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January 14, 2026

Why Dentsu Can't Be Sold (And What That Means For Creative)

When production is free and buyers can't value the business, the industry has a measurement problem—not a revenue problem.

Dentsu Group generates $4.5 billion in annual revenue. Private equity firms just walked away from buying it at any price.

Not because the business isn't profitable. Not because advertising is dying. But because, as Gustaf Dahlqvist put it: "When AI makes the scalable bits free, the value of having 100,000 people doing those things efficiently doesn't compound. It evaporates."

This isn't a Dentsu problem. It's an industry measurement problem that's now visible at the $4.5bn scale.

The deal collapsed because buyers couldn't see where the durable value is.

Here's what happened: Private equity looked at Dentsu's financials and "couldn't see how to make it work." Investors who routinely value businesses with intangible assets walked away.

Why couldn't they make the numbers work?

The inability to model creative's contribution to business outcomes was almost certainly a major factor. Buyers can model media performance (CPMs, CTRs, CPA, ROAS). They can model production efficiency (cost per asset, turnaround times). But they can't model creative's multiplier effect on business outcomes because the industry has no standardized way to measure it.

When production costs drop to near-zero and creative's contribution remains unmeasured, the whole business model looks like it's built on air.

And here's the brutal irony: creative is the only part of the business with growth potential left.

Media and production margins have been squeezed for decades.

Media planning fees have been compressed relentlessly. What used to command 5-7% commission per media plan has been ground down to 2-3%—and the squeeze isn't finished. Clients demand "more for less," procurement teams benchmark everything, and platforms automate what used to require planning expertise.

Production margins face the same pressure. AI makes asset creation essentially free. What agencies used to earn healthy margins on—design, editing, versioning, localization—is now automated or commoditized.

Neither media nor production offers exponential growth. Both are being compressed.

Even holding company "growth" isn't built on creative value.

Look at Publicis, the success story of holding company consolidation. Their growth wasn't driven by creative excellence or the value of their creative product.

It was driven by massive technology acquisitions:

  • Epsilon: $4.4 billion acquisition in 2019—a data marketing technology company
  • Sapient: Digital business transformation and tech capabilities
  • Publicis Sapient AI Labs: Acquired in 2023 to strengthen data and AI capabilities

Publicis created a short-term competitive advantage through tech and data—not creative. And even that advantage is being commoditized as AI tools democratize what used to require massive technology infrastructure.

The pattern is clear: When holding companies grow, it's through tech, data, scale efficiency, and financial engineering. Nobody's buying or building holding companies expecting creative to drive growth, because there's no way to value creative's contribution.

The only hope for growth is if creative finds market-based value.

Here's what remains after AI makes production free, media margins get squeezed to 2-3%, and tech advantages get commoditized:

The IP of the industry—creative expression and the strategic judgment behind it.

Creative expression that actually works. Creative that multiplies media performance. Creative that drives measurable business outcomes. That's the only defensible, non-commoditizable value left.

But only if it can be valued, standardized, priced, and compensated based on performance.

Right now, there's no market mechanism for that. Good creative and bad creative get paid the same fee. Creative that drives 10x outcomes and creative that barely moves the needle both bill as "creative services rendered."

If creative expression finds market-based value—if it can be priced based on outcomes—that's the only path to growth left in the industry.

This is the zero-cost creative inflection point—at scale.

Three weeks ago, we wrote about the zero-cost creative inflection point: AI has made production essentially free. When making the creative costs nothing, what is the creative idea actually worth?

Dentsu's failed sale is that question writ large across an entire holding company.

The traditional agency model worked when creative and production were bundled:

  • Clients paid for both the idea and the execution
  • Agencies earned margin on production
  • Creative fees were absorbed into project costs
  • Nobody needed to isolate creative's contribution to outcomes

When production becomes free, that model collapses:

  • The scalable production work (what AI automates) can't justify the headcount
  • The creative judgment and strategic thinking (what AI can't do) has no market-based value language
  • Buyers look at the P&L and can't see where the durable value is

Gustaf's diagnosis is surgical: "Only the bits AI can't do matter: judgment, taste, strategic contrarianism."

But here's the problem: judgment, taste, and strategic contrarianism only matter if they drive measurable business outcomes. And if you can't measure creative's contribution to outcomes in financial terms, you can't value the judgment that created it.

Creative and media misalignment—now a $4.5bn problem.

A few weeks ago, we wrote about creative and media misalignment: creative teams measure awards and engagement, media teams measure CPMs and ROAS, and neither speaks the other's language.

That misalignment isn't just awkward in internal meetings. It's now likely preventing entire holding companies from being sold.

Here's what private equity saw:

Media has clear financial metrics:

  • Instagram CPMs are $8.50
  • CPA for this audience is $42
  • Media ROAS is 4.2x

Creative has qualitative assessments:

  • "This concept tested well"
  • "Brand lift was positive"
  • "The campaign won awards"

When buyers tried to model Dentsu's future cash flows, they could price the media capabilities (there's a market for that). They couldn't price the creative capabilities because there's no market-based measurement.

And when you can't measure it, you can't value it.

The missing piece: market-based valuation for creative outcomes.

This isn't an unsolvable problem. Distribution outcomes have market-based pricing because platforms created transparent benchmarks. A thousand impressions costs $X. A click costs $Y. A conversion costs $Z.

Creative-driven outcomes need the same thing.

Not predicted scores. Not qualitative lift studies. Market-based valuations for the outcomes creative actually drives—brand consideration, engagement depth, conversion contribution, long-term brand equity.

The infrastructure exists now:

  • Platforms have comprehensive outcome data
  • Benchmark databases operate at scale
  • Machine learning can price outcomes the same way auctions price CPMs

What's been missing is the marketplace.

Creative CPM exists to solve exactly this problem.

We built Creative CPM because we think creative outcomes should have market-based values—the same way media outcomes do. Not because we predicted Dentsu would become unsellable, but because the logic is sound: if creative drives business outcomes, those outcomes need financial values that buyers, CFOs, and private equity can model.

Here's how it works:

Distribution outcomes have prices:

  • CPM: $8.50
  • CPC: $2.00
  • CPA: $42.00

Creative-driven outcomes get priced the same way:

  • Brand lift outcome: $X per unit (benchmarked against market data)
  • Engagement depth: $Y per interaction (based on conversion contribution)
  • Consideration shift: $Z per incremental prospect (tied to purchase intent)

The result: a Creative Multiplier that tells you, in financial terms, how much value the creative message generated relative to distribution spend.

Suddenly, buyers can model creative's contribution.

Instead of:

  • "This campaign drove strong brand lift"

You get:

  • "This creative generated $2.4M in valued outcomes against $800K in media spend—a 3x Creative Multiplier"

That's a number private equity can put in a spreadsheet. That's a valuation metric buyers can model against future cash flows.

Creative is the only growth engine left.

Media margins: being squeezed from 5-7% to 2-3% and still declining.

Production margins: commoditized by AI and automation.

Tech advantages: Publicis spent $4.4 billion on Epsilon for data/tech capabilities, but AI is commoditizing those advantages too.

Holding company value: based on cost consolidation and financial engineering, not creative product value.

What's left?

Creative expression that works. Creative that multiplies media performance. Creative that drives business outcomes.

But only if the industry builds a market-based valuation system.

Only if good creative can be distinguished from bad creative in financial terms.

Only if agencies can prove creative value, marketers can allocate budgets based on creative multipliers, and creative talent can be compensated for outcomes—not just production.

This is the only path to growth.

Does anyone actually care?

That's the question we asked in our recent article: is creative valuation a real problem, or is it just logical?

Dentsu's failed sale suggests it's very real.

When a $4.5bn revenue business can't find a buyer—possibly because investors can't model how creative creates value—that's not apathy. That's a market failure.

The brutal irony:

Everyone agrees creative is important. CMOs say it. Media buyers know it. Private equity wants to believe it. But when it comes time to write a check—whether to acquire an agency, invest in creative talent, or allocate a marketing budget—nobody can model creative's financial contribution.

So they walk away. Or they cut creative budgets. Or they treat creative as overhead.

What happens when creative has market-based value?

Maybe Dentsu still wouldn't have sold. Holding company challenges run deeper than measurement. But if creative outcomes had standardized market values, buyers could at least model the business—and potentially see the growth opportunity.

More importantly:

  • Agencies could prove their value in CFO language
  • Marketers could allocate budgets based on creative multipliers
  • Creative talent could be compensated for outcomes, not just production
  • Buyers could distinguish high-performing creative from low-performing creative—and pay accordingly
  • The industry could finally have a growth engine again

Right now, there's more bad creative in the world than good. It's just that they get paid the same because there's no performance-based value system.

Market-based creative valuation makes the invisible visible—and creates the only growth path left.

This is the moment that forces the question.

For three decades, the industry has operated without performance-based value for creative. Agencies adapted. Marketers adapted. Everyone learned to live with creative/media misalignment and creative being valued as overhead.

But when production costs hit zero, media margins get squeezed to 2-3%, tech advantages get commoditized, and a $4.5bn business becomes unsellable because buyers can't see where the durable value is, the question becomes unavoidable:

Can the industry continue without market-based creative valuation?

We don't think so. Not because we built Creative CPM, but because the economics have shifted. When AI makes production free, media planning is commoditized, and even $4.4 billion tech acquisitions create only temporary advantages, creative differentiation is the only competitive advantage left. And if you can't value creative contribution in financial terms, you can't invest in it, reward it, defend it when budgets get tight, or grow it into something buyers will pay for.

Dentsu's failed sale isn't the cause. It's the symptom.

The fix is a marketplace for creative outcomes—one where value emerges from collective participation the same way CPMs emerged from media markets.

Creative CPM provides the infrastructure. The question is whether the industry is ready to use it.

Because after 30 years of living without performance-based value for creative, it's worth asking: Is this just how it is, or is this something we can finally fix?

What do you think?