nike or Adidas won the tournament, sifting data from AdClarity, Meltwater, Sprout Social and MediaRadar across paid, earned and social. That read rests on third-party estimates rather than budgets either brand has disclosed, which is worth holding onto before anyone uses it to price sponsorship value. Industry reaction leans toward reframing the scoreboard altogether. Some in the trade argue the standout tournament plays came from brands with no official rights at all, and a related thread holds that speed of sign-off, not budget, is what wins cultural moments. Staying with the holding companies. Following our earlier report that Omnicom is merging Mediahub and Hearts and Science, Digiday has put the reasoning to four consultants and analysts. The argument that comes back is conflict avoidance. Merging two former IPG shops would have been operationally simpler, Mercer Island Group's Steve Boehler told that reporting, but would have run into client conflicts, notably in pharmaceuticals. Pairing an IPG brand with an Omnicom one sidesteps that, at the cost of stitching together disparate systems. Forrester's Jay Pattisall put numbers to the pressure behind it in the same piece. Omnicom's headcount grew sixty percent in twenty twenty-five on the IPG close, against five and a half percent at Publicis and a decline at WPP, and seventy percent of the savings slated for twenty twenty-six and twenty twenty-seven are labor related, per the company's fourth-quarter investor presentation. That is the arithmetic putting staffing on both client rosters in play. Seven thousand two hundred positions have gone since the end of twenty twenty-five, per that analysis, with at least as many expected again by twenty twenty-seven. An internal memo from Omnicom Media global chief executive Florian Adamski, quoted in that reporting, called the fit between the two agencies remarkably complementary, and did not address headcount. Industry reaction leans toward expecting more of this, with a recurring view that the group still has too many media brands standing. Separately, a filing that puts a price tag on the AI training question. Hachette Book Group, Cengage Learning, Elsevier and the novelist Scott Turow have filed a class action against Google in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, alleging the company infringed copyright in training its Gemini models, according to Adweek, which credits Publishers Weekly with first reporting the complaint. The most striking allegation in that account is that Google trained on books publishers had handed over to build Google Books, under an agreement the plaintiffs say permitted snippets, not training data. The complaint also cites an internal Google document estimating the company faced tens to hundreds of billions of dollars in potential fines. Those allegations are untested, and that reporting carries no response from Google. The plaintiffs seek an injunction and statutory damages, which is where a licensing market for training data starts getting priced. The same reporting notes a nearly identical roster sued Meta in May over its Llama models, and that Meta denied wrongdoing and argued fair use. Now, a few more headlines moving the trade today. WPP Media has knocked Omnicom off the top of COMvergence's latest Australian new business rankings, opening a one hundred and fifty million dollar gap between the two networks, per AdNews. Digiday reports the cost of AI is being absorbed into principal media arrangements without an explicit price attached, which bears on how advertisers audit those deals. New research from Omnicom Media Intelligence, an interested party here, finds eighty percent of consumers say a bad ad is worse than no ad, per Marketing Dive. Canon India has appointed Dentsu Creative Isobar its digital and e-commerce partner for its imaging consumer business, expanding an existing relationship, per Storyboard eighteen. And finally, Unilever is using AI to vet creators and automate workflows across a three hundred thousand creator network while keeping creative decisions with people, according to Digiday.