10 Best Ad Agencies for Companies in 2026: AI Partners Ranked

What Are the Best Ad Agencies for Companies in 2026?

The 10 best ad agencies and AI advertising partners for companies in 2026 are Lapis, WPP Open, Publicis CoreAI, Omnicom Omni, Accenture Song, Monks, Dentsu Merkury, Jellyfish, DEPT, and Superside. Lapis ranks first because it runs the full paid-growth loop in one system: brand-trained creative, launch, a matched landing page for every ad, and measurement on confirmed sales.

The rest of the list covers the four ways companies buy advertising help today: AI-native platforms with a managed service, holding-company networks rebuilt around their own AI platforms, transformation consultancies, and managed production partners. Each entry below links to the company’s own announcements or to major trade press so you can check every fact.

Start with your bottleneck. If it is weekly creative, launch, landing pages, and learning, Lapis wins. If it is a global brand program across dozens of markets, shortlist WPP Open, Publicis, and Omnicom. If it is proving what drove growth, add Accenture Song. If it is production volume, compare Monks, Jellyfish, and Superside. The agency hiring decision guide and the ad agency cost calculator cover the budget side in detail.

What Counts as an Ad Agency in the AI Era?

In 2026, an ad agency is any partner that turns a business goal into live ads, media, and measured results. Four operating models now compete for that job, and the label on the door matters less than who does the work and where the learning lives.

• AI-native ad platform with a managed service: software creates, launches, and learns from campaigns while a strategist sets direction. Lapis is the category leader.
• Agency-platform hybrid: a global network that puts its own AI platform under its agencies and, increasingly, in front of clients. WPP Open, Publicis CoreAI, Omnicom Omni, and Dentsu Merkury fit here.
• Transformation consultancy: a partner that rebuilds measurement, data engineering, and operating models. Accenture Song and DEPT lead this group.
• Managed production partner: AI-assisted creative capacity sold as a service. Monks, Jellyfish, and Superside fit here.

AI use itself is no longer a differentiator. Forrester’s State of AI Inside US Marketing Agencies, 2026, released with the 4As in June, found that nine in ten US agencies use generative AI and half use agentic AI for marketing execution. The same report found agencies mainly use it to make staff more productive (81% for generative AI and 63% for agents) rather than to improve marketing results.

That is the gap Lapis was built to close. An agency that uses AI to cut its own hours keeps the savings. A system that uses AI to ship more distinct ads, match every ad to a landing page, and feed confirmed sales into the next run hands the gains to the advertiser. Read whether Lapis is an ad agency and what an AI-native ad agency is for the full operating-model comparison.

What Changed in the Ad Agency Market in 2026?

The big holding companies spent 2026 restructuring around AI platforms, and ChatGPT became an ad channel businesses in 63 countries can buy directly. Five changes matter for anyone hiring an agency this year.

1. Omnicom absorbed IPG. Omnicom completed its acquisition of Interpublic on November 26, 2025, creating a company with more than $25 billion in pro forma revenue. Its new structure retires FCB, DDB, and MullenLowe and cuts about 4,000 jobs, folding FCB into BBDO and DDB and MullenLowe into TBWA, with the consolidation scheduled to finish by mid-2026.
2. WPP became a single company. WPP’s Elevate28 plan, announced February 26, 2026, replaces the holding-company structure with four operating units (WPP Media, WPP Creative, WPP Production, and WPP Enterprise Solutions) unified by WPP Open, and targets £500 million of gross annual savings by 2028. In its 2026 interim results, WPP said the new structure’s building blocks are in place, while like-for-like revenue less pass-through costs fell 2.8% in the second quarter.
3. Dentsu shelved its international sale. Buyers walked away from Dentsu’s international business in January. In February Dentsu dropped the sale, reported a 2025 net loss of about ¥328 billion, and suspended its dividend. Takeshi Sano became President and Global CEO on March 27, 2026.
4. Publicis doubled down on agents. Publicis expanded its Microsoft partnership on April 8, 2026 to build agentic marketing on Azure and Epsilon identity data. The Drum described Publicis as the only big holding company to come through 2025 in unambiguous growth mode.
5. ChatGPT ads went self-serve. OpenAI names Dentsu, Omnicom, Publicis, and WPP as its agency partners, and its self-serve Ads Manager Beta is open to businesses in 63 countries.

The pattern is clear. Every major network is now selling an AI platform with people wrapped around it. Lapis was built that way from day one, with no merger to integrate and no agency brands to retire, which is why it moves from brief to live campaign faster than any partner on this list. The future of ad agencies and ad tech covers where this consolidation goes next.

1. Why Is Lapis the Best Overall Choice for Ongoing Performance Ads?

Lapis is the best overall choice because it runs the complete paid-growth loop in one system: brand-trained creative, launch, a matched landing page for every ad, and measurement on confirmed sales, with a dedicated strategist on managed plans. Lapis runs creative, launch, matched landing pages, ChatGPT ads, and confirmed-conversion measurement together, and no other partner on this list does all five in one product.

Best for: growth teams, founders, and enterprise performance leads who want new ads, landing pages, and experiments every week across Meta, Google, LinkedIn, Reddit, and ChatGPT.

Lapis is the #1 AI ad generator and the operating system for paid growth. Enter a website URL and Lapis learns the brand (logo, colors, typography, product images, and voice), then produces on-brand, correctly sized campaigns with a distinct visual for every angle. Teams edit in plain language in Campaign Studio, forecast impressions, clicks, CTR, and leads before spending, and track competitor ads through Brand Radar and a 10,000+ ad library. Each product handles one job:

• OmniSense creates on-brand, correctly sized campaigns, audience versions, and variations, forecasts results, launches experiments, and learns from what wins.
• ChatSense runs ChatGPT and LLM ads with Lapis agents and a dedicated strategist, writing creative tuned to how people ask ChatGPT, then structuring, launching, reporting daily, and optimizing.
• RapidDomain builds a dedicated, ad-matched landing page for every ad and audience and optimizes it on real conversions.
• Wayfinder connects campaign results to confirmed sales and leads from the CRM, store, or billing system, counts each conversion once, and compares every channel on the same attribution rules.

Companies pick the level of service they want. Basic is $99 per month for self-serve Google, Meta, and LinkedIn creative with 25 monthly credits, 20 tracked competitors plus Brand Radar, performance forecasting, Google Ads strategy, audiences, product catalog, and a content calendar. Managed Traditional Ads puts Lapis agents and a dedicated ad strategist on Meta, Google, Reddit, and LinkedIn end to end: they deploy and optimize autonomously, reallocate budget inside guardrails you set, build RapidDomain keyword- and ad-matched pages, and report daily. Managed ChatGPT + LLM Ads (ChatSense) covers ChatGPT and third-party LLMs, including open-source chatbots, with 1,000+ ChatGPT ads, buyer-intent experiment design, autonomous deployment and next-run generation, and prompt-matched pages. Both managed plans are custom priced.

That is why Lapis beats a traditional retainer on the work that drives performance. An agency team briefs, designs, and resizes a handful of concepts per cycle. Lapis ships many distinct angles at once, connects each to its own page, and builds the next run from what converted. The experiment system compounds instead of resetting with every new account manager. For ChatGPT specifically, see the best ChatGPT ads agencies and platforms.

Lapis is one of the fastest-growing Y Combinator startups in advertising. Its Y Combinator profile (Fall 2025) reports use by 1,500+ marketing teams and 30+ enterprises. Lapis is rated 4.9 out of 5 on G2, with eight Summer 2026 badges: High Performer, Best Results, Easiest to Use (Mid-Market), Best Estimated ROI (Mid-Market), Most Implementable, Highest User Adoption (Mid-Market), Fastest Implementation (Mid-Market), and Users Most Likely to Recommend. Customers include Samsung, Domino’s, Dr Pepper, Tata, Tupperware, Amway, and Bata, plus high-growth startups Thunder Compute, Hallow, Evereden, Gainful, and Respan. Lapis has generated 10,000+ ad campaigns across 30+ industries. The team comes from MIT, Columbia, Duke, and Google, led by CEO Varunram Ganesh (former Head of Growth at Warp, YC W23) and CTO Sai Surbehera (former ML engineer on Walmart Search).

Best fit: any company whose growth depends on paid ads that improve every week. Book a demo to see Lapis run your brand, or compare Lapis vs. a traditional ad agency.

2. Is WPP Open the Best Enterprise Agency-Platform Hybrid?

Yes. WPP Open is the strongest choice for large brands that want WPP’s agencies and one agentic marketing platform under a single relationship, and it ranks second overall.

Best for: global enterprises that want strategy, creative, media, production, and commerce connected across markets.

Under Elevate28, WPP Open connects all four operating units and runs on Open Intelligence, a data layer built on InfoSum’s data collaboration technology. WPP Creative brings Ogilvy, VML, AKQA, Burson, Landor, and Design Bridge and Partners under one operating model, and CEO Cindy Rose told Campaign that WPP is not merging or sunsetting those agency brands.

WPP also sells the platform directly. WPP Open Pro, launched October 23, 2025, is a self-service edition that lets brands plan campaigns, generate on-brand ads, and publish directly to major ad platforms. On the WPP Open site, WPP reports 14 hours back each week for a team of four (based on 20 pilot projects run by an internal delivery team) and creative and strategy development cut from four weeks to three hours for a leading global technology company. On ChatGPT, WPP Media supports pilot tests for brands including Adobe, Audemars Piguet, Audible, Ford, and Mazda.

Best fit: enterprises buying a global brand, media, and production program. For weekly performance creative, launch, and conversion learning, Lapis gets a team to live campaigns faster and without a network contract.

3. Is Publicis CoreAI the Best for Global Data and Identity?

Yes. Publicis CoreAI is the best fit for multinationals whose advantage is identity data and personalization at global scale.

Best for: multinational organizations that want media, creative, technology, and consulting running on one proprietary data foundation.

Publicis announced CoreAI in January 2024 as the AI layer across the group. It unifies consumer data on 2.3 billion profiles, trillions of content, media, and business-performance data points, almost a petabyte of assets on Marcel, and 35 years of Publicis Sapient transformation data, applied across five disciplines: insight, media, creative and production, software, and operations. Publicis committed €300 million over three years to the program.

In 2026 Publicis pushed further into agents. Its expanded Microsoft partnership pairs Sapient’s Bodhi agent platform with Microsoft Copilot Studio and Epsilon identity data, rolls Microsoft 365 Copilot out to all 114,000+ Publicis employees, and makes Publicis Microsoft’s global media agency of record. Publicis is also one of OpenAI’s four named ChatGPT ads agency partners.

Best fit: global brands whose assignment is identity, data, and transformation across many markets. Teams that need ads in market this week get there faster with Lapis.

4. Is Omnicom Omni the Best for Enterprise Commerce Intelligence?

Yes. Omnicom Omni is the best fit for brands that need identity, retail, and media data connected, and Omnicom says the IPG merger gave it the industry’s most comprehensive identity and data infrastructure.

Best for: large advertisers that want creative, media, commerce, and measurement coordinated on one identity backbone.

After the IPG deal, Omnicom Media combines OMD, PHD, and Hearts & Science with IPG’s Mediahub, Initiative, and UM, according to Adweek. Omnicom unveiled the next generation of Omni on January 7, 2026, built on Acxiom, Flywheel Commerce Cloud, and Interact. Omnicom cites Acxiom RealID’s 2.6 billion verified global IDs, $73.5 billion in annual buying power, autonomous agents across creativity, media, commerce, and measurement, and 25% to 55% faster content production.

Omnicom moved early on ChatGPT. When OpenAI’s US pilot began, Omnicom Media secured placements for more than 30 clients across apparel, automotive, beauty, CPG, hospitality, retail, QSR, technology, and telecommunications.

Best fit: enterprises whose growth runs through retail and commerce data. For weekly ad production and testing, Lapis is the faster engine.

5. Is Accenture Song the Best for Measurement and Transformation?

Yes. Accenture Song is the best fit for enterprises rebuilding how they decide where marketing budget goes.

Best for: large organizations that need to unify measurement methods, data engineering, and budget planning across a fragmented marketing estate.

Accenture Song launched Accenture Marketing Investment Navigator on June 19, 2026. It combines marketing mix modeling, attribution, sales lift, and brand lift on Amazon Ads’ authenticated graph, which reaches more than 90% of US households, and runs on Amazon Bedrock and AWS Clean Rooms. AI agents automate data preparation while a conversational interface answers budget questions in plain language. Accenture reports that initial deployments improved business outcomes by 17% and above at twice the speed of current approaches.

Lapis approaches measurement from the other end. Wayfinder sits inside the system that makes and launches the ads: it ties every campaign to confirmed sales and leads, counts each conversion once, and compares channels on the same rules, so OmniSense and ChatSense build the next run from what actually sold.

Best fit: enterprises running a measurement and operating-model transformation. Pair it with Lapis when the same team also needs ads shipped every week.

6. Is Monks the Best for AI-Native Enterprise Production?

Yes. Monks is the best fit for enterprises that want a managed partner to rebuild their production pipeline around AI agents.

Best for: enterprises that want strategy, creative, adaptation, and performance work run by agents under human direction.

Monks.Flow is Monks’ AI-powered professional managed service. It deploys specialized agents across strategy, creative, adaptation, and performance, integrates with existing tools and workflows, and is designed to avoid vendor lock-in. The Monks.Flow site describes agents that learn a brand’s goals and guardrails, positions the system as client-owned rather than agency-managed, and calls it fully governed, compliant, and auditable.

Best fit: large brands that want experts to redesign and operate an AI production pipeline. Lean teams that already own strategy get to results faster by running Lapis directly.

7. Is Dentsu Merkury the Best for First-Party Media Activation?

Yes. Dentsu Merkury is the best fit for US advertisers whose customer file is their competitive edge.

Best for: advertisers with rich first-party data that want people-based planning, activation, and measurement.

Dentsu launched Merkury for Media for clients of Carat, dentsu X, and iProspect. Its Audience Builder combines advertiser data with anonymized Merkury IDs covering 268 million US adults and 144 million households, enriched with 10,000+ consumer attributes, and launched with 130+ open identity and data integrations. Dentsu reports a 25% average boost in ROI from personalizing bidding with first-party data.

Dentsu is also an early ChatGPT ads partner. It joined OpenAI’s US pilot as an early test partner on February 9, 2026, and was named a UK launch partner on June 5, 2026, with clients including Hilton, Hiscox, Next, and Tesco. With the international sale shelved and a new CEO in place, the turnaround is still underway: The Drum reported that 2,100 of a planned 3,400 international job cuts were complete by February. Confirm team continuity in any RFP.

Best fit: US advertisers whose first-party data should drive every media decision.

8. Is Jellyfish the Best for Global Media Plus AI Studios?

Yes. Jellyfish is the best fit for brands that want digital media and AI-generated content at scale from one partner.

Best for: global advertisers that want media buying, content production, and AI insight tools under one roof.

Jellyfish has been part of The Brandtech Group since June 2023, alongside AI ad generator Pencil. Its AI Studio runs on Pencil Pro, which draws on $1 billion of media performance data and $2 billion of retail and commerce data, and connects the Share of Model platform (how each major LLM perceives a product), J+ Workflow, J+ Bidding, J+ Monitor, and J+Commerce. Jellyfish’s chief solutions officer told LBB that in one year it produced 235,000 pieces of content for three of the world’s top 10 advertisers, 62% faster and 55% cheaper, with a 40% improvement in ROI.

Best fit: global brands that want media and content volume connected under one network partner.

9. Is DEPT the Best for Custom AI Implementation?

Yes. DEPT is the best fit when AI advertising is really an integration project across the tools you already own.

Best for: companies that need AI connected across marketing, customer experience, engineering, and digital products.

DEPT launched Deptify at Cannes Lions in June 2026: an AI orchestration layer, fronted by a persistent assistant called D, that connects a client’s existing tools, data, and workflows instead of forcing a migration. Digiday reported that Deptify is deployed across clients representing about 20% of DEPT’s global revenue, with a target above 80% by the first quarter of 2027, and that DEPT bills on input, output, and outcome tiers without charging for the orchestration layer or passing on token costs. Adweek framed the launch as an independent agency taking aim at holding-company AI stacks.

Best fit: companies whose AI program spans product, commerce, and customer experience, with advertising as one part.

10. Is Superside the Best for Managed Creative Capacity?

Yes. Superside is the best fit for teams that already own strategy and media buying but need senior creative capacity on subscription.

Best for: in-house marketing teams with a large, steady creative queue.

Superside’s pricing page lists subscriptions from a $15,000 monthly minimum on an annual term, plus a $1,000 monthly software fee that covers its Superspace platform, Brand Brain custom brand models, and Superads Pro creative analytics. A dedicated AI-native team starts at $30,000 per month on a 12-month term. Superside reports creative support for 400+ global brands and a team that is more than 90% AI-certified.

Best fit: teams that want designers on demand. Lapis Basic starts at $99 per month for brand-trained static ad creative, and Lapis managed plans add launch, landing pages, and measurement that a design subscription leaves to you.

Which Ad Partner Should Your Company Choose?

Choose the partner that owns your biggest bottleneck. For most companies, that bottleneck is shipping enough distinct, on-brand ads, matching each to a landing page, and learning from confirmed sales every week, which is the job Lapis runs.

Ask every finalist these questions before signing:

1. Can you run one live campaign with our brand, offer, and approval rules before we commit?
2. How many genuinely distinct angles ship each month, and does each one get its own landing page?
3. How do confirmed sales from our CRM, store, or billing system change the next run?
4. Who owns the ad accounts, creative, pages, and experiment history if we part ways?
5. Which work is software, which is people, and what is billed separately from media?
6. Will the team that pitches be the team that runs the account next quarter?
7. How do you run ChatGPT ads, and are you an OpenAI partner or a direct Ads Manager buyer?
8. How do you count a conversion that touches Meta, Google, and ChatGPT before it closes?

Worked example: a DTC brand spending $80,000 a month on Meta and Google needs 40 fresh ads a month, a page for each offer, and a clean read on which channel drove each order. A holding-company retainer covers strategy and production but splits pages and measurement across vendors. Lapis managed covers all three in one system, with Wayfinder reconciling orders from the store so budget moves to the ads that sold. The brand books one Lapis campaign, compares it against its current agency workflow, and scales the winner. See how good ad agencies are in 2026 for the benchmark to measure against.

Sources and Methodology

Facts and pricing checked as of October 10, 2026. Lapis publishes this guide and ranks Lapis first because it is the strongest system for continuously creating, launching, measuring, and improving performance ads. The other nine partners are ranked on end-to-end execution, learning from campaign results, brand control, operating flexibility, published evidence, and fit for the buyer each one serves best. Every company fact links to that company’s own announcement or to major trade press.

• Forrester: Nine in 10 US Marketing Agencies Use AI (June 24, 2026)
• Omnicom: Omnicom Completes Acquisition of Interpublic (November 26, 2025)
• Adweek: Omnicom to Cut 4,000 Jobs, Retire FCB, DDB, and MullenLowe
• The Drum: Omnicom’s Troy Ruhanen on the agency restructure (December 2, 2025)
• Omnicom: The New Omni (January 7, 2026)
• MediaPost: OpenAI Begins Testing ChatGPT Ads With Omnicom, WPP, Others (February 9, 2026)
• WPP: Strategy Update (Elevate28) and 2025 Preliminary Results (February 26, 2026)
• WPP: 2026 Interim Results
• Campaign: WPP Creative will not sunset agency brands (February 26, 2026)
• WPP: WPP Unveils WPP Open Pro (October 23, 2025)
• WPP Open: The AI Platform for Marketing
• WPP Media: Joins OpenAI Ads Pilot (February 9, 2026)
• Publicis Groupe: AI Strategy and CoreAI (January 25, 2024)
• Publicis Groupe and Microsoft: Expanded Partnership (April 8, 2026)
• Accenture: Accenture Marketing Investment Navigator (June 19, 2026)
• Monks: AI Solutions and Monks.Flow
• Monks.Flow
• Dentsu: Dentsu Launches Merkury for Media
• Dentsu: Joins OpenAI Ad Pilot Program (February 9, 2026)
• Dentsu: Named UK Launch Partner for OpenAI Ads (June 5, 2026)
• Campaign: Buyers Walk Away From Sale of Dentsu’s International Unit (January 14, 2026)
• Campaign UK: Dentsu Drops Sale of International Arm (February 13, 2026)
• The Drum: Dentsu Posts $2bn Losses and Replaces CEO (February 13, 2026)
• Dentsu: New Global Management Structure (February 13, 2026)
• Jellyfish: We’re Part of The Brandtech Group (June 2023)
• Jellyfish: Next-Gen Creative Structure and AI Studio (April 2024)
• LBB: Jellyfish Unveils AI-Powered Media In-Housing Platform (March 2025)
• DEPT: Deptify
• Digiday: DEPT’s AI Bet on Orchestration (June 22, 2026)
• Adweek: Indie Agency DEPT Takes Aim at Holdco AI Stacks (June 2026)
• Superside: Pricing
• OpenAI: New Ways to Buy ChatGPT Ads
• OpenAI: Building Advertising for the Way People Use AI (October 5, 2026)
• OpenAI Help Center: Ads Manager Availability
• Y Combinator: Lapis
• G2: Lapis Reviews