Welcome in, today is Tuesday, October sixth, and we begin with WPP, where Mumbrella reports the global CEO of VML is leaving after three decades. WPP says Jon Cook will leave the company, handing its largest creative network to a new chief. Per Mumbrella, Cook steps down as global CEO of VML and as CEO of WPP Creative, staying in both roles through March twenty twenty-seven to run the handover. Eric Campbell, currently CEO of VML and WPP Creative in North America, becomes global CEO of VML at that point, and keeps the North America job. That same account notes Campbell has been at VML more than twenty-five years. A transition signposted that far out is unusual at this level, and it gives clients and staff months to read VML's direction before anything moves. Cook built the network, leading the twenty twenty-four combination of VMLY and R with Wunderman Thompson into an agency spanning more than fifty-five markets, then added the WPP Creative brief in February under the group's Elevate twenty-eight strategy, covering Ogilvy, Grey, Burson, AKQA and Landor among others. In his statement, Cook called it one of the hardest decisions of his life and said both businesses operate from positions of strength. Mediaweek reports WPP has not named a successor for the WPP Creative role, and that Cook has not said where he is going. Industry reaction leans toward reading this as a cluster rather than a one-off, with several senior network exits in the same week. More About Advertising notes Cook follows Omnicom Advertising Group's Troy Ruhanen out of a top creative job. On the adtech side, a development on the Google ad tech antitrust case, following our earlier report on remedies that AdExchanger argued arrive too little and too late for publishers. The same outlet reports Google and the Justice Department filed their proposed final judgments on Friday night, a forty-one page document in a case that has been in the courts since January twenty twenty-three. Per that reporting, the two filings bracket what the court can order, from conduct restrictions to a possible divestiture of Google's exchange. That range is what buying and selling stacks have to be planned against, and nothing binds until the court rules. Practitioner reaction leans skeptical that the remedies reach the underlying power. Also today, political money. Digiday's Michael Bürgi writes that this midterm season is unlike any the business has seen, with a record eleven point six billion dollars expected to be spent once all votes are cast and counted. The scale is the argument, and it is the problem for everyone else buying through November, because that money chases the same local and connected-TV inventory sitting on brand plans now. A recurring practitioner concern is crowd-out rather than the headline number, with some in the buying community framing the cycle as a fourth-quarter inventory and pricing squeeze, since campaigns bid for the same social, search and TV placements with very different economics, an early-warning signal they suggest most non-political budgets have not been planned around. Across the platforms category, TikTok is moving to sell inventory beyond its own app. Digiday reports the company wants a bigger share of media budgets through an ad network push. Adweek puts specifics on it, reporting the rebranded Pangle network spans nearly four hundred thousand apps, weighted toward gaming, and that TikTok is also letting advertisers run campaigns from AI tools including Claude and Perplexity. Marketing Dive ties the products to Advertising Week and the holiday quarter. For buyers, it reclassifies TikTok from a social line item to a broader reach buy, and scale, pricing and brand-safety controls have not been detailed. Practitioner reaction leans cautious, with a recurring concern about which apps actually carry the inventory. Now, a few more headlines moving the trade today. Digiday's twenty twenty-six media agency report finds thirty-six percent of agency respondents say client budgets held flat this year, and thirty-two percent say they rose. From Advertising Week New York, which we covered as it reweighted toward creators, Digiday reports an opening mood of permanent uncertainty amid an industry rebuild. Storyboard eighteen reports that, per industry sources, Dentsu is a finalist alongside incumbent Wavemaker for Pernod Ricard India's media account, worth over eight hundred crore rupees, with a decision due next week. And finally, Digiday argues that agency fees inside creator deals are the next transparency headache for marketers, as those budgets grow.