By Audrey Kemp

Copyright adweek

When Havas and Horizon Media launched Horizon Global on Monday, an independent joint venture between the two rival agency groups, it was a sign of the times.

The tie-up underscores the pressure facing mid-tier networks in a consolidating market. Omnicom’s $13.5 billion acquisition of IPG, expected to close before the end of the year, will narrow the field of global media giants while creating a new largest player. Publicis began consolidating its media business more than a decade ago. Meanwhile, WPP is restructuring its media arm by merging operations across its agencies, and the future of Dentsu’s international business hangs in the balance.

Horizon and Havas—each strong in their home markets but smaller on the global stage—see the joint venture as a way to compete for global media briefs they would otherwise struggle to win.

Operating out of New York and Paris, Horizon Global manages $20 billion in billings and has a presence in more than 100 markets. The new entity also scales each agency’s access to data by merging Horizon’s Blu platform with Havas’ Converged.AI into a unified system called BluConverged.

The JV highlights the pressure on independents and mid-sized networks to grow as media reviews balloon in size. In the past year, brands including Bayer ($720 million), Mars ($1.7 billion) and Coca-Cola ($785 million) have launched launched sprawling reviews that require global scale and cross-market coordination.

Horizon Global is an acknowledgement that consolidation is reshaping the market. “Client centricity…has been a huge driving force for us,” said Peter Mears, Horizon Global board member and global CEO of Havas Media Network.

Bulking up

Led by Horizon president Bob Lord as interim CEO and Havas’ Renata Spackova as COO, Horizon Global will operate independently from both agencies under a single P&L. Lord and Spackova will report to a board led by Mears, Horizon founder and CEO Bill Koenigsberg, and Havas chairman and CEO Yannick Bolloré. Havas and Horizon will split profits from the JV equally.

While the goal is to compete globally, Horizon Global’s sweet spot will be U.S.-centric clients with global reach—business Horizon couldn’t credibly win on its own, but now can support with Havas’ international footprint.

Horizon Global is also a data and tech scale play. Combining both agencies’ data platforms “allows us to run a much leaner operation from a human perspective than some of our competitors are,” said Mears.

Lord added that when it comes to tech, Horizon Global’s “open ecosystem” approach lets it plug in tools from Amazon, Google, and Adobe: “An open ecosystem spurs innovation. A closed ecosystem stifles it,” he said.

Most importantly, the new structure gives clients working across geographies “one throat to choke,” as Lord put it. He pointed to airlines and footwear as areas where Horizon Global sees near-term opportunity—though the agency declined to confirm whether it’s in any active pitches.

A new terrain

Horizon Global reflects the reality facing many midsize networks that need more scale to compete for global media accounts. With Horizon’s U.S. heft and Havas’ international reach, both are betting that joining forces can win them a seat at bigger tables in a market with fewer options. Mears said 2025 has been slow for new business, but that its looking like “a very busy fall and a busy Q1 2026.”

Industry analyst Brian Wieser, however, said the JV only opens doors to a narrow set of reviews that require both U.S. heft and a small global footprint.

“There’s going to be some subset of marketers who are primarily U.S.-based, who are large and have relatively small global operations, and only want to appoint one agency,” he said. “In that narrow set of circumstances, they might get into a pitch that they would have otherwise [not].”

Asked if Horizon Global narrows the gap with mega-holdcos, Wieser was blunt: “Not at all. If the global part were big, you’re not considering Horizon or Havas in the first place.”

While both companies see Horizon Global as a long-term play, Lord said there’s room to evolve the offer, including potential acquisitions down the line.

“Because of the way that we’ve set this joint venture up, it gives us a lot of flexibility for what will come in the future,” he said. “Are there assets that we want to pull into this JV?”

By joining forces, Horizon and Havas are acknowledging that if they want to chase big, global media clients, going it alone is no longer an option.