Welcome back, today is Wednesday, September twenty-third, and we begin with COMvergence's first-half new-business scoreboard. Publicis Media led global new business in the first half of the year, with three point two four billion dollars in net billings, according to agency research firm COMvergence. That figure nets wins, losses and retentions, and group-level wins included Adidas in Greater China, HP, Microsoft and Prada. Per that tally, Dentsu and Havas Media Network both finished the half negative, at minus one hundred eighty-one million and minus three hundred forty-three million dollars. The same research reviewed one thousand nine hundred seventy account moves across forty-nine countries and nineteen point two billion dollars in spend, up nine percent on last year. Founder Olivier Gauthier described a clear shift toward media consolidating into centralized solutions run directly by the big five holding groups, outside their global agency brands. Those units took twenty-six percent of reviewed spend, five billion dollars, a shift that moves the contest away from the agency brands themselves. Industry reaction ties new-business leadership to balance-sheet scale, with a recurring view that owning resolved audience data is becoming table stakes. Also today, The Media Leader carries the second part of Nick Manning's analysis of the agency model, following our earlier report on his argument that client in-housing is what comes next. The argument now holds that Publicis is no longer an agency group but an aggregator connecting content, data, identity, commerce and media, assembled through Sapient, Epsilon, Lotame, Profitero, CitrusAd and Mars United Commerce. That read points to Microsoft moving over from Dentsu and large parts of LVMH shifting without a pitch, and frames the Publicis and Microsoft deal as an enterprise partnership negotiated well above the usual marketing and procurement level. It has one UK advertiser unable to get a Publicis agency onto its pitch list at all. Where that lands is on procurement, whose job shifts from cost benchmarking toward auditing data and its use. Reaction is thin, though some read assignments moving without a review as a signal about the pitch process itself. Separately, eighty-one percent of creative professionals are now using AI to create and release content. That comes from Luma's first annual State of Creative Professionals and AI report, presented at a Brandweek workshop and covered by Adweek. The survey of seven hundred sixty professionals found creative organizations evaluated an average of six point one tools, adopted four point three, and stopped using three. Michele Madansky, the research consultant who presented the findings, called that churn. Per that report, agencies lead adoption while freelancers lag, and written copy and images run ahead of video. The distance between using the tools and integrating them puts the next cost line on training and workflow, not procurement. A recurring view in the trade is that the harder problem sits in the data underneath, and that the advantage goes to teams who shortened the gap between a signal and a response. Elsewhere, Geico is pushing its brand characters beyond television and into entertainment, Variety reports. Chief marketing officer Arianna Orpello, who took the job in January, told the outlet that the company's character worlds will show up in places they have not before, after an AI-enabled Gecko appeared on a WNBA player's podcast in June. Per that interview, Geico is working with iHeartMedia on a TikTok podcast network, has tied up with Oprah Winfrey's weekly podcast and with Apartment Therapy for a series running on Meta, TikTok and YouTube, and is preparing a holiday special built on its characters. Orpello said almost sixty percent of insured consumers shop for a new policy each year, the churn behind an always-on budget. Some observers note a planned Dairy Queen tie-up keeps the work inside the Berkshire Hathaway portfolio. Now, a few more headlines moving the trade today. Officeworks is moving its media account to PHD Melbourne from Initiative after almost two decades, Mumbrella reports, joining fellow Wesfarmers business Bunnings, with no formal pitch. FP7 McCann MENA and MullenLowe MENA will merge as McCann MENA, Arab News reports, following our earlier coverage; clients gain access to Omnicom's wider regional resources. Power Digital has acquired Amazon agency pirawna and TikTok agency uptickk, per a company announcement; pirawna manages more than one billion dollars in Amazon revenue annually. And finally, Dentsu India has launched Dentsu Performance Studio in Bengaluru, Indian Television reports, a creative-led performance practice in a three thousand square foot facility targeting more than one thousand assets a month.